TAG work on HTML Doctypes, Versioning, etc.

Sam,

I understand you have some interest in knowing the TAG's likely course of 
action on questions relating to HTML Doctypes, versioning, polyglot 
documents, and also how the TAG might involve itself in Larry Masinter's 
HTML WG ACTION - 172 [1].  We discussed these questions on our call today, 
but did not yet reach any firm conclusions.  In particular, the TAG has 
not at this point decided to endorse Larry's proposed ACTION - 172 text 
[2], but I have been asked to convey to you the following as a summary of 
our status:

The treatment of DOCTYPE statements in the HTML and XHTML syntax sections 
and in the HTML processor section of the HTML 5 working drafts, raises 
potential concerns in at least four areas:  the interpretation of the 
text/html media type; document workflows which use PUBLIC and/or SYSTEM 
identifiers; the general question of how to determine what the spec. says 
with respect to what are conformant documents; the use of DOCTYPEs as 
version identifiers.  The TAG is still working to pull together input in 
this area -- we hope to have something to say by the end of our March F2F 
(I.e. by 26 March 2010).

I expect that draft minutes of today's TAG teleconference will be 
available within a couple of days, if not sooner.  You might want to take 
a look to get a sense of the positions taken by various TAG members, and 
to get a general feel of how the discussion is going.   In any case, 
please confirm that our target of resolving this by the end of our F2F is 
agreeable to you.  In particular, this may give us some opportunity to 
discuss these questions at the AC meeting or at our F2F.  Thank you.

Noah

[1] http://www.w3.org/html/wg/tracker/actions/172
[2] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2010Jan/0015.html

P.S.  Tracker:  this should fulfill TAG ACTION-393

--------------------------------------
Noah Mendelsohn 
IBM Corporation
One Rogers Street
Cambridge, MA 02142
1-617-693-4036
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Received on Thursday, 18 February 2010 19:53:40 UTC