Re: Preparing to launch the Forms Task Force ...

On Mon, 12 Mar 2007, Dave Raggett wrote:
>
> As a starting point, the Task Force would be expected to collect use 
> cases and assumptions, followed by work on the basic design choices that 
> flow from them.

Wouldn't a better starting point for a forms task force be to build on the 
work of the Web Application Formats working group? Art (the chair of that 
group) has already proposed that this group take over publication of their 
document, which is currently a W3C WD document.

I would recommend that the forms task force continue this earlier W3C work 
and lead the document to Last Call.


> Whilst it might seem easier to start from a detailed proposal and to 
> discuss tweaks to that, we are more likely to end up with a concensus 
> across the wide variety of experience and opinions in the two working 
> groups if we start by building a shared vocabulary and a common 
> grounding in the use cases and assumptions.

To get from use cases to the proposal the WAF has suggested we work on 
took the better of three years of heavy work. Given that we have to reach 
REC by 2010 (according to our charter), which includes shipping "multiple 
independent complete and interoperable" "widely used" implementations, I 
humbly suggest that a more practical approach would be to start with 
something that already has native shipping experimental implementations in 
actual browsers, and which already has a spec nearly complete.

I do not believe there is any way we could reach REC by 2010 if we started 
collecting _use cases_ today.

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

Received on Monday, 12 March 2007 17:49:17 UTC