XHTML 2.0 Last Call process

Dear HTML WG,

  The HTML WG Roadmap <http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/xhtml-roadmap/> states
that you expect XHTML 2.0 to go into Last Call in October 2003 and
advance the specification to Candidate Recommendation in January 2004.
Is this information up to date? Will there be any other Working Draft
before your Last Call Announcement? How much time do you expect to give
for the Last Call review period?

I like to suggest that XHTML 2.0 is not advanced to Candidate
Recommendation status after Last Call but rather that the HTML WG issues
a second Last Call after reviewer comments have been addressed. For
example, it is much easier for a reviewer to tell whether the Working
Group fully understood and properly addressed his comments if there is a
draft to look at, and he has a better chance to express his satisfaction
or objection to the response. A number of specifications already went
this path (though not necessarily intentionally) and I believe these
specifications, their communities and the Working Groups benefitted from
this slightly informal process.

Further, I like to suggest that the first Last Call period is at least
6-8 weeks and the second Last Call period should be additional 3 weeks.
Considering the potential impact of XHTML 2.0, it's complexity and it's
significant external dependencies, a long review time is critical for
the success of the specification, especially because it takes a lot of
time to carry the now-or-never message into communities whose members
have insufficient language skills to participate in the discussion
directly and to carry their feedback back to the Working Group.

regards.

Received on Sunday, 3 August 2003 00:12:16 UTC