Re: New resource: Normative References to W3C Standards

On Fri, Apr 19, 2013 at 1:29 PM, Daniel Glazman
<daniel.glazman@disruptive-innovations.com> wrote:
> On 19/04/13 13:23, Anne van Kesteren wrote:
>> I don't think e.g. http://url.spec.whatwg.org/ is developed much
>> faster than any other standards document. It's maintained better, but
>> you still have to go through the same cycles.
>
> WebSockets for instance?

I'm not sure I follow.


>> A feature does not change overnight. The change might be checked in
>> overnight, but there is discussion and buildup leading up to that. And
>> in the case of the WHATWG HTML specification such a feature would
>> likely have already been flagged as unstable. This is no different
>> from when the CSS WG, five years after it released Media Queries as
>> Candidate Recommendation, clarified and changed parsing aspects
>> drastically.
>
> There is one big difference: CR is no "living standard". It's not
> standard at all at that stage...

Except it was implemented and shipped by multiple vendors, and
deployed on sites already. You cannot have it both ways. We could say
none of this new stuff is a standard and wait twenty years for it to
stabilize and then call it a standard, but I don't think that will
help anyone.


>> You can take a snapshot, but it will not be stable. Whenever I hear
>
> So that snapshot is pointless and useless.

Yes, snapshots are :-)


>> the concerns from Boeing et al raised it sounds to me more like they
>> just want to freeze a single browser engine for a while and code their
>> software to that. The problem for them is that the web is still
>> evolving, more rapidly now than before. I think we can safely assume
>> that the web rapidly evolving is not going to stop. So the problem
>> Boeing et al need to solve is how to deal build their software stack
>> on that unstable equilibrium.
>
> I hope you understand that "solve" is a tremendously complex and
> expensive task.

I hope you understand there is not really any alternative.


>> They cannot have that. The W3C could continue to provide such fiction
>> in forms of RECs, but reality is that most of those RECs have glaring
>> holes and are not to be looked at.
>
> I know your opinion, I read it in the TAG ftf minutes. But unless I
> am completely mistaken, this thread is about W3C Standards, right?
> So if you think W3C Standards are pointless and should be dropped, why
> do you contribute to the debate anyway?

I'm not sure why you feel the need to question my motivation. That
does not seem relevant to the arguments I put forward. But to be
clear, I want the W3C Process to change. It's one of two things I want
the W3C to address: http://annevankesteren.nl/2012/11/process

I'd like to produce standards within the context of the W3C, but until
these issues are resolved I think my time is better spent elsewhere.


--
http://annevankesteren.nl/

Received on Friday, 19 April 2013 12:56:11 UTC