On Fri, 14 Aug 2009, João Eiras wrote: > On Fri, 14 Aug 2009 12:01:31 +0100, Ian Hickson <i...@hixie.ch> wrote: > > On Sun, 9 Aug 2009, Aaron Boodman wrote: > > > > > > I frequently see the comment on this list and in other forums that > > > something is "too late" for HTML5, and therefore discussion should > > > be deferred. > > > > > > I would like to propose that we get rid of the concepts of > > > "versions" altogether from HTML. In reality, nobody supports all of > > > HTML5. Each vendor supports a slightly different subset of the spec, > > > along with some features that are outside the spec. > > > > > > This seems OK to me. Instead of insisting that a particular version > > > of HTML is a monolithic unit that must be implemented in its > > > entirety, we could have each feature (or logical group of features) > > > spun off into its own small spec. We're already doing this a bit > > > with things like Web Workers, but I don't see why we don't just do > > > it for everything. > > > > > > Just as they do now, vendors would decide at the end of the day > > > which features they would implement and which they would not. But we > > > should never have to say that "the spec is too big". If somebody is > > > interested in exploring an idea, they should be able to just start > > > doing that. > > > > I agree in principle. > > I wholeheartedly agree with all the reasoning, but there are issues. > > From an implementor's point of view it is much harder to implement and > keep up with a mutating specification. During implementation a stable > spec is preferred.
The parts of the spec you would be implementing would still be stable, it's just that other parts of it would evolve. > Currently, because specs are being edited and might take a while to get > to CR, we have different implementors implement different parts of the > specifications, and then meanwhile the specification mutates and > implementors have to waste time updating their implementation which > could have been right from the start. I understand that implementation > feedback is necessary, but this is not very optimal. We have to keep the spec from running away from implementations anyway, whether we have a stable snapshot model or a continually evolving model. > After a spec gets to CR it can't just mutate out of thin air, hence > forking it into a new version is the way to go. > > Example: Gecko, Webkit and IE have localStorage, but the spec changed a > few days ago to allow structured storage. If we do snapshots, it just means the implementors are working on an obsolete version of the spec, which is worse. -- Ian Hickson U+1047E )\._.,--....,'``. fL http://ln.hixie.ch/ U+263A /, _.. \ _\ ;`._ ,. Things that are impossible just take longer. `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'
