Re: joint work with WebApps WG on Manifest

On Friday, May 10, 2013 at 2:40 AM, Charles McCathie Nevile wrote:

> We have a Recommendation for packaged apps already, and as I understood
> the discussion at the meeting we were pretty clear that this is part of
> what we do. Your app: URI spec is just a copy and paste of the Widget URI
> work done in webapps, with s/widget/app/g

I don't think that's a fair characterization. Yes, it's true that app:// and widget:// are the same spec, but Mozilla seems to have arrived at the solution independently (so no copy/pasting, AFAIK … note that chrome apps also reached the same solution). I've put out countless calls for implementation support for widgets:// and, apart from Opera (who have now abandoned it), few publicly backed it… Tizen also abandoned widget:// in their Tizen 2.0 release (or at least that's what I read in their release notes). WebApps also abandoned the work by publishing it as a WG Note:

"The working group reached consensus to stop work on this specification. It is being published for archival reasons and is no longer being progressed along the W3C's Recommendation Track." [1]

Given that app:// is implemented by FxOS, it currently has more chance of becoming a standard than widget://. Yes, SysApps still need another implementor to say they will support it. Anyway, widget:// and app:// is just bikeshedding and saying "you guys copied" doesn't help - imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, no? :)   
> (and then some nice editing by
> Marcos to make it not look quite the same - but seriously, when the first
> CfC went out the examples were identical down to having the same UUID). We
> have a spec for signing apps which was held up by a PAG for a year or two,
> but is now back on track to be shipped as a Recommendation.

It actually did ship as a rec:
http://www.w3.org/TR/widgets-digsig/
> I see no reason why you wouldn't leave this to Webapps, who have done it
> once already, and concentrate on the actual APIs, which are potentially
> quite complex and will require some serious expertise gathering to get
> right.

The dependency on XML Canonicalization and XSD has previously been raised as a problem for, at least, Mozilla (I don't know if that position still stands - I've only been here a week). Having it as a REC doesn't address the technical concerns.  

> On the other hand, the Webapps group explicitly rejected the runtime
> aspect (which was recently split into a separate spec) despite the fact
> that it is in their current charter. This is another item that I think
> will take some serious work and hope that the sysapps groups can focus on.

SysApp is all over it:
https://github.com/sysapps/runtime/issues

[1] http://www.w3.org/TR/widgets-uri/

Received on Friday, 10 May 2013 09:23:49 UTC