Resuming work on the TCS

All -
There was substantial discussion at the last meeting regarding the timing of the restart of the work on the TCS,  following the completion of the work on the TPE.
The Chairs considered the points made for delay carefully, and laid them out against the rationale for immediately continuing. The key issues for continuing with the current schedule fell into several categories.

*                     Process and procedural issues - Based on the WG input we made the decision in October to prioritize TPE but to advance the two document in parallel again after Last Call. If the TCS is delayed by several months, the further advancement of TPE to Candidate Recommendation will be slowed by the same amount.

*                     User/stakeholder pressure for a W3C compliance specification.  There have been calls for the compliance spec from users and stakeholders. This works against the slippage of the schedule.

*                     Resource issues. Generally, based on experience in standardization, the resources necessary for conformance specification writing are usually different than those necessary to write an implementation of the TPE.
After consideration of the multiple points, it was decided that the need to maintain the TPWG approved and requested schedule for the TPE and TCS was significant enough to begin work on the TCS sooner rather than later. As we have done since October, TCS will deal with issues with the same process used for completion of the TPE.
While we understand that this is a challenge for on some stakeholders, we believe that the larger community will be better served by moving ahead - as scheduled - with the TCS.
For the Chairs,
Carl Cargill
Carl Cargill
Principal Scientist, Standards
Adobe Systems
Cargill@adobe.com
Office: +1 541 488 0040
Mobile: +1 650 759 9803
@AdobeStandards
http://blogs.adobe.com/standards