Re: DOM interfaces for XSLT

On Thu, 2005-06-09 at 11:37 +0000, Frans Englich wrote:
> > > The questions that begs is, is the W3C bureaucracy justified? I can't
> > > answer if it fully is, but it surely is frustrating.
> >
> > In my experience the "bureaucracy" is quite limited. The major problem
> > I've found is that finding people to do actual work on specifications
> > and test suites is hard. Way too often WGs are short on workforce as too
> > few people can commit time to get things done.
> 
> Yes, nothing is easy. My comment shouldn't been taken seriously, it was a 
> silly, disillusioned whining in the name of frustration.

Well, to some extend, you're correct. It's not easy to do new things in
the W3C. Having spent 6 months of effort to create a Working Group last
year, it's quite exhausting. Most of the time, it's due to finding
motivated individuals/companies to spend their resources on it, trying
to reach consensus on what to do, finding a chair, etc. Robin would
probably have a lot to say/rant following his experience with Binary
Characterization, and we're not done yet, despite me telling him that
we'll try to come up with some decision fast.

I remember a discussion 3 or 4 years with Scott Boag on the future of
APIs developments within W3C and how the W3C Process wasn't well adapted
for developing plenty of APIs. Having a "W3C Recommendation" stamp on a
document introduces lots of costs that are too high for small APIs. The
problem is that developing a specific process to develop APIs within W3C
didn't find enough supporters so far. Sun already has the JCP Process,
and there is also the Apache APIs. Microsoft has probably a way to get
input regarding their C# APIs. Python, or perl have their own
repositories. ECMAScript doesn't have any as far as I know.

Robin was correct to point to the current effort regarding an other
application-oriented APIs and vocabularies for browsers is currently
under discussion, but there is still some way to go to make sure we have
common goals. Some would like to develop Web Services API, others
vocabularies specific extensions, XML Schema APIs, etc. Way too large
scope for a group imho.

Regarding the DOM Working Group, I've been giving some thoughts about it
lately but I'm waiting for the result of the discussion on
application-oriented APIs before pushing it further. My bottom line is
that we have W3C Recommendations on DOM out there that needs to be
maintained, and that's one of the mission of W3C.

Philippe