Dan Brickley wrote:
Lachlan Hunt wrote:
Tim Berners-Lee announced the W3C's new plan for HTML and the
Working Groups this morning [1].
If it's grand re-think time, I'd like to see the Compound Document
Formats work (CDF, http://www.w3.org/2004/CDF/
etc ) sit a lot closer to the heart of the post-xhtml1 roadmap. W3C is
good at creating technologies, but relatively poor at integrating them.
AFAIK, at this stage, HTML is the primary focus.
I hope W3C can show some leadership here by doing all the new
HTML-related work in full public view, regardless of the impact that
might have on its ability to recruit paying Members.
I hope they can too. A few groups are already starting to work more in
public view. In particular the WAF and Web API groups keep most of the
discussions on the public mailing lists and make the editor's drafts of
all the specs available via CVS, so you can keep track of changes
without having to wait for the next draft.
However, their issue lists are kept internally, so it's difficult to
keep track off their status until they get announced on the mailing list.
As for the current HTMLWG, it's virtually sealed off to the public. You
can basically file an issue, which gets worked on behind the scenes and
then the resolution is announced when it's done, often with little
explanation for why some decisions were made.
Operating in public view has worked well for other W3C Working Groups
in recent years,
Yes, agreed. It's worked incredibly well for the WHATWG and they will
continue to do so now that the work is moving to the W3C.
The engineering tradeoffs will get worked out in time, for better or
worse. I'm more concerned about how these groups work, about visibility
and accountability (WhatWG as well; there's more to accountability than
having public mail archives, and WhatWG has much to learn from W3C).
Can you elaborate on what you mean by accountability in this context and
where the WHATWG is failing in this regard?
It's time we saw the detailed future of HTML designed in full public
view again. There are thousands of people out here who will never
represent W3C Members, ... never be W3C Invited Experts, ... but who
have a huge amount to contribute and who deserve to see as much as the
inner circles see, in terms of mailing list archives, meeting minutes
etc.
That point of view seems quite common, but I see a lot of people who
still don't try to get involved in whatever way they can. I know
there's a lot of reasons people don't, such as lack of time or
unwillingness/inability to read/comprehend specs, but I get the feeling
that some people could but just choose not to, and still complain about
the lack of openness.
--
Lachlan Hunt
http://lachy.id.au/
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