On 1/23/11 6:31 PM, Charles Pritchard wrote:
Ian has, for quite some tine, described his whatwg document as HTML "Next", a 'living' standard.
Yes, we did the same with W3C Widgets. We dropped versioning and (unsuccessfully) requested the W3C to change its process to allow the "latest version" to always point to the Editor's draft. The "latest version" and "previous versions" snapshot encourages fragmentation by allowing implementers to cherry-pick which dated snapshot they want to claim conformance to (even if those dated versions are obsolete, contain errors, or lack a test suite). This has proven to be so disastrous that, as an editor, I've all but given up publishing snapshots on /TR/.
IMHO, the resistance of the W3C to review it's process goes against the spirit of standardization, which justifies the WHATWG's abandonment of the W3C process towards a "living" standard. Hence, moves by the WHATWG are logically justified (though they are not without its own perceived problems - history will be the judge there, and it will make for a hell of a movie!:)). In any case, I encourage the W3C to review its processes.
Also, I'm sure Ian can speak for himself, but I doubt he has ever said it is "his whatwg document". Ian is the spokesman of for the group, and not the owner of the document (which is "owned" by the community and the WHATWG membership. To be clear, the document states that "© Copyright 2004-2010 Apple Computer, Inc., Mozilla Foundation, and Opera Software ASA. You are granted a license to use, reproduce and create derivative works of this document." Sure, the license of the WHATWG spec leaves a lot to be desired; but you get the general idea).
This is separate from the w3c procedures, where HTML5 will be codified. As for web apps: I think it's too early to include them. I'd like to see more standardization on elevating permissions. Currently, we have the cache manifest, and that can work securely over https. But after that, every browser has its own semantics for content scripts and global (background) pages.
Right, more could be done to address that.
