Re: [gamepad] Seeking status and plans [Was: [TPAC2014] Creating focused agenda]

[Ted Mielczarek]

On 10/22/2014 8:08 AM, Arthur Barstow wrote:
>
>> * Gamepad: Ted and Scott; plan and expectations to get the spec to
>> feature complete state (aka Last Call) and implementation status.
>

Sorry about the late response, I had a vacation in the middle of things
there.

The Gamepad spec currently has one major issue and a handful of minor
issues that prevent it from moving forward. Unfortunately I haven't
found time to fix them up, I'm planning on making time in the near
future to get those cleaned up.

Major issue: "Need to spec liveness of Gamepad objects"[1]. This was
discussed on the list[2] with lots of useful feedback but without really
convincing me one way or the other. However, at this point Chrome (and
IE's dev preview) have implemented the snapshot behavior, so I think I'm
going to write spec text to that effect and change Firefox's
implementation to match.

A few other minor issues[3] are filed in the tracker, several of which
were filed by implementers (Microsoft, Apple) and as such represent real
spec issues that need to be clarified to ensure interoperability. Some
of them have straightforward answers, some do not.

Implementation status: Microsoft has shipped an implementation in their
IE developer preview release[4], which I believe means it should ship in
IE 12. Chrome and Firefox have been shipping for some time now, and I
believe Apple will ship in the near future. The implementations are
mostly-compatible modulo the liveness issue discussed above (and
probably a few other corner cases including some of the minor issues).
Despite these incompatibilities it's quite possible to write code that
works across Firefox/Chrome/IE without trouble. Microsoft's own demos
work fine on Firefox and Chrome.

-Ted

1. https://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=21434
2. http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-webapps/2014AprJun/0238.html
3.
https://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/buglist.cgi?component=Gamepad&list_id=34439&product=WebAppsWG&resolution=---
4. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ie/dn753843%28v=vs.85%29.aspx

[gamepad] Seeking status and plans [Was: [TPAC2014] Creating focused agenda]

[Arthur Barstow]

On 10/11/14 10:43 AM, Arthur Barstow wrote:
If you are an Editor and you did not register for the meeting please 
note:


a) If you can join the meeting via the teleconf bridge, please: 1) add 
your spec to the Potential Topics list and identify high priority 
discussion points; 2) plan to dial-in Monday morning (or let me know 
which open day + time slot you prefer to join the meeting).


b) If you cannot remotely participate in the meeting, please provide a 
short status of your spec, including any major blocking issues as well 
as general plans and expectations for the next six months (including 
publications plans). Please start a separate thread and use your 
spec's short name as the Subject: prefix (f.ex. "[html-imports] Oct 
2014 status report and plans").


Here is the list of specs whose Editor(s) did not register for the 
meeting (if I made any mistakes, I apologize in advance, but please do 
let me know):


* Gamepad: Ted and Scott; plan and expectations to get the spec to 
feature complete state (aka Last Call) and implementation status.


Ted, Scott,

Please see the above and respond accordingly.

-Thanks, ArtB

[Agenda] https://www.w3.org/wiki/Webapps/November2014Meetin 

Re: [gamepad] Seeking status and plans

[Marcos Caceres]

On Tuesday, October 15, 2013 at 4:01 PM, Ted Mielczarek wrote:

> On 10/14/2013 3:34 PM, Marcos Caceres wrote:
> > Hi All, 
> > The Gamepad API was briefly discussed at the LXJS conference.
> > 
> > See:
> > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekvaKmVfjtc&t=5m30s
> > 
> > It seems at least one developer is very unhappy with it. 
> > 
> > Have we received any other feedback from developers about it? Has any 
> > effort been made to reach out to other developers to get feedback? 
> Thanks for the pointer. I watched that portion of the video and it's not
> very constructive feedback. I'll reach out to him (considering he's a
> coworker) and see if I can find out more specifics.
> 
> We heard from quite a few developers while implementing the first draft
> of the API and they were overwhelmingly in favor of the current design.
> I haven't heard much in the way of feedback from developers actually
> testing the implementation we've shipped, so it's possible there are
> issues with it in practice. I'd definitely like to hear more we declare
> things finished.
> 


Ok, great. Let me know if I can do anything to help. 

