On Thu, 18 Aug 2011 15:00:28 +0200, Jeff Jaffe <j...@w3.org> wrote:
I would add to this discussion that we need to be mindful of where we
are in the development cycle.
Certainly, in the early phases of development it does not yet make sense
to converge to a fixed point. We have now recognized that reality and
have introduced Community Groups to facilitate specification development
in areas of rapid innovation which are too early for standardization.
And I agree Danny, that as a spec matures and stabilizes, it is quite
useful for the ecosystem to converge to a fixed point - a versioned
spec. And to be sure, there will continue to be innovation beyond which
would lead to the next version.
For convergence you typically need to specification to evolve as well.
Because with convergence you typically get better understanding of the
problem space and holes in the specification.
(And then parts of specifications become obsolete if we later decide on an
alternative way of doing something, and it would be beneficial if
specifications were updated directly to reflect that new direction so
people do not end up implementing the wrong thing. E.g. that can happen
now (and does happen) with HTML4, DOM1*, DOM2*, DOM3*, CSS1, etc.)
--
Anne van Kesteren
http://annevankesteren.nl/
