Re: help navigating your HTML spec text objection?

Dan,

It should be clear from Maciej's postings alone that folks will hunt and 
scramble for every word they can put their hands on to obstruct 
collaboration, so questionnaire wordings like "Motion to have X and Y be 
*the* editors" or "Motion to have X and Y be *the* basis of review" need 
to be used with caution because some will look at the questions as 
"normative" and the links as "informative." 

You are stating otherwise, that it's all "normative."  That helps with #3, 
but your assertion that you anticipate consensus problems would result 
from including XForms in the list of documents to be used as the basis for 
review is surprising and worrisome.  It leads me to suspect that this 
whole collaboration business is going quickly off the rails.

As such, I spent yet another enormous chunk of time doing what I feel the 
task force should be doing.  I wrote a document that concretely argues for 
better consideration of XForms in the "basis for review" based on 
comparison of an pseudo-xforms design for repeating constructs with some 
of the problems that seem to exist in the current WF2 repeating 
constructs.

Despite the question being one of process, this new information (delivered 
before close of questionnaire) provides more technical grounds to 
illustrate why a more open-minded approach is needed to this work.  The 
technical concerns I expressed also included implications for important 
members of the full web community *other* than web browser makers, 
including server purchasers, administrators, server code authors and 
design tool authors,  Yet at the same time, my alternative example 
illustrated that it was possible to consider alternatives in the review 
without seeming to inconvenience the requirements that were expressed as 
being important by the web browser vendors.

John M. Boyer, Ph.D.
STSM: Lotus Forms Architect and Researcher
Chair, W3C Forms Working Group
Workplace, Portal and Collaboration Software
IBM Victoria Software Lab
E-Mail: boyerj@ca.ibm.com 

Blog: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/blogs/page/JohnBoyer





Dan Connolly <connolly@w3.org> 
Sent by: public-html-request@w3.org
05/03/2007 03:12 PM

To
John Boyer/CanWest/IBM@IBMCA
cc
Anne van Kesteren <annevk@opera.com>, Chris Wilson 
<Chris.Wilson@microsoft.com>, Karl Dubost <karl@w3.org>, "Michael(tm) 
Smith" <mike@w3.org>, public-html@w3.org, public-html-request@w3.org, 
www-archive@w3.org
Subject
Re: help navigating your HTML spec text objection?







On Thu, 2007-05-03 at 12:40 -0700, John Boyer wrote:
> 
> Hi Dan, 
> 
> Thanks for considering my point of view.  I believe that considering
> the question somewhat differently is worthwhile and that I did provide
> a statement of what could change to assuage my objection to the first
> question. 
> 
> Indeed I think it would be very useful to test the waters of the
> "spirit of the charters" to see how much formal objection would result
> from the change I suggested, but I've seen enough willingness to
> collaborate in the past two days that it now seems an impasse is not
> the most likely outcome. 

Yes, I think we're making some real progress on the substance,
regardless of these formal details...

> ... the wording of the question implies that we are selecting *the*
> editors, as opposed to selecting editors. 

I think the current question is clear enough that this is not the
case; it cites the "Nomination for Co-Editor: Dave Hyatt"
thread, where I said, on behalf of myself and Chris Wilson:

"We remain open to more offers of help, should they arise over
the course of this Working Group."
 -- http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2007Apr/1356.html


> Regarding question 1,  what I requested is that the question be
> amended to ask: "Shall we adopt HTML5, WF2 and XForms as our bases for
> review?" 
> 
> That's it.  The follow-on material is already clear enough that using
> these documents as *the* basis for review does not constitute
> endorsement of the entire feature set... 
[...]
> Finally, with regard to cost, it was unclear why the above might be
> considered costly.  There does not seem to be much cost in actually
> running another questionnaire, nor in respondents answering it as the
> questions are similar.

It seems likely that substantial discussion would result from
that amendment. (The current question, which was put 27 April, is
the culmination of discussion that goes back at least as far as
the 9 April proposal and consists mainly of points of clarification.)
It's not clear that the level of consensus would be greater as a result
of several more weeks of discussion.



-- 
Dan Connolly, W3C http://www.w3.org/People/Connolly/
D3C2 887B 0F92 6005 C541  0875 0F91 96DE 6E52 C29E