Re: Reference to the HTML specification

On Saturday, 3 September 2011 at 20:54, Ian Hickson wrote:

> On Mon, 29 Aug 2011, Philippe Le Hegaret wrote:
> >  
> > But, the WHATWG HTML links to the editor's drafts and does not link to  
> > the TR one. While documents on the REC-track should link to other  
> > documents on the REC tracks, this doesn't apply to editor's draft, which  
> > have no special status anyway. So, you can link to both versions in the  
> > editor's draft if you prefer.
>  
> Well, the editor's drafts have one special status: they're the most  
> correct drafts, unlike the TR/ drafts, which are often obsolete as soon as  
> they're published (in the case of the HTML spec, they're obsolete _before_  
> they're published, since the publication process takes several days). So  
> it's not entirely true that they have no special status.
I agree with Ian. The W3C process is really harmful in not giving Editor's Drafts special status in the process. Ideally, Working Groups should be able to choose if their specs are frozen or live documents on TR.  

I've made this proposal several times to the W3C (pointing out how harmful this has been, particularly when other consortia or implementers use W3C status as an indicator of stability), and I'm hoping we can all have a fruitful discussion about this during TPAC.  

Can we please arrange a formal forum for this discussion and debate during TPAC? I've said this a number of times, but I am getting to the point where I no longer want to put anything on TR because I've seen how harmful that can be (if I end up writing another spec at the W3C, I will not choose to publish it on TR without HTML5-like "BIG RED WARNING" and only to meet the IPR requirements… and continue to only link to editor's drafts).  

Kind regards,
Marcos

Received on Saturday, 3 September 2011 20:15:16 UTC