-- 
Marcos Caceres

Re: [gamepad] Seeking status and plans

[Ted Mielczarek]

On 10/14/2013 3:34 PM, Marcos Caceres wrote:
> Hi All, 
> The Gamepad API was briefly discussed at the LXJS conference.
>
> See:
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekvaKmVfjtc&t=5m30s
>
> It seems at least one developer is very unhappy with it. 
>
> Have we received any other feedback from developers about it? Has any effort 
> been made to reach out to other developers to get feedback? 
>
Thanks for the pointer. I watched that portion of the video and it's not
very constructive feedback. I'll reach out to him (considering he's a
coworker) and see if I can find out more specifics.

We heard from quite a few developers while implementing the first draft
of the API and they were overwhelmingly in favor of the current design.
I haven't heard much in the way of feedback from developers actually
testing the implementation we've shipped, so it's possible there are
issues with it in practice. I'd definitely like to hear more we declare
things finished.

-Ted

Re: [gamepad] Seeking status and plans

[Marcos Caceres]

On Tuesday, October 15, 2013 at 12:47 PM, Arthur Barstow wrote:

> One reason groups publish a LCWD is to use it as a signal that broader 
> review of the spec is desired, and in this case, perhaps we can ask 
> Marcos to help us reach out to the developer community he mentioned in 
> [Dev].

 
I've pinged the developer, as he works for Moz. I can reach out to a few other 
devs too. If anyone knows folks working with this API, please let me know.   
 

Re: [gamepad] Seeking status and plans

[Arthur Barstow]

On 10/10/13 2:12 PM, ext Ted Mielczarek wrote:

Thanks for the nudge! My work on the spec (and the Firefox
implementation) fell by the wayside for many months, but I found some
time to work on my implementation recently. We (Mozilla) are shipping a
very-close-to-spec implementation in Nightly builds, and it's available
behind a preference in our current release (Firefox 24).

I'd actually like to ship our implementation in release soon, I just
have a few minor implementation bugs (with significant impact) to fix as
well as one possible breaking spec change[1]. With those in order I'd be
pretty happy to ship. We'd be shipping unprefixed, as is our new policy.

It's my understanding that Google has been shipping a prefixed
implementation that's also pretty close to the spec for some time now,
but that Scott suffers from the same "Gamepad is not really my full-time
job" problem that I do. He'd be more equipped to talk about this than I
am, certainly.

In terms of feature-completeness I think the spec is basically done.
Aside from that one breaking change I'd like to make I don't think
there's anything else we want to address right now that couldn't be done
in a future release of the spec. We've wanted to keep the scope small
from the beginning and I think we did okay. It definitely needs some
more work (mostly polishing of the text, fixing the existing bugs), but
we could certainly get out a new WD with the most recent text.


Thanks for this update Ted. Scott - please let us know if you have any 
additional status to share.


Since 21388 is now Resolved/Fixed, based on what you say above it seems 
like the next step should be to have a 1-week "pre-LC call for 
comments". Then, assuming no major issues are raised, I would start a 
CfC to publish a LCWD.


However, I noticed 4 open bugs [Bugs]. What is the plan for these (f.ex. 
are they deferred to the next version)?


One reason groups publish a LCWD is to use it as a signal that broader 
review of the spec is desired, and in this case, perhaps we can ask 
Marcos to help us reach out to the developer community he mentioned in 
[Dev].


-Thanks, ArtB

[Dev] 





-Ted

1. https://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=21388

Re: [gamepad] Seeking status and plans

[Marcos Caceres]

Hi All, 
The Gamepad API was briefly discussed at the LXJS conference.

See:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekvaKmVfjtc&t=5m30s

It seems at least one developer is very unhappy with it. 

Have we received any other feedback from developers about it? Has any effort 
been made to reach out to other developers to get feedback? 
 
