- From: Larry Masinter <masinter@adobe.com>
- Date: Fri, 21 Dec 2012 14:55:57 -0800
- To: "Henry S. Thompson" <ht@inf.ed.ac.uk>, Richard Cyganiak <richard@cyganiak.de>
- CC: "www-tag@w3.org List" <www-tag@w3.org>
In my view, the status of specifications about URIs, IRIs, URLs, fragment identifiers, MIME types, use of MIME in HTTP is really still in quite a bit of disarray between the IETF and W3C, with the work being split up between individuals and groups who don't seem to want to work with each other. http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-iri/2012Nov/0016.html There's the IETF APPSWG application area working group, the IETF IRI working group (which will likely be shut), the Unicode consortium, W3C's HTML working group, WEBAPPS working group, and the WHATWG, all with (unfortunately incompatible) specs with no clear way of moving the mass forward to get a coherent set of specs. The individuals in each group actually need to coordinate and won't or can't. In addition, the TAG, IAB, W3C/IETF liaison group and a few others have gotten involved, but no one takes overall responsibility for cleaning up the mess. The IETF MIME and URI contingents in APPSWG are worried about other non-browser non-web contexts for MIME and URIs that aren't important to others. The IETF IRI working group -- started with a lot of effort primarily to coordinate with HTML -- suffered from near-total lack of participation from the implementing community. The W3C work supposedly migrated from HTML WG to WEBAPPS WG; I've lost track of what HTML will do, but last I heard, WebApps was looking for an editor, but they have a lot on their plate, and they're waiting for Anne to finish a WHATWG spec with the hope of copying it into W3C stable document space. However, there hasn't been much progress on Anne's document, and Anne wasn't interested in solving all the problems IETFers have. I was hoping to get IRI and URI tests into the W3C test repository, and Chris Weber was going to submit a bunch of webkit-based tests; I thought that was in progress but I haven't heard more news. Where fragment identifiers rules get specified is just a part of the mess. While it isn't ideal, Henry's right that getting the IETF to absorb this document shouldn't be on a critical path to getting it done. Larry -- http://larry.masinter.net
Received on Friday, 21 December 2012 22:56:38 UTC