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

On Mon, Apr 25, 2016 at 8:29 PM, Marcos Caceres <w3c@marcosc.com> wrote:
> On April 26, 2016 at 1:32:38 AM, Wendy Seltzer (wseltzer@w3.org) wrote:
>> Hi Spec-Prod,
>>
>> 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.
>
> I think most people (inside the W3C and outside) don't have any idea what constitutes a "level" vs "edition" vs "version". It just leads to confusion and frustration, because searching for a feature might mean you end up a the wrong "level" or because you don't find the feature at whatever level. I know I've experienced this frustration trying to find CSS stuff (sorry, Tab!)

level/edition/version are all the same thing.  Point is just that *if*
your workmode is to work on a spec for a while, then cut it to a
stable version, and then work on it more, then you're doing levels/etc
and it's good to acknowledge that up-front to avoid future problems
with shortname urls.

The alternate workmode is to do a living standard that just gets
updated as appropriate.  That's also 100% fine.

> I've also been doing standards for about a decade now, and I still have no idea what CSS Levels mean - to an outside-insider, they appear to be completely arbitrary and even more frustrating that versions: does a level obsolete a version? Does it build on it? Can Super Mario jump onto that level or will he reach that level.. because games have levels? is that what levels mean?

The only confusion I've ever heard from authors is the distinction
between spec levels and "language" levels, caused by the fact that CSS
previously updated all-at-once (and so did HTML, and so does JS).

The concept of levels *themselves* doesn't seem to confuse anyone.

> We should just move to living standards and stop with the levels/versions/dates nonsense altogether (as the WHATWG has done): one stable URL is all you need.

That's easy to do with levels *or* living standards - the CSSWG has
for quite a while been ensuring that when we publish "css-foo-3", that
"css-foo" also works and points to the latest thing.  Unless you have
a burning need to refer to a specific version, using the unversioned
url is always the easiest and most correct thing to do.

~TJ

Received on Tuesday, 26 April 2016 18:38:32 UTC