RE: html4 vs html5 and "superseded RECs" when there isn't a new REC

My original post was not issue 2 (what I was asking for was snipped out in what's below).   HTML4 isn't a superseded REC because html5 isn't a REC.   That was the point.  But, HTML5 is defacto the new html spec and it will take a very long time to get to REC even though it is widely implemented.  We should do something in the html4 REC to at least point to html5.

The suggestion was to put a note in the HTML4 spec pointing to the latest html5 TR WD.  (and keeping that up to date is a different issue - but it's better than not indicating anything in the old and out of date official REC).

>-----Original Message-----
>From: Charles McCathieNevile [mailto:chaals@opera.com]
>Sent: Wednesday, March 07, 2012 3:05 AM
>To: Carr, Wayne; Marcos Caceres
>Cc: public-w3process@w3.org
>Subject: Re: html4 vs html5 and "superseded RECs" when there isn't a new REC
>
>Note - this is ISSUE-2 - if you add that string in mails about the topic they will be
>collected at
>http://www.w3.org/community/w3process/track/issues/2

>
>On Wed, 07 Mar 2012 11:48:35 +0100, Marcos Caceres <w3c@marcosc.com>
>wrote:
>
>> On Wednesday, 7 March 2012 at 10:35, Carr, Wayne wrote:
>>> With HTML4 we have the formal W3C Recommendation for HTML, but no one
>>> would want that as the basis for a UA. It has been superseded by HTML5.
>>> But, people still write that html4 is the html spec and html5 is in
>>> the future. Obviously, that doesn’t reflect the Web Browsers out
>>> there which have embraced html5. But html5 is still years away from
>>> going to REC.
>>>
>>> It seems in this (hopefully) unusual situation,
>>
>> Just wondering, was it not the same case with CSS 2.1 (and now with
>> many modules of CSS3)? And with XHR 1 and XHR level 2 also (with
>> neither XHR version going to REC, while XHR 1 was abandoned in favour
>> of just "XHR"…)
>
>Yeah, I think the situation is actually quite common.
>
>> XHR level 2 was originally published under:
>> http://www.w3.org/TR/XMLHttpRequest2/

>...
>> What would be nice would be if HTML5 would dethrone the obsolete XHTML
>> spec from the URI (and we dropped the "5" from the spec, as the WHATWG
>> has done):
>> http://www.w3.org/TR/html/

>
>Actually, I think that is a far too simplistic approach to be useful, except to a small
>handful of the stakeholders. And I think removing the version token from the spec
>is not a helpful solution, as nice as it might feel.
>
>Having a pointer that describes the status of HTML at
>http://www.w3.org/TR/html/ might be useful - and it might need to be more
>complex than "latest draft, last 'heartbeat' publication, last Recommendation".
>There are plenty of people who use XHTML. There are people who use HTML 4.
>There are people who use HTML5. And there are people who use HTML and don't
>actually know what they are using. If they want to look up "What is HTML" and
>they expect W3C (instead of Wikipedia, about.com, or their local library's CD-
>ROM encyclopedia of the Web) to explain it, we should think about how to
>provide different bookmarkable references for the different needs.
>
>(Which also feeds into the bibliographic references discussion Marcos kicked off a
>while ago. Did that result in any issues, actions, or
>conclusions?)
>
>cheers
>
>Chaals
>
>--
>Charles 'chaals' McCathieNevile  Opera Software, Standards Group
>     je parle français -- hablo español -- jeg kan litt norsk
>http://my.opera.com/chaals       Try Opera: http://www.opera.com

Received on Wednesday, 7 March 2012 12:04:33 UTC