Re: The Progress of CSS

>On Fri, 1 Jul 2005, Adam Kuehn wrote:
>>
>>  Whatever message you have taken from the rest of the thread, I think it
>>  should be clear that the process is taking too long and effort should be
>>  made to speed it up.  I'm not meaning to suggest that the working group
>>  is lazy, or that resources are being squandered. Mostly I am suggesting
>>  that these limitations should be recognized, and the process itself
>>  should be streamlined.
>
>How?


Well, for example, does a draft really need a full six months in CR? 
If you really think the answer is yes, perhaps it could receive ONLY 
six months.  The current version of CSS2.1 is back to WD status after 
spending SEVENTEEN MONTHS in CR.  That's nearly three times as long 
as the required period, and its reversion to WD entails a minimum of 
six MORE months once it again gets promoted back to CR.  And how long 
after the July 15 "Last Call" will that actually be?  The original WD 
spent a year and half in WD status, albeit in three different 
incarnations.  It seems to me that each step needs to be shorter.

Does a CR need two COMPLETE, interoperable implementations to become 
a Rec?  Perhaps we require, say, 95% compliance from two different 
vendors.  No, we don't want to release Recs that have a host of 
features which never get implemented, but is 100% compliance from two 
vendors really necessary?  There aren't really more than four 
significant vendors in the field.  Why require 100% compliance from 
half the known universe?

Finally, if the W3C is going to publish a schedule, as it has for the 
various CSS3 modules, it ought to try to at least come close.  The 
only modules which have the Test phase even scheduled were all 
supposed to hit Rec status in '04.  None have.  Indeed, halfway 
through '05 we have zero Recs, despite the fact that no fewer than 20 
items in that table are scheduled for Rec status by the end of this 
year.

This is not a good track record.

-- 

-Adam Kuehn

Received on Friday, 1 July 2005 21:36:05 UTC