- From: Ian Hickson <ian@hixie.ch>
- Date: Tue, 7 Oct 2014 05:45:33 +0000 (UTC)
- To: Daniel Glazman <daniel.glazman@disruptive-innovations.com>
- cc: public-w3process@w3.org
On Tue, 7 Oct 2014, Daniel Glazman wrote: > On 06/10/2014 23:57, Ian Hickson wrote: > > > > I disagree that that is a priori important. The purpose of the > > snapshot is just to provide a reference for patent lawyers in cases > > regarding patent infringement, and government officials in contracts > > whose precise details are ignored (as discussed in my last e-mail). In > > neither case is the history of the document important. > > Ian, did you read my message here about a third important case? I > entirely agree with Dave Singer; snapshots should contain links. I assume you mean: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-w3process/2014Oct/0050.html | large companies having to control the deployment of browsers internally | because their operations rely on critical intranet web sites | They would like to know exactly what is implemented and based on what | spec's level. No spec says exactly what is implemented. There are no browsers that implement HTML4 as written. There are no browsers that implement _any_ standard exactly as written. Having a snapshot specification does not serve the purpose that you describe as needed in this argument. It is why I have not included this purpose in the list of purposes served by a snapshot. In fact, when it comes to the HTML spec, the living standard has always addressed this use case significantly better than any HTML snapshot that has ever existed, for two reasons: one, the living standard keeps being updated to match the actual deployed browsers, especially those behaviours that are actually required by deployed content; and two, the HTML specification has for many years had documentation within the specification itself saying what major browsers implement what features. (This documentation was recently upgraded further; now it actually lists 11 different browsers, and gives the earlier version of that browser with support for the feature, using the data from caniuse.com.) | But when a browser vendor says "X is implemented", it doesn't refer to a | given commit, it refers to a spec. It refers to their aspirations, but no document exactly documents what they implemented. What snapshot of HTML do you think browsers mean they implement when they say they implement "HTML5"? I can assure you that it certainly isn't the version that the W3C is about to publish -- that version has literally months of fixes missing from it, fixes that made the WHATWG version a closer description of what browsers shipped than the W3C snapshot. Further, what exactly do you think is the difference between a commit and a spec, or a snapshot of a spec? A snapshot, by definition, is a copy of a specific commit (possibly a commit plus a branch label). Anything you can say about a snapshot, you can say about a specific commit. | If the spec is a living standard, there could be changes between the | state of the implementation and the relevant prose in the living spec. If the spec is a snapshot, there could be differences between the state of the implementation and the relevant prose in the snapshot spec. In fact, I guarantee that there would be. > What is this leitmotiv about lawyers and governments, as if they were > useless and mentioning them was immediately pejorative? If they were useless, we wouldn't need the snapshot for them. Mentioning that the document is for them is no more pejorative than having a version of the specification for Web developers say so (as in the specification variant found at developers.whatwg.org , for instance -- heck, even the hostname for that spec mentions the audience!). > > Other than the title, for the URL spec, it is done: > > > > https://whatwg.org/specs/url/2014-07-30/ > > Ian, please do change the title. Please. It's a snapshot with legal rammifications; multinationals have made specific legal commitments to the text of that document. Changing it in any way is simply not on the table. The suggestion being discussed here is to use a new title in a future snapshot. I explained in detail the reasoning for having such a carefully crafted title in my earlier e-mail: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-w3process/2014Oct/0036.html I haven't seen any compelling arguments against the current title. My advice to future people making snapshots of WHATWG spec would be unchanged; the format we used in the URL spec is excellent, IMHO. > It is just insulting hundreds of thousands of people. It is insulting nobody. > And please add a link to the most recent version as Dave asked. This is > a perfectly valid request. It's already there. It's literally the first link in the document, in the first sentence of the document; the entire purpose of that first sentence, indeed, is to provide this very link. To make it as obvious as possible, that sentence is the only sentence in the entire first paragraph. I don't really know what more one could possibly do. -- Ian Hickson U+1047E )\._.,--....,'``. fL http://ln.hixie.ch/ U+263A /, _.. \ _\ ;`._ ,. Things that are impossible just take longer. `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'
Received on Tuesday, 7 October 2014 05:45:56 UTC