Re: Thursday WG telecon postponed

At 12:22 AM 11/29/2006 +0100, Thierry Michel wrote:

>Lofton Henderson wrote:
>>Hi WebCGM WG,
>>The Thursday 11/30 telecon will be postponed till next week (6-dec) -- 
>>next week is better timing for events in progress and for various travel.
>>We should start to discuss what we want to do during the remaining 6 
>>months of the chartered life of the WG (assuming REC in early January).
>>Picking possibilities from the Charter [1]:
>>[[[
>>     Deliverables / Tracking and maintenance items:     [...]     # 
>> Collect and publish any pending WebCGM 1.0 errata. If required,
>>     collect these together and publish a WebCGM 1.0 third release.     # 
>> Collect and publish errata for the new WebCGM 2.0.
>
>
>One question gets to my mind, does WebCGM 2.0 REC supersedes 1.0 ?

Hmmm... interesting question.  My inclination is "no".  Detailed thoughts 
follow...

BACKGROUND.  I looked at http://www.w3.org/TR/, and I find only one 
Recommendation that carries a version > 1.0 and that even mentions the 
topic (at least in SoTD) -- SMIL 2.1.  It supersedes 2.0.  It links to 2.0, 
but oddly, 2.0 cannot be found in the list of Recommendations in /TR/ -- it 
has disappeared from the list of Recommendations.  (Note also:  the SoTD of 
the old SMIL 2.0 spec, once you find it, does not announce that it is 
superseded, obsolete, defunct.  Could a PER publication do that -- mark a 
version as superseded?.

I looked in the Process Document.  The word "supersede" does not 
appear.  Neither does it appear in pubrules.  I found it here:
[2] http://www.w3.org/2005/05/tr-versions

I don't know what exactly what "supersede" means to W3C.  In ISO, the 
terminology is "supersedes and replaces" (S-R), and it means "[old version] 
is no longer a standard".  So in ISO, version 2 CGM S-R'd version 1 CGM, 
version 3 S-R'd version 2, version 4 S-R'd version 3.  But in the ISO CGM 
case, each new version incorporates the prior one as an identifiable 
conformance level.

ABOUT WEBCGM.  It would probably have been good for us to have looked at 
and discussed this earlier.  But if we agree with "no", then it's probably 
not a big deal.

All of that said, IMO the answer should be "no", 2.0 does not supersede 
1.0.  Why?  While it adds to and builds on 1.0, it would create a problem 
to say that the 2.0 spec superseded the 1.0 spec.  The problem is that 2.0 
spec, for example, identifies ProfileEd:2.0 content, but does not identify 
ProfileEd:1.0 content.  If 1.0 were no longer a standard, what is the 
status of 1.0 content and 1.0 implementations?  Rather than raise such 
questions, I think it is cleanest to keep 1.0 updated/corrected with errata 
(and "Editions", which according to [2] *do* supersede the earlier editions).

MORE.  We have explicitly talked in the 2.0 spec, in at least one place, 
that "2.0 conformant viewers that receive 'foo' in 1.0 content shall 
blah..blah.."  This reinforces the perception that 1.0 remains a valid 
conformance target for content, generators, and interpreters that do not 
care about 2.0's extensions and additions.

MORE.  Note that WebCGM 2.0 also has a different shortname:  webcgm20.  If 
we explicitly intended "supersede", should we have used the same shortname? 
Note also that the Abstract says that 2.0 "adds [stuff]... builds upon and 
extends...", which to me implies that 1.0 is still available for simple jobs.

CONCLUSION.  2.0 does *not* supersede 1.0.  Corollary:  We have to keep 1.0 
correct and accurate with errata and possibly edition 3 [Third Release]).

Thoughts?

-Lofton.

p.s.  When was [2] first published?  I haven't seen it before.

>>     # The WebCGM WG may produce related usage guidelines as time,
>>     expertise, and other resources permit.
>>     Milestones:     [...]     # Rec (and OASIS Standard) -- 1 November 
>> 2006     # PER of WebCGM 1.0 -- 1 December 2006     # Post-Rec publicity 
>> and evangelism - to May 2007
>>]]]
>>REC 1.0 Errata is a concrete work item.  We have been remiss in keeping a 
>>list as we hurried through 2.0 development, but I recall at least one 
>>that we intended to publish (clarification of ambiguities in the IRI, 
>>URI, non-ascii characters stuff).  I'm sure there are others.
>>The other work items will intersect activities in the WebCGM TC 
>>(CGMO/OASIS), and we will need to sort that out.
>>Discussion welcome (on this list, in telecon, etc).
>
>another item is: Do we plan to have another F2F ?
>>Regards,
>>-Lofton.
>>[1] http://www.w3.org/2006/03/webcgm-charter. 
>><http://www.w3.org/2006/03/webcgm-charter.html>html 
>><http://www.w3.org/2006/03/webcgm-charter.html>
>
>
>

Received on Thursday, 30 November 2006 22:05:03 UTC