Re: Schedule

Ron Daniel wrote:
> 
> Brian McBride said:
> 
> > 02 Jan 2002  Last call announcement
> [...]
> > Eric, Dan and others with experience of this process, does this look feasible?
> 
> Unfortunately, I don't think so.


> It is feasible that we have new working drafts of all the documents at the
> start of the new year.

It's feasible to have new drafts at any time; next week
sounds good to me. The editors have been fairly busy
since the Sep publications, from what I can tell.

> (In fact it is probably mandatory). For those to be
> 'last call' drafts would require that we have all issues essentially settled
> now and only be arguing over how they are worded in the documents. Just
> getting all the documents read, commented, changed, re-read, re-edited,
> tweaked for consistency, and approved for last call would take all the time
> between now and then, esp. given the holiday season that is coming up.

That shows very little trust in the editors, or very little
willingness of WG members to write text that goes straight
in the drafts, or something.

> It may be feasible to shoot for having a last call draft at WWW2002.
> Anything more aggressive than that is, IMHO, far more likely to be missed
> than met.

I don't think we can justify taking that long.

We're here to do (among other things)
an editorial clarification of RDF 1.0.
We're scheduled to be just about done with that by now.

We could be just about done... or very much further along...
if folks put a bit more value on building consensus
and less on tearing it down.

For example, take item "12: Issue: Identity of anonymous resources"
from today's agenda. That issue was discussed thoroughly
and decided at the ftf meeting: the meaning of
	<rdf:Description>
		<dc:title>ABC</dc:title>
		<dc:date>2001-04-23</dc:date>
	<rdf:Description>

is: "there is something whose title, in the dublin core sense,
is ABC, and whose dc:date is 2001-04-23."

From the record:

  "The WG agreed that nodes in an RDF graph arising from
  description elements without and rdf:about or an rdf:ID
  attribute can be distinguished from nodes that had such an
  attribute."
	-- http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/RDFCore/20010801-f2f/

We have since clarified that in excruciating mathematical
detail in the model theory; we have demonstrated several
pieces of software that implement RDF this way... software
that, in fact, implemented RDF that way on the basis
of the original RDF 1.0 recommendation, before the WG
decided to clarify it exactly this way.

After the publication of the model theory, just to tidy
up the issues list, Graham dotted the last i's and
crossed the last t's by writing up a resolution; first
on 10 Aug
  http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-rdfcore-wg/2001Aug/0030.html
and then refined it 2 Oct
  http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-rdfcore-wg/2001Oct/0028.html
Art contributed test cases.

Since the substantive discussion at the ftf, noone
has objected to the the way bNodes are handed in the MT draft,
nor to either of Graham's resolutions.

The chair put it on the agenda. By all indications,
this should have been a simple "any objections? hearing
none, so ordered" sort of decision.

But folks objected. Folks that
were at the ftf meeting; folks that had every opportunity,
over the last month or so, to object to the MT draft
and/or either of Graham's resolutions.

Indeed, if that's the way we conduct business, who
knows how long it will take us to close all the issues?

I'm not interested in operating that way.

I'd like us to please focus on a few issues at a time,
get test cases developed, (preferably based on real-world usage
scenarios) check that we have multiple implementations
that pass the tests, edit the drafts to clearly
address the issues, and close the issues.

If you're the owner of an active issue, I'd like
to see clear progress on your issue, if not
a concrete proposal with spec-wording and test cases,
every week. Work with the editors on spec wording.
Solicit use cases from the user community.

Let's try to close three to five issues per week, please.

At that rate, we should have a clarified RDF 1.0 Recommendation
out before Christmas and an RDFS Proposed Recommendation
in January or February.

And while the ink is drying on those, we should be hot
on the trail of a design for integrating datatypes in RDF,
and gathering requirements for next-generation syntax work,
maybe including XML-schema based stuff like

  extracting statements from XML
  http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-rdf-interest/2001Oct/0004.html

There are bigger fish to fry than RDF 1.0 syntax bugs.
Even the model theory is not that big of a deal:
it's just the existential conjunctive fragment
of FOPC that's been well-studied for years and years.

Please, let's move along much quicker.

-- 
Dan Connolly, W3C http://www.w3.org/People/Connolly/

Received on Friday, 12 October 2001 16:21:10 UTC