Re: joint work with WebApps WG on Manifest

On Fri, 10 May 2013 10:23:13 +0100, Marcos Caceres <w3c@marcosc.com> wrote:

>
>
>
> 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,

So I think my characterisation of it as the same is fair.

> 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).

I am not accusing anyone except you of copy-pasting, and rather than think  
it is bad that the specs are technically perfectly aligned I think this is  
really good news.

It does not reflect very well on Chrome and Mozilla that they went ahead  
and re-invented something that is apparently really only different in the  
colour of the bikeshed, while being part of an agreement to drop it as a  
work item that had been developed and implemented. Your words above  
suggest this was already implemented by at least Opera and Tizen - the  
standard requirement for a Recommendation, and Mozilla and Google folks  
tend to be abundant at webapps meetings, where I should add they do a lot  
of valuable work so I hope to keep seeing them.

> WebApps also abandoned the work by publishing it as a WG Note:

Web Apps does what it has agreement to work on. I am disappointed that  
WebApps members supported the consensus to stop developing something that  
they then effectively implemented. But this just an example of people  
making mistakes - for which there is no magic perfect solution. I still  
believe that the group should follow the policy of doing work on the items  
it has agreed to.

> "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://.

Maybe. So long as someone finally stops playing "not invented here" and  
adopts it instead of reinventing it with their own preferred name. However  
I have high hopes for that to actually happen...

> 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? :)

Given that we have seen everything implemented already with a different  
name, I would think you have a strong argument that your spec describes a  
technology that can clearly be implemented interoperably, and given that  
several entirely independent (to the point of reinventing the same wheels)  
projects have come up with precisely the solution in the original spec, I  
would think it makes sense that W3C Recommend the web use this technology  
as a standard for the use cases it meets.

>> (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).

cheers

Chaals

-- 
Charles McCathie Nevile - Consultant (web standards) CTO Office, Yandex
       chaals@yandex-team.ru         Find more at http://yandex.com

Received on Saturday, 11 May 2013 23:09:14 UTC