Re: W3C Community Group

Yes I tend to agree that the "official" W3 group is not worth a lot in
practical terms. The W3 imprimatur is nice to have at some point, but I
don't think it helps significantly in fostering the community of developers
and implementers.

One small practical step that might help would be to create a "Planet
XProc" (i.e. an aggregator of XProc-related stories).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet_(software)



On 7 March 2017 at 19:15, James Fuller <jim@webcomposite.com> wrote:

> It is worth noting that for many years the WG tried to get more people
> to join the XProc effort and failed miserably ... good progress has
> been made over the past half year with the informal group of
> interested people forging ahead on features that matter to them.
>
> Rereading Nic's email, I believe his main point is the need to get a
> central link for people ... that should be relatively simple to do
> (xproc.github.io would be my preference w/ any of the various xproc
> domains pointing to it).
>
> 'nurturing the green shoots and shielding the flickering flame' is
> more important then potentially getting distracted by official status
> (a decision that can always be made in the future)  ... keep up the
> momentum!
>
> J
>
> On 7 March 2017 at 09:58, Ari Nordström <ari.nordstrom@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hi Christophe,
> >
> > Just a note re this:
> >
> >> If we look at the "Datapipelining Community Group" members, only 4 of
> them
> >> are active in the XProc 3 group ; we have never seen others, except we
> had a
> >> skype talk with you during Prague session.
> >
> >
> > There was also a meeting in Amsterdam last year, which I tried to attend
> > through Google Hangouts as I recall it. It didn't work, as the connection
> > was through Gerrit's phone and the signal quality was, shall we say,
> > suboptimal. Nic, I believe, had meant to be there but unforeseen
> > circumstances happened.
> >
> > It should also be pointed out that the Amsterdam meeting was in doubt
> > practically until the last minute. I emailed Norm the night before and he
> > wasn't sure.
> >
> > If I had been properly aware of the Prague meetup in time, I would have
> > attended it. XProc is important to me, I use it daily, and I really want
> to
> > help bring about a new version. The fault was partly mine--it seems that
> > this email wasn't subscribed to xproc-dev and I had more or less assumed
> > that I'd hear about the next meeting through other channels. I did not,
> > which was unfortunate.
> >
> > This is not to point fingers but to say that so far, the overall
> > communication could be better. What both me and Nic are trying to find
> out
> > here is if the community group can serve a purpose, such as spreading the
> > word and providing help and info to all XProc users, not just the ones
> > subscribing to a W3C list. Communication is a good thing and I believe
> > there's no such thing as too much of it.
> >
> > As for working under W3C authority, how do you envision this? Actually
> > joining W3C is too expensive for quite a few of the potential XProc
> users,
> > certainly for independent contractors such as myself, and I believe
> that's
> > one of the reasons to why the community group happened.
> >
> > All the best,
> >
> > /Ari
> >
> >
> > On 7 March 2017 at 09:26, Christophe Marchand
> > <christophe.marchand@contactoffice.net> wrote:
> >>
> >> The response to your question is in the "to" header of your mail ; there
> >> is a mailing list for the datapipelining group, but you've used the
> >> xproc-dev list...
> >> ;)
> >>
> >> Christophe
> >>
> >> Nic Gibson <nicg@corbas.co.uk> wrote:
> >>
> >> Hi Christophe
> >>
> >> I’m aware of that - Norm and the committee asked Ari and I to consider
> the
> >> future of the community group and what it should do. Hence the email
> >>
> >> nic
> >>
> >> On 7 March 2017 at 08:18:23, Christophe Marchand
> >> (christophe.marchand@contactoffice.net) wrote:
> >>
> >> There is an active group who decided in Prague 2017 to work on XProc
> 3.0.
> >> This group is about 12 people who are really concerned by XProc, and are
> >> active. The Prague session ended on defining goals and responsabilities.
> >> If we look at the "Datapipelining Community Group" members, only 4 of
> them
> >> are active in the XProc 3 group ; we have never seen others, except we
> had a
> >> skype talk with you during Prague session.
> >>
> >> So, datapipelining community group does nothing, the members - except 4
> of
> >> them - are not active, and there is no reason to keep this group, or
> keep
> >> thinking it is related to XProc (that was the purpose of the CG at the
> >> beginning).
> >>
> >> But, I think the XProc 3.0 group **must** work under W3C authority, as
> >> XProc was a W3C Working Group, and as we work on language evolutions.
> Should
> >> it be a community group, a working group, or anything else, I do not
> know
> >> enough on W3C groups organizations and responsabilities, so I do not
> have an
> >> opinion. But, as nobody (except Norm) in group is a W3C member, it'll be
> >> difficult to build a working group.
> >>
> >> I've been volunteer to work on XProc documentation. In my message on
> this
> >> list, the feb, 14th, I explain I'm on reviewing the existing
> documentation,
> >> to produce an updated, useful, educational documentation. The WHERE has
> not
> >> been yet discussed, but the goal is actually to have a central source
> for
> >> documentation, tutorials, FAQ, CookBook, and whatever uesful.
> >>
> >> I actually think we must work under W3C authority. We met Bernard Gidon
> >> (bgidon@w3.org) & Francois Daoust (fd@w3.org) last week, and they
> encourage
> >> us to join W3 to work on normalization, "as (we) do on XProc" (tr. FR).
> >>
> >> @Liam, your opinion ?
> >>
> >> Best,
> >> Christophe
> >>
> >> Nic Gibson <nicg@corbas.co.uk> wrote:
> >>
> >> Hi all
> >>
> >> As some people are aware, there is a W3C Community Group
> >> (http://www.w3.org/community/datapipelining/) related to XProc that
> has been
> >> effectively moribund due to Ari and myself not being terribly full of
> free
> >> time and our lack of a particular vision for the group.
> >>
> >> A week or two ago Ari and I met up to discuss this* and we came up with
> a
> >> few ideas. We are taking the fact that there is no longer a formal
> working
> >> group as the basis of our thought processes.
> >>
> >>
> >> So, we’d like feedback on the following thoughts
> >>
> >> 1) Could the community group be used to organise the ‘home’ of XProc
> >> online? Currently, there is xproc.org, exproc.org, the w3c site,
> Gerrit’s
> >> site, github and probably some other sites
> >> 2) Could we merge some of the online tutorials and host them on the
> >> community group wiki?
> >> 3) We wonder if it would be a good place to gather uses cases and
> feature
> >> requests (for the language itself, not the implementations).
> >>
> >>
> >> Finally, should the group actually exist? I’m not convinced either way.
> It
> >> *does* need to be renamed if it continues to exist. Data Pipelining Uses
> >> Cases doesn’t exactly slip off of the tongue.
> >>
> >>
> >> nic
> >>
> >>
> >> * and, unfortunately, to get Ari’s phone stolen.
> >>
> >
>
>


-- 
Conal Tuohy
http://conaltuohy.com/
@conal_tuohy
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