Re: Charters for review

On Wed, 22 Nov 2006 17:04:38 +0100, Karl Dubost <karl@xxxxxx> wrote:

> Le 23 nov. 2006 à 00:49, Dean Jackson a écrit :
> > I liked David's suggestion that the group consider deliverables with  
> > smaller increments, although I understand what Ian says about this  
> > being difficult. It still might be possible to develop an HTML  
> > specification with the minimum set of new features.
>
> +1
> I think that would help the whole community:
>    - browser developers in being able to synchronize specs development  
> and product releases
>    - book writers to publish updates
>    - webmasters, web developers to learn step by step with small  
> increments the technologies.
>    - Test suite a lot easier to develop.
>
> A big monolithic specification trying to cover everything is likely to  
> have the same difficulties than previous framework. It was one of the  
> lessons of the WebAPIs WG.

You mean one of the lessons that led to the structure of the Web APIs WG?  
One of the lessons coming out of that is that there are only a handful of  
people in a group who are able to successfully produce a spec, so aiming  
for too many of them at a time is still a recipe for failure. On the other  
hand, the handful of editors available, if they are prepared to keep  
working, can do one and then another and then another, if they can be done  
more or less sequentially (with a few editors working together some  
overlap can be handled reasonably).

But this is about subjective things. "Small increments" of course means  
making only the "obvious improvements", to which "any sensible person"  
would agree. It comes down to having a good chair who can balance the  
various competing desires and get consensus in "reasonable" steps, not  
something you can really pin down in a charter.

> > The development of the test suite is another matter, but I would expect  
> > that the majority of it arrives after CR.
>
> hmmm :) let me insist with my QA hat on. Please, please, I encourage the  
> chair and the staff contact to push the group to produce test cases when  
> developing the specifications. I think it would help everyone again and  
> it will avoid to have the pain at CR to try to get a full test suite.
>
> *Each* time a feature is discussed, the WG writes the test cases for it.

Yes, I think that is the ideal.

> It will also gives the opportunity to really promote HTML in the good  
> way by looking who/what will have to implement this specific feature  
> (browsers, search engines, authoring tools, etc.)

Actually I think far too little attention is paid to authoring tools by  
W3C as a whole, and they are extremely important to the long-term future.  
It is great that people can code by hand, but browsers mostly have to  
follow what authoring tools produce anyway (as well as the few rogue  
hand-coders at abnormally popular sites).

cheers

Chaals


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  Charles McCathieNevile, Opera Software: Standards Group
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