References to SMIL 2.1 in SVG 1.2

Dear Scalable Vector Graphics Working Group,
Dear Synchronized Multimedia Working Group,
Dear W3C Communications Team,

  I've already expressed my opposition [1] against the versioning
requirements imposed by W3C's publication rules [2] and on how W3C
manages the Technical Report URL space [3] and it seems SMIL 2.1
provides an opportunity to repeat parts of the argument. E.g.,

  http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/WD-SVG12-20041027/animation.html

refers to SMIL 2.0 e.g. using

  http://www.w3.org/TR/smil20/smil-transitions.html

which now redirects to

  http://www.w3.org/TR/SMIL2/smil-transitions.html

which is not the SMIL 2.0 Recommendation but rather the SMIL 2.1
Working Draft. Obviously such a policy change comes unexpected
and introduces all sorts of confusion. In particular because
SMIL 2.1 states

  If this specification is approved as a W3C Recommendation, it
  will supersede the 07 January 2005 version of the SMIL 2.0
  Recommendation (Second Edition) [SMIL20].

The term "supersede" is not defined in the Process document and
there does not seem to be a reasonable interpretation for it...
The Process document should be updated to include a definition
for this term if W3C intends to continue using it outside of the
well-understood SotD note.

There is further no reasonable way to replace the links to SMIL
2.0 in the SVG 1.2 Working Draft, it would have to use the "dated"
URLs which refer to SMIL 2.0 Second Edition. That's not a very
useful reference should there ever be a SMIL 2.0 Third Edition.

The idea behind linking to the "latest" version is exactly that
there is no confusion about the status of the reference if the
referenced document gets updated and to aid readers who prefer
to read the latest normative text than old, incorrect text plus
the errata (should they remember to look into it).

I thus request, again, that the publication rules are changed
such that they do not contradict W3C's publication practise and
that (consequently, as that would mean that revised editions of
a specification do not get new version numbers) each Technical
Report's latest edition be made referencable through a URL, for
example, SMIL 2.1 should be at http://www.w3.org/TR/smil21/ not
<http://www.w3.org/TR/SMIL2/>.

I would further like to request, though that's of much less con-
cern to me, that no "latest foo version" URLs are published, I
think http://www.w3.org/TR/soap/ and http://www.w3.org/TR/html/
have already caused sufficient confusion and there is very little
use to link to such documents, in particular, if there is no
consistent maintenance for such documents, the "soap" and "html"
documents here are quite different indeed.

The SVG 1.2 Working Draft should be updated to refer to the right
version of the document (one that actually includes the text that
is referred to and/or corresponds to the version the document
cites; ideally both, of course, but I'll address "changes-only
documents" separately).

  [1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Member/w3c-archive/2004Aug/thread.html#12
  [2] http://www.w3.org/2004/02/02-pubrules.html#head
  [3] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/site-comments/2004Mar/thread.html#21

Thanks,
-- 
Björn Höhrmann · mailto:bjoern@hoehrmann.de · http://bjoern.hoehrmann.de
Weinh. Str. 22 · Telefon: +49(0)621/4309674 · http://www.bjoernsworld.de
68309 Mannheim · PGP Pub. KeyID: 0xA4357E78 · http://www.websitedev.de/

Received on Thursday, 10 February 2005 18:26:56 UTC