Re: Supporting levels and level-less drafts in /TR, bikeshed

On Mon, Apr 25, 2016 at 8:31 AM, Wendy Seltzer <wseltzer@w3.org> wrote:
> We've been having discussion whether every spec needs to have a "level"
> indicator. I understand that CSS has moved in that direction, even for
> "Level 1" drafts, while some other groups have moved to levels only
> after v1.
>
> Two data-points:
> Mike West reports that bikeshed gives a fatal error when asked to
> produce a WD without level metadata.

While I'm going to continue requiring Level metadata, I consider it a
bug that it doesn't handle the semantics of "living" or "currently the
only level" standards well.  I'll fix that.

> The pubrules "this version" checker complains about a -1- after a
> shortname.

This is a bug in pubrules that's been known for some time (at least a
few years).  CSS has been publishing with urls like that for a long
while.

> Is there a common view on whether to use levels or not, and if so, how
> to indicate them?

Unless the org has a strong policy on only publishing the spec as a
living standard, I strongly support using CSS's pattern more widely:

1. Every spec is published with a leveled, dated shortname, like
"foo-1-20160425".
2. Additionally, the latest published version of a given level is
available at a leveled shortname, like "foo-1".
3. Additionally, the latest publication of the spec is available at a
plain shortname, like "foo".

W3C in general instead just publishes a dated shortname, and a plain
shortname.  This means that, if a second level is ever published, we
either (a) retroactively interpret all links to /TR/foo/ to mean "the
latest level" (and there's no way, prior to this, to validly refer to
just the first level), or (b) interpret /TR/foo/ to always mean the
first level (and so there's no way to just refer to the latest version
of a spec, as you always have to specify a level).

It's not killer, but it's annoying.

On Mon, Apr 25, 2016 at 9:02 AM, Shane McCarron <shane@spec-ops.io> wrote:
> What is the semantic of "Level"?

Within CSS, a "level" is what you'd expect - a new edition of an older
specification.

In Bikeshed, Level is used to implicitly specify that a particular
spec obsoletes another one (with the same shortname and a smaller
level).  If you attempt to autolink to a term, and both the obsolete
spec and its superceding version provide refs for that term, the ones
from the obsolete spec are automatically thrown out, so you don't get
any "ambiguous ref" errors.

~TJ

Received on Monday, 25 April 2016 17:33:35 UTC