Kind regards,
Marcos 

-- 
Marcos Caceres


On Thursday, October 10, 2013 at 7:12 PM, Ted Mielczarek wrote:

> On 10/2/2013 12:31 PM, Arthur Barstow wrote:
> > Hi Ted, Scott,
> > 
> > If any of the data for the Gamepad spec in [PubStatus] is not
> > accurate, please provide corrections.
> > 
> > Also, if you have any new information re your plans for the spec -
> > last published 29-May-2012 - or the spec's status with respect to
> > being feature complete, implementation status, etc., please let us know.
> > 
> > -Thanks, ArtB
> > 
> > [PubStatus] 
> Hi Art,
> 
> Thanks for the nudge! My work on the spec (and the Firefox
> implementation) fell by the wayside for many months, but I found some
> time to work on my implementation recently. We (Mozilla) are shipping a
> very-close-to-spec implementation in Nightly builds, and it's available
> behind a preference in our current release (Firefox 24).
> 
> I'd actually like to ship our implementation in release soon, I just
> have a few minor implementation bugs (with significant impact) to fix as
> well as one possible breaking spec change[1]. With those in order I'd be
> pretty happy to ship. We'd be shipping unprefixed, as is our new policy.
> 
> It's my understanding that Google has been shipping a prefixed
> implementation that's also pretty close to the spec for some time now,
> but that Scott suffers from the same "Gamepad is not really my full-time
> job" problem that I do. He'd be more equipped to talk about this than I
> am, certainly.
> 
> In terms of feature-completeness I think the spec is basically done.
> Aside from that one breaking change I'd like to make I don't think
> there's anything else we want to address right now that couldn't be done
> in a future release of the spec. We've wanted to keep the scope small
> from the beginning and I think we did okay. It definitely needs some
> more work (mostly polishing of the text, fixing the existing bugs), but
> we could certainly get out a new WD with the most recent text.
> 
> -Ted
> 
> 1. https://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=21388 

Re: [gamepad] Seeking status and plans

[Ted Mielczarek]

On 10/2/2013 12:31 PM, Arthur Barstow wrote:
> Hi Ted, Scott,
>
> If any of the data for the Gamepad spec in [PubStatus] is not
> accurate, please provide corrections.
>
> Also, if you have any new information re your plans for the spec -
> last published 29-May-2012 - or the spec's status with respect to
> being feature complete, implementation status, etc., please let us know.
>
> -Thanks, ArtB
>
> [PubStatus] 
Hi Art,

Thanks for the nudge! My work on the spec (and the Firefox
implementation) fell by the wayside for many months, but I found some
time to work on my implementation recently. We (Mozilla) are shipping a
very-close-to-spec implementation in Nightly builds, and it's available
behind a preference in our current release (Firefox 24).

I'd actually like to ship our implementation in release soon, I just
have a few minor implementation bugs (with significant impact) to fix as
well as one possible breaking spec change[1]. With those in order I'd be
pretty happy to ship. We'd be shipping unprefixed, as is our new policy.

It's my understanding that Google has been shipping a prefixed
implementation that's also pretty close to the spec for some time now,
but that Scott suffers from the same "Gamepad is not really my full-time
job" problem that I do. He'd be more equipped to talk about this than I
am, certainly.

In terms of feature-completeness I think the spec is basically done.
Aside from that one breaking change I'd like to make I don't think
there's anything else we want to address right now that couldn't be done
in a future release of the spec. We've wanted to keep the scope small
from the beginning and I think we did okay. It definitely needs some
more work (mostly polishing of the text, fixing the existing bugs), but
we could certainly get out a new WD with the most recent text.

-Ted

1. https://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=21388

[gamepad] Seeking status and plans

[Arthur Barstow]

Hi Ted, Scott,

If any of the data for the Gamepad spec in [PubStatus] is not accurate, 
please provide corrections.


Also, if you have any new information re your plans for the spec - last 
published 29-May-2012 - or the spec's status with respect to being 
feature complete, implementation status, etc., please let us know.


-Thanks, ArtB

[PubStatus]