Re: Blocker for PR: links to HTML5 spec

On Mon, 4 Apr 2011, Philippe Le Hegaret wrote:
> On Mon, 2011-04-04 at 17:54 +0000, Ian Hickson wrote:
> > On Mon, 4 Apr 2011, Philippe Le Hegaret wrote:
> > > On Mon, 2011-04-04 at 07:50 +0000, Ian Hickson wrote:
> > > > On Sun, 3 Apr 2011, Zhiheng Wang wrote:
> > > > >
> > > > >    Philippe and I sync'ed up after the F2F meeting last Friday and we've 
> > > > > decided to resolve these references and making the spec (mostly) 
> > > > > self-contained. I am going over the references and see
> > > > > 
> > > > >    - if it's a concept, we can leave the reference as it is.
> > > > >    - if it's a process, we will keep a snap shot of the referred section in
> > > > >    the current draft.
> > > > 
> > > > That seems like a really bad idea... what if the definitions change? The 
> > > > worst possible outcome would be for the two specs to diverge, resulting in 
> > > > conflicting requirements.
> > > > 
> > > > What problem does doing this solve?
> > > 
> > > We need to get Navigation Timing to REC and waiting 3 years isn't
> > > practical.
> > 
> > Why would you wait 3 years?
> 
> Because the HTML5 spec won't be a REC before that.

Why does that matter?

HTML5 as published by the W3C is more stable and mature than the HTML4 
REC, and you can reference that, right? So why not reference HTML5?

Is there a process rule that says you cannot? If so, where is it? Can you 
provide a URL to that rule?

Also, if there is such a rule, why not change it? We should obviously not 
be making decisions like copying spec text, along with the risks that 
entails, purely to work around a process we control.

If there really is such a rule and you can't change it, why not reference 
the WHATWG HTML spec instead? It's already a Standard, the most mature 
state a spec can get in the WHATWG, so presumably there's no problem with 
maturity, right? The process clearly doesn't require that you reference 
only W3C specs, since it references both an IETF spec and an ECMA spec 
already.


> > > If the definitions change in HTML5, it will break the Navigation 
> > > Timing implementations in any case and we'll need to revisit our 
> > > spec since some of our attributes may not make sense anymore.
> > 
> > So what difference does it make if you depend on the HTML spec or not?
> 
> The difference is that we will be allowed to move REC if we don't rely 
> on a WD normatively. If we keep the current dependency, we cannot move.

Working around a process you control is a clear indicator that the process 
is broken. Fix the process.

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'

Received on Monday, 4 April 2011 21:48:55 UTC