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

Ian Hickson wrote:
> On Tue, 15 Feb 2011, Danny Ayers wrote:
> I would welcome the W3C moving to the "living standard" model so innate to 
> the way the Web works for all of its Web specifications. It's already 
> effectively been using it for CSS and XML for the past ten years, and for 
> HTML for the past four. The WHATWG has no interest in monopolising this 
> model; we're using it because we honestly believe it's the best way of 
> improving the Web, not to lay claim to the center of HTML development.
> 
>> I for one can't see how that model alone can fulfil the demands of 
>> organisations which rely on fixed specifications to decide policy (and 
>> developers to build against).
> 
> That's a different topic, but since I'm here: I hear often about people 
> wanting "stability" and needing "fixed" specs to refer to, but nobody ever 
> seems to notice that RECs aren't stable nor fixed, and nobody ever seems 
> to mind that when people refer to RECs they immediately ignore what those 
> RECs say if they have bugs, as if the specs had in fact been updated. 
> (Indeed sometimes, as with XML, the specs even are updated, in place, 
> despite the claims that stability is needed.) Could you elaborate (maybe 
> with a somewhat trimmed cc list) on what exactly it is that these 
> organisations demand, and maybe more importantly, why they think that the 
> W3C model serves their needs?

The W3C timeline and model of releasing major versions "5" "6" is far 
too slow, whilst the WHAT WG Living Standard is a constantly moving 
target that the common web folk simply can't keep up with.

It would be great to see the two approaches balanced such that 
announcements are made like "HTML has just been updated, features a,b 
have been added, bugs h,j,k have been fixed and z has been deprecated".

Everybody knows HTML is constantly in development and always will be, 
the major milestones are no longer doing anybody any good, and neither 
is the constantly moving target. We simply need an in-development 
version for people implementing/working on/testing new features, and an 
iteratively updated standard where features which have been implemented 
and tested, and bug fixes, can be pushed (after wg agreement that is) so 
that the masses can start using them.

It's great to see open dialogue here, and I sincerely hope that 
something beneficial (change) comes from it, soon - there's a recharter 
needed isn't there?

BTW, is there an issue number for this?

Best,

Nathan

Received on Tuesday, 15 February 2011 12:30:37 UTC