Re: Spec organizations and prioritization

On Thursday, 22 March 2012 at 20:23, Jeff Jaffe wrote:

> On 3/22/2012 3:46 PM, Marcos Caceres wrote:
> >  
> > On Thursday, 22 March 2012 at 19:15, Jeff Jaffe wrote:
> >  
> > > > My money is still on 2022 :)
> > >  
> > > While you jest; many a truth is said in jest so I need to respond.
> > >  
> > > We as a developer community owe it to our stakeholders to get a stable
> > > HTML 5 to them.
> >  
> >  
> > Stability of specification is not the issue here. The spec may be rock solid today, but if no one can pass the test suite, or a test suite does not exist, then the spec is not going nowhere on the REC track. Consider also that HTML5 sits on-top two specs under development: WebIDL and DOM4. Those specs will need to progress quickly, and also require test suites, etc… then they too have dependencies, and so on.
> Yes that is our challenge.

To address this challenge, we need to give people time to do the LC review. I was hoping the review period would be around 2-3 years (please don't laugh!): have we have a spec that is currently ~750 pages long (might be the longest spec produced by the W3C? certainly the most detailed one). We should also expect a couple of rounds of LC during that period.  

I'll note that 3 years is about right with the WHATWG timeframe. The WHATWG spec went to "Last Call" on October 27th, 2009. See: http://blog.whatwg.org/html5-at-last-call

So it would make sense if combined the W3C and WHATWG finish the LC phase around October 2012… but without a complete test suite, it's pretty futile to enter exit LC as a lot of spec bugs are found through testing… and even more will be found through actually implementing (which will mean the ol' CR to LC to CR to LC dance).  

> > Let me cite from the WHATWG FAQ:
> >  
> > "For a spec to become a REC today, it requires two 100% complete and fully interoperable implementations, which is proven by each successfully passing literally thousands of test cases (20,000 tests for the whole spec would probably be a conservative estimate). When you consider how long it takes to write that many test cases and how long it takes to implement each feature, you’ll begin to understand why the time frame seems so long."
> >  
> > See: http://wiki.whatwg.org/wiki/FAQ#What.27s_this_I_hear_about_2022.3F
> >  
> > The FAQ also states that:
> >  
> > "Now that we've moved to a more incremental model without macro-level milestones, the 2022 date is no longer relevant."
> >  
> > Hence, WHATWG HTML, at least, is not concerned with reaching a status.
> > > HTML is a living technology. So there certainly needs
> > > to be continued enhancement which I assume we will call HTML.next or 5.1
> > > or 6. But it would be irresponsible not to provide something until 2022.
> >  
> >  
> > It would be more irresponsible to do another HTML4.01 - or to violate the W3C process to meet some arbitrary date. We have the Process Document in place for a reason (and having _at least_ two independent implementations passing tests for every feature is what makes W3C RECs of high quality).
> Yes, we must not violate our process to meet some arbitrary date.
>  

That's very good to hear! :) Ok, so what do we do to get there by 2014?

Received on Thursday, 22 March 2012 20:38:13 UTC