[wbs] response to 'Polyglot Note vs Recommendation Track Preference Survey'

The following answers have been successfully submitted to 'Polyglot Note vs
Recommendation Track Preference Survey' (HTML Working Group) for Leif
Halvard Silli.


---------------------------------
Should Polyglot Markup continue on the Recommendation track?
----
HTML WG has not reached consensus on whether the Polyglot Markup:
HTML-Compatible XHTML Documents should continue to progress on the
Recommendation Track or if the Working Group should end work by publishing
a Working Group Note.  This Preference Survey results from discussions on
bug 12725. This bug has not been resolved and it is considered that further
discussion in bugzilla will not result in the bug being resolved.

Clearly, we do not have unanimity on how to proceed. Rationales have been
provided for both positions:

 * Rationale statement in favor of keeping the Polyglot specification on
the Recommendation track.
 * Rationale statement in favor of ending work on the Polyglot Markup
specification and publishing the result as a Working Group Note.
At this point, per the Decision Policy, we are proceeding using this survey
to give Working Group participants a final opportunity to express their
preference.

Since this is a process, not a technical decision, the survey is by
individual not organization. Simple majority wins.



Please read the rationale statements carefully before responding.

A yes answer indicates you would like the Polyglot Markup specification to
continue on the Recommendation Track.

A no answer indicates that you would like to see work on the Polyglot
Markup specification ended at this time and for the results to be published
as a Working Group Note.

 * (x) Yes
 * ( ) No
 * ( ) Concur (cast vote with the majority)
 * ( ) Blank vote
Rationale: Comments to some of Henri’s rationale:

1. I agree that the sentence ”This commonly arises …”, should be 
improved. It came as part of a suggestion from the TAG, see bug 22563.
This is an argument to keep working on the spec = Recommendation track.

2. Regarding “overselling” in the Introduction section:
  # First subsection, ”Scope” ends with a “underselling” warning 
    NOTE which Henri asked to be placed there.
  # Subsection "Robustness": Concrete claims about overselling will be
    considered. Generally, the intro attempts the opposite of oversell.
  # The entire Intro is largely about scope, as this was a commonly
    requested from us. I’m open to shorten it.

3. Henri’s two first pointers to public-html:

Henri’s pointer to Henri Sivonen Fri, 2 Nov 2012 11:44:38 +0100
     http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2012Nov/0006.html

  Comment 1: Polyglot Markup is not *only* ”conclusions drawn from 
normative statements” in HTML5 and XML. See the Intro. (Sic.) It is a
*particular* subset, which largely is a common subset, but not purely.
It was, defacto, always like that. But this has ben emphasized and
spelled out since 2012. I’m sure we don't mind spell it out better.

  Comment 2: The understanding of what the "pure" subset is (which, 
again, polyglot isn’t) has increased, amongst many partakers in the
project, including some of those that currently has voted no. (For
instance, the rules for white-space handling comment in XML was long
misunderstood. The clarification of that also contributed positively
to HTML5 proper, including the definition of how to do @srcdoc in
XHTML5.) (Let me dig up pointers, if you wish.)

  Comment 3: Since November 2012 message, Polyglot has become
“looser”,
as result of the editors listening to critics, including Henri.
For instance, it now allows more markup inside <script> and 
<style> than before. 

  Comment 4: As for XHTML5, then HTML5 - and this too is new
since november 2012 - now allows <meta http-equiv="Content-Type"
content="text/html;charset=utf-8"/> even in XHTML5. This was forbidden
before, because HTML5 forbade it - it was stricter than necessary.

 Comment 5: It was very much with my co-editor 
hat on, that I engaged in bug 23587, and HTML5.1 has now chosen the 
same option that Polyglot now is encouraging.
<https://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=23587#c10> 

  Comment 6: Risks that Polyglot becomes to strict. As shown above, work
on Polygot has actually affected ”HTML5 proper”, both directly and
indirectly. Because, even if it is supposed to be a subset, it is not so
that it is only polyglot that gets impacted by HTML5. It is *not* just a
one way thing. Thus, by halting work on polyglot, there is also a risk
that work on HTML5 - and XHTML5 - proper suffers.  

Henri’s pointer to Lachlan Hunt Sun, 04 Nov 2012 15:59:50 +0100
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2012Nov/0021.html

  Comment 1: On the normativity and recommendation issue, I
  concur with Larry and Roy. But add that the main thing to me is
  whether work has ended or not and that it has not ended.

  Comment 2: Lachlan’s inputs, has been very much on my mind in my
  edits. A clear place were his objection has not been met is w.r.t. 
  encoding: the Polyglot Markup profile requires UTF-8. But his
  UTF-8 views has been met in the sense that it is clarified, in the,
  spec, that it is "just" a profile and for the issue of UTF-8, in
  particular it has been explained that it is *possible* to use
  other encodings without suffering w.r.t. DOM equivalence, see
  the introduction.

  Comment 3: Here is a list of issues where Lachlan’s comments have
  been met directly, IMO:
  A) <script> and <style> now basically permits any content,
  as long as it follows the //<![CDATA[ //]]> rules Lachlan
  described at the end of his follow-up: 
  http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2012Nov/0063.html
  B) Perhaps it can be improved, but we have made the principles
  section normative, as suggested by him and others.

These answers were last modified on 5 December 2013 at 02:24:04 U.T.C.
by Leif Halvard Silli

Answers to this questionnaire can be set and changed at
https://www.w3.org/2002/09/wbs/40318/polyglot-status-preference-poll/ until
2013-12-10.

 Regards,

 The Automatic WBS Mailer

Received on Thursday, 5 December 2013 02:27:07 UTC