VoiceXML 2.1: Organization of the document

Dear Voice Browser Working Group,

  The organization of http://www.w3.org/TR/2005/CR-voicexml21-20050613/
as a set of extensions to VoiceXML 2.0 is problematic. Readers who are
not familiar with VoiceXML 2.0 would have to consult two specifications
to understand VoiceXML 2.1 and more experienced readers would have to
know for each feature when it was introduced e.g. to point other people
to the normative definition of an element.

It's also difficult to review the document, it is for example not always
clear which VoiceXML 2.0 requirements also apply to 2.1 documents and
implementations, and reviewers will likely fail to catch problems that
are inherited from VoiceXML 2.0; for example, VoiceXML 2.0 references
RFC 1521 and RFC 2396 normatively (both of which are obsolete now) but
VoiceXML 2.1 does not seem to take that into account. The VoiceXML 2.0
errata is also empty.

This organization of a specification for a new version of a W3C tech-
nology also caused some concern for other drafts, for example, SMIL 2.1
and SVG 1.2 were originally organized in a similar way like VoiceXML 2.1
but the Working Groups reconsidered this approach and future versions of
these documents will be complete specifications.

I think VoiceXML 2.1 should be a complete specification rather than a
set of extensions.

regards,
-- 
Björn Höhrmann · mailto:bjoern@hoehrmann.de · http://bjoern.hoehrmann.de
Weinh. Str. 22 · Telefon: +49(0)621/4309674 · http://www.bjoernsworld.de
68309 Mannheim · PGP Pub. KeyID: 0xA4357E78 · http://www.websitedev.de/

Received on Sunday, 26 June 2005 21:14:12 UTC