- From: Marcos Caceres <w3c@marcosc.com>
- Date: Wed, 5 Jun 2013 11:18:00 +0100
- To: Larry Masinter <masinter@adobe.com>
- Cc: Jonathan A Rees <rees@mumble.net>, Anne van Kesteren <annevk@annevk.nl>, "L. David Baron" <dbaron@dbaron.org>, Robin Berjon <robin@w3.org>, "www-tag@w3.org" <www-tag@w3.org>
On Wednesday, June 5, 2013 at 5:43 AM, Larry Masinter wrote:
> Marcos,
>
>
> > If you want to compare and contrast, this is the "right way"™ to do referencing
> > in Web specs, IMO:
> > http://www.w3.org/TR/html51/references.html#references
>
>
>
> I get a 404 not found. I don't think that's what you intended. If that's the "right way" and the way I suggested is not, shouldn't you say why the "right way" is better?
Weird… I think something broke since they last generated the HTML file. Today, the references are at this address:
http://www.w3.org/TR/html51/iana.html#references
…yeah, "iana.html"? :)
Try this one http://www.w3.org/TR/html5/references.html#references
Ok, so why: because the main problem is that the metadata of references (i.e., date, author, title, status, etc.) constantly fall out of date (only the latest draft URL is stable - and only the Editor's draft reflects the most stability). If you get rid of date, year, status, etc. then the references falling out of date problem goes away.
The only way around this problem would be to make Web Specs dynamically build their references (by XHRing each spec their reference and extracting the appropriate details - or by having a bibliographical database that is computationally/automagically kept up to date). The problem is that this breaks down if you reference anything outside the W3C (e.g., the IETF hasn't enabled CORS headers - and yes, I've asked them to do it, but they still haven't).
So, the path of least resistance is just to treat all references as living documents as HTML5 does.
> > (I would personally exclude the Editor's too from the references, as those can
> > be gotten by following the link to the appropriate spec)
>
> I'm not sure what this means, you would exclude the editors? The Editor's what? I'm sorry.
Sorry I was not clear. For example:
[ABNF]
Augmented BNF for Syntax Specifications: ABNF, D. Crocker, P. Overell. IETF.
Would be just:
[ABNF]
Augmented BNF for Syntax Specifications: ABNF. IETF.
I'm not convinced you need "IETF" either, as the standards org can be derived from the URL and doesn't really add much at a glance.
Received on Wednesday, 5 June 2013 10:18:34 UTC