Re: Please explain the role of the W3C in the continuing development of HTML

On 8/18/2011 9:05 AM, Anne van Kesteren wrote:
> On Thu, 18 Aug 2011 15:00:28 +0200, Jeff Jaffe <jeff@w3.org> wrote:
>> I would add to this discussion that we need to be mindful of where we 
>> are in the development cycle.
>>
>> Certainly, in the early phases of development it does not yet make 
>> sense to converge to a fixed point.  We have now recognized that 
>> reality and have introduced Community Groups to facilitate 
>> specification development in areas of rapid innovation which are too 
>> early for standardization.
>>
>> And I agree Danny, that as a spec matures and stabilizes, it is quite 
>> useful for the ecosystem to  converge to a fixed point - a versioned 
>> spec.  And to be sure, there will continue to be innovation beyond 
>> which would lead to the next version.
>
> For convergence you typically need to specification to evolve as well. 
> Because with convergence you typically get better understanding of the 
> problem space and holes in the specification.
>
> (And then parts of specifications become obsolete if we later decide 
> on an alternative way of doing something, and it would be beneficial 
> if specifications were updated directly to reflect that new direction 
> so people do not end up implementing the wrong thing. E.g. that can 
> happen now (and does happen) with HTML4, DOM1*, DOM2*, DOM3*, CSS1, etc.)
>
>
At TPAC this year, the agenda is being driven by participants who will 
be proposing brainstorming sessions of various types.  Let me know if 
you want to lead a discussion on how we get better on "obsoleting" 
existing specs (or parts thereof).

Received on Thursday, 18 August 2011 14:38:41 UTC