Re: References Re: What are the requirements/problems? Re: Working on New Styles for W3C Specifications

On Saturday, 24 December 2011 at 04:16, Liam R E Quin wrote:

> On Fri, 2011-12-23 at 18:41 +0000, Marcos Caceres wrote:
> [...]
> > As an example, there is no guarantee that "xmldig-core1" will
> > eventually (when it goes to Rec) replace "xmldig-core". I would like
> > that guarantee.
> 
> 
> 
> You can't have it.
> 
> Sometimes the new spec supplants the old and sometimes not.

But for cases where it does not break backwards compatibility, then I should be able to have it. It's the same with namespaces: you don't version namespaces (that would be stupid): you only mint a new one in the extreme case where you break backwards compat.

Groups like XML Dig Sig acknowledge that in their spec [1]: 

"No provision is made for an explicit version number in this syntax. If a future version is needed, it will use a different namespace."

So why not do the same for specs?  

> For example, sometimes we publish a spec and the community by and large
> rejects it; XML 1.1 was an example.

That's a good example actually. Except, it generally excepted that XML 1.1 is no backwards compatible with 1.0, hence: 

<?xml version="1.1"?> is explicitly needed to trigger it. 

So that would go into it's own short name (xml11), as it currently does. 
> We have to deal with the world as it is, not with the world as we'd like
> it to be :-)

The w3c isn't the world: we made the w3c that way, which means that we can change it.  

Please, lets keep a "can do" attitude ;) 

[1] http://www.w3.org/TR/xmldsig-core/#sec-Versions

Received on Saturday, 24 December 2011 10:38:15 UTC