Re: Dependence on works in progress

On Friday, March 21, 2003, 12:13:50 PM, Etan wrote:


EW> Chris Lilley wrote to <mailto:www-style@w3.org> on 20 March 2003 in "Re:
EW> Proposed Additions to list-style-type based on Unicode 4.0"
EW> (<mid:17030163468.20030320095640@w3.org>):

>> unaproved scripts should probably not be used in
>> a CSS3 Rec.

EW> I would like to generalize this suggestion and to elevate it to a
EW> requirement. Please consider the following text.

EW> A W3C Recommendation must not have any normative references to
EW> works in progress. A W3C Recommendation should not have
EW> non-normative references to works in progress.

EW> I did not find a like-worded requirement anywhere. I suspect that
EW> one exists in some Member-only document. I would appreciate a
EW> confirmation or denial of this suspicion.

The first place I would look would be the 'technical reports' section
of the process document:
http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Process-20010719/tr.html#Reports
This is not member-only.
However, I did not see anything there about maturity levels of
references.

There is, as you suspect, a rule about normative references and
maturity levels but (from memory) it is generally phrased in terms of
W3C maturity levels and allows referencing documents up to one level
lower as it moves along the track. For example, a CR "A" can reference
a last call WD "B" but not an ordinary WD; there is expected to be
communication as to when last call WD "B" is expected to go to CR
because that would affect document A moving to PR.

There are also rules about referencing open-ended specifications -
such as Unicode. For example, on the one hand one would not wish to
revise XML each time a new character is added to Unicode and on the
other hand, one would not want a conformance requirement to correctly
render a charactetr that is not in Unicode yet.

EW> Clearly, the proposed policy would affect many Working Groups. I
EW> could not, however, discover the proper forum to raise the issue
EW> with the W3C at large. I hope that Chris or another person can
EW> direct me.

I guess www-tag might be an appropriate forum; or at least, if it is
not then the problem will be assigned there to wherever it best fits.



-- 
 Chris                            mailto:chris@w3.org

Received on Friday, 21 March 2003 20:00:09 UTC