Re: [SVGMobile12] Too many issues

Ian,
Thanks for careful reading of the SVG Tiny 1.2 spec. Your comments are all 
very helpful towards making the specification better.

The one thing I will point out is that the majority of your comments so far 
are relative to the introduction sections of the Tiny 1.2 specification 
which were lifted pretty much directly from the SVG 1.0 and 1.1 
specifications, and which were written (mainly by me) in the 1998-2001 
timeframe. While clearly these sections have shortcomings and indeed should 
be improved, and thanks for all of your comments, I think it is worth 
pointing out that: (a) somehow these sections managed to get through 
multiple Last Call, Candidate Recommendation, Proposed Recommendation and 
Recommendation milestones in the past, and (b) have managed to prove 
sufficiently satisfactory for dozens of commercial implementation of the 
SVG language, including viewers, server products and authoring tools, 
targeting a wide range of platforms from set-top boxes to mobile phones to 
desktop computers. Yes, let's make the spec better, but let's also maintain 
some perspective. The W3C process is to produce specifications which are 
implementable. There is plenty of evidence in the form of dozens of 
commercial implementations that the introductory sections which have 
generated your 25 issues have been consistent with the notion of 
implementability. (Incidentally, doesn't your company Opera ship an 
implementation of SVG? My own company has implemented SVG viewers at least 
three times with independent teams, plus a few authoring products [not all 
that shipped, unfortunately!], and SVG server transcoder products.)

Jon

At 07:27 AM 5/20/2005, Ian Hickson wrote:


>I printed the SVG 1.2 Tiny spec out. It came out at 370 pages. I have so
>far managed to get only as far as page 22 and have already sent over 25
>issues. In doing so I have tried to avoid sending issues that were
>rendundant with other issues already sent to the list.
>
>Drawing those numbers to their logical conclusion, if I were to continue
>reporting issues that I found, I would easily get to three hundred or more
>mostly unique problems. This, again, would be in addition to the hundreds
>of other issues that have been reported by other people.
>
>Many of these issues are fundamental problems, such as lacking clear
>conformance criteria or huge ambiguities in error handling behaviour,
>issues that are obvious on a first reading of the specification.
>
>In short, I do not feel that this specification is even remotely close to
>being ready for last call.
>
>I request that this specification be returned to working draft status, so
>that the working group can more carefully proof-read the specification,
>ensuring that it is internally consistent, that its language is
>appropriate for a specification, that the language be compatible with
>other existing W3C languages, and that, most importantly, it be possible
>to interoperably implement SVG UAs in the context of HTML and CSS UAs that
>behave in the same way for both correct and incorrect content.
>
>I strongly recommend that the next release of the SVG 1.2 Tiny
>specification be normal a working draft, not a last call, so as to set
>expectations at a realistic level.
>
>--
>Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
>http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
>Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'

Received on Friday, 20 May 2005 17:08:31 UTC