Re: Moving past last call for HTML5

On Mon, 23 Feb 2009, Sam Ruby wrote:
> Ian Hickson wrote:
> > 
> > > I see a lot of subjective content in the spec.  Not just a little, 
> > > but a lot. And a process set up whereby one individual party "wins" 
> > > every controversial argument.
> > 
> > I understand that certain people have this (incorrect) perception. I 
> > don't know what to do about it. Maybe I should keep sending complaints 
> > to the group about areas of the spec where logical argument and 
> > research (and thus the edits to the spec) disagreed with my opinion, 
> > in the same way that certain other working group members keep 
> > reraising the same issue over and over again without introducing new 
> > data?
> > 
> > (e.g. the allowance for the /> syntax in text/html, which I still 
> > think is a bad idea but which is in the spec against my desires 
> > because as editor I only took into account the arguments put forward 
> > and the data presented, and the arguments you and others put forward 
> > and the data that you and others presented were stronger than the 
> > arguments against the idea.)
> 
> Let me help paint a picture as to why people may have that "incorrect" 
> perception.  I remember that issue well.  After providing use cases and 
> an quite a number of examples from the web, you made this relatively 
> minor change.  Over two years ago.
> 
> I saw it at the time as evidence of value of logical arguments and use 
> cases presented.  Frankly, it saddens me for this to be lumped into the 
> "horse trading" category.

I don't consider this "horse trading" at all. This is an issue where clear 
data and arguments were presented, and were used, to the exclusion of 
opinions including my own, to make a decision. This is not an example of 
something I would consider subject to horse trading.


> Furthermore, it is disingenuous for you to state that you still think it 
> is a bad idea and to state that the arguments for it are stronger than 
> the arguments against it... and to do so in the same paragraph.

I really do think it's a bad idea. I think the entire concept of polyglot 
documents is a bad idea. People have put forward arguments that suggest 
that we should support this case, so the spec does so. But that doesn't 
mean I like it. (It also doesn't mean I'm going to argue about it, since I 
can see that my opinion here is at odds with logical argument. I wish for 
something that reality isn't going to provide.)


> And in my opinion, the single most easiest thing you could do to help 
> address this is to adjust the order in which you work on items.  In 
> particular by defering subjective items leaving in place text that 
> reflects your own preferences, you are reinforcing the perception that 
> you ignore feedback that you disagree with.  Alternately, replacing 
> 1.5.4 wholesale with the simple text "to be written later" would 
> suffice.

Fair enough. I've removed 1.5.4.


> > What suggestions have you made but not received feedback for?
> 
> Annevk wins a gold star: 
> http://krijnhoetmer.nl/irc-logs/whatwg/20090223#l-155

I am very surprised to hear that I haven't replied to this issue already. 
I'm sure I've covered this topic before.

The recent IRC discussion revealed a case that we could allow without 
introducing the harm that I was concerned about, so I've allowed <meta 
charset> for the UTF-8 case in XML. I had not previously considered the 
option of allowing this but only for UTF-8 documents.


> My concern is that "The W3C technical report development process is 
> designed to maximize consensus about the content of a technical report, 
> to ensure high technical and editorial quality, to promote consistency 
> among specifications, and to earn endorsement by W3C and the broader 
> community"; it provides a number of explicit "outs" for FPWD, but 
> declines to do so for LC.
> 
> In the upcoming weeks, I plan to discuss this with my co-chair, W3C 
> staff, and W3C management to see home much wiggle room there is in the 
> definition of this term.  I should have an answer by the time we meet 
> next month.

What do you think we need wiggle room or an "out" for? I wouldn't want to 
proceed to LC even this year if there were areas where the working group 
knew there was something that should change further before going to CR.


> It now occurs to me that if you were willing to provide a similar amount 
> of input weekly (say, on Monday) on the items that appear on 
> <http://www.w3.org/html/wg/tracker/agenda> with a due date within the 
> next 11 days (i.e., covering both the immediate call and the next), that 
> would be most helpful.

That should be possible, yes.


> > I really can't prioritise editorial stuff over issues with actual 
> > normative requirements, sorry. People are implementing the spec, and 
> > shipping it, and if we don't fix the spec when they mention problems 
> > we might find ourselves forced into things we don't like.
> 
> I acknowledge that you are unwilling or unable to do so.

I'm in the unexpected position right now of having no urgent feedback, 
having dealt with the pending urgent feedback this weekend. Now would be 
an excellent and rare time for us to deal with issues that you think would 
help but that I normally would not consider a high priority. Are there any 
others beyond the two issues mentioned above that I've now dealt with, 
and the summary="" issue, which I will deal with tomorrow?

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'

Received on Monday, 23 February 2009 12:13:13 UTC