Re: Technical Parity with W3C HTML Spec

[-a whole bunch of people on the cc list, since I doubt they care.]

On Fri, 25 Jun 2010, Sam Ruby wrote:
> On 06/25/2010 10:57 PM, Ian Hickson wrote:
> > On Fri, 25 Jun 2010, Sam Ruby wrote:
> > > On Fri, Jun 25, 2010 at 3:01 PM, Ian Hickson<ian@hixie.ch>  wrote:
> > > > 
> > > > While I agree that it is helpful for us to cooperate, I should point
> > > > out that the WHATWG was never formally approached by the W3C about
> > > > this
> > > 
> > > With whom (and where?) would such a "formal" discussion take place?
> > > 
> > > I would prefer that such a discussion happen on a publicly archived
> > > mailing list.
> > 
> > I meant a discussion about a general approach to how we can resolve 
> > differences, not a discussion of a specific issue, by the way.
> 
> To whom, at the WHATWG, should I then address my specific question?

What you did is fine, assuming there's no technical reason for requesting 
the change. If there is a technical reason, you can just mail the list; 
assuming the reason is sound, the change would get made without much 
comment (but then there's no need to mention that you're trying to get 
consistency between versions of the spec; it's just a technical request 
like any other -- the equivalent of filing a bug in the HTML WG).


> > Out of interest, with whom and where would a formal discussion of the 
> > reverse take place? e.g. if the WHATWG wanted to request a change in 
> > the W3C HTML WG spec?
> 
> The process starts with opening a bug, per:
> 
> http://dev.w3.org/html5/decision-policy/decision-policy.html

That's the process for a working group member to request a change from the 
editor (and later, if escalated, the chairs). That's not what I was asking 
though. I mean what would the contact point be for a cross-working-group 
decision to request a change that contradicts a working group decision?

Say the WHATWG wanted to persue convergence of the two specs. This would 
presumably require changes to both the HTMLWG and WHATWG specs, right? So 
if the WHATWG wanted to do this, how should it approach the HTMLWG to 
request the changes to the HTMLWG spec?

(Currently the WHATWG spec has many things in it that it wouldn't have if 
we weren't trying to converge with the HTMLWG spec, by the way. For 
example, several sections in the introduction, or the paragraphs about 
"resources" and "URL" terminology. It's also missing things it otherwise 
would have, like the mention of profile="", or how to parse URLs.)

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

Received on Saturday, 26 June 2010 04:14:44 UTC