New interim working draft of TAG finding on Self-Describing Web

I have posted a new draft of the TAG's Self-Describing Web finding at [1]. 
 Differences from the previous version are at [2].  I'm referring to this 
as an interim draft because it's been prepared mainly for discussion on 
tomorrow's TAG teleconference and for quick review next week, and I expect 
it will soon be replaced with a version reflecting guidance received in 
those reviews.  A major review [3] of the previous draft [4] was done at 
the TAG's recent face to face meeting.  This draft attempts to cover most 
but not all of the changes that were agreed at that time (some exceptions 
are listed below), including integration/adaptation of the handwritten 
suggestions provided by Tim Berners-Lee. 

As a reminder: we agreed at the F2F to try and get this finding published 
within the next few weeks, so that we'll avoid the overhead of having to 
bring a new round of TAG members up to speed on it.  A couple of related 
action items (formal and informal) were assigned involving people other 
than me.   Specifically::

* Action 208 [5] was for Stuart to work with me on the "attribution of 
libel" question.  I think my redraft probably deals with this, but Stuart 
should take a look when I post it.

* From the draft minutes of our F2F:  Possible ACTION:, not actually 
assigned: Henry S if necessary to take whatever TimBL does on the 
machine/Client Tech issue and try to improve it and submit for review. I'd 
like to think that my adaptation of Tim's written comments comes close 
enough to resolving this, but it does stop short of really introducing the 
notion of "packages" of specifications for use by, e.g. clients.  rather, 
it just mentions under the examples that the browsers build in support for 
URI, HTTP, etc.  If we want to go further, then I'd welcome some guidance 
from Henry.

The following are outstanding areas of concern that I know have not yet 
been completely resolved:

* There was a suggestion to better align two of the examples, and Henry 
offered to help with preparing them.  Assuming tomorrow's call goes well, 
and that he has time, I will pass the "write token" to him.

* As agreed at the face to face meeting, Jonathan posted [6] specific 
suggestions for elementing use of the phrase "semantic web". 
Unfortunately, the reactions we've received range from ambivalent [7] to 
somewhat negative [8], and I'm not convinced the changes are on balance 
positive either.  The new draft does not include any of Jonathan's 
suggested changes.  We should discuss tomorrow.

The other changes acted upon are too numerous to list explicitly here.  I 
will leave it to TAG members to review the new draft and the diffs to 
determine whether their concerns have been adequately addressed.  I think 
that, except as listed above, I've covered them all to my satisfaction, 
but in one or two cases (talking about packages of specifications), one 
could argue that I might have gone further.

The agenda for tomorrows call will shortly be updated to point to this new 
material.  Thank you.

Noah

[1] http://www.w3.org/2001/tag/doc/selfDescribingDocuments-2009-01-07.html
[2] 
http://www.w3.org/2007/10/htmldiff?doc1=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.w3.org%2F2001%2Ftag%2Fdoc%2FselfDescribingDocuments-2008-12-03.html&doc2=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.w3.org%2F2001%2Ftag%2Fdoc%2FselfDescribingDocuments-2009-01-07-diffbase.html
[3] http://www.w3.org/2001/tag/2008/12/11-minutes.html#item02
[4] http://www.w3.org/2001/tag/doc/selfDescribingDocuments-2008-12-03.html
[5] http://www.w3.org/2001/tag/group/track/actions/208
[6] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-tag/2008Dec/0089.html
[7] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-tag/2008Dec/0090.html
[8] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-tag/2008Dec/0091.html

--------------------------------------
Noah Mendelsohn 
IBM Corporation
One Rogers Street
Cambridge, MA 02142
1-617-693-4036
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Received on Thursday, 8 January 2009 03:29:09 UTC