Re: Moving from DTDs to Schemas

Lachlan Cannon <luminosity@members.evolt.org> wrote:

> > I've been observing the development of DSDL, and I have good hope that
> > DIS 19757 Part 2, a.k.a. RELAX NG, would become an International Standard
> > within the time frame of XHTML2 (that's part of the reasons why I'm
> > investigating the possibility of using RELAX NG for XHTML2, after all).
> 
> What exactly is the time frame?

As indicated on the public overview page [1] as well as the roadmap [2], 
the WG is currently under rechartering.  The Charter review period has
just ended earlier this week, and we expect to announce the launch of
the rechartered HTML WG shortly.  New charter and updated roadmap will
be made available at that time.  Stay tuned.

Roughly, the new group will be chartered for 2 years, and for XHTML2,
we will spend one year for developing the spec and another year for
implementing it.

> Is there really any need to get this out 
>   in any hurry at all, considering that the vast majority of people are 
> only beginning to migrate to XHTML 1.x now? I don't want the spec to 
> take forever, but I really don't think there's a rush... browser vendors 
> are having trouble keeping up with everything already out 
> (unfortunately...).

Running a WG does require resource commitment, and we cannot run a WG
forever.  After all, what we call as "XHTML2" now is something we
should have started in 1998, following the outcome of the "Shaping
the Future of HTML" workshop [3].  Since that time, all work items
of the HTML WG lead to XHTML2.  We are not in a hurry, we have been
spending years to come to this point.

Back to DSDL, I really don't think we should rely on DSDL to complete.
We could take advantage of the DSDL framework when it's done, but
I don't think that's a prerequisite to develop XHTML2.  It's always
the case that something better might come later, but at the moment
no one would be able to say the exact time frame of the whole DSDL
work for sure.

[1] http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/#rechartering
[2] http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/xhtml-roadmap/#rechartering
[3] http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/future/

Regards,
-- 
Masayasu Ishikawa / mimasa@w3.org
W3C - World Wide Web Consortium

Received on Wednesday, 21 August 2002 23:14:20 UTC