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Hi there, one of the WHATWG HTML editors here. > Meanwhile, W3C HTML5 has defined releases that are thoroughly scrutinized, reviewed, and debated in endless co

Hi there, one of the WHATWG HTML editors here. > Meanwhile, W3C HTML5 has defined releases that are thoroughly scrutinized, reviewed, and debated in endless committee meetings. While this was true in the past, these days it's not really the case. They mostly just copy and paste our work without scrutinizing it, and usually without understanding it (as can be seen by the bugs they introduce during the copy-and-paste process). There aren't really any technical deliberations or committee meetings, and they don't follow a well-defined process; the most recent fork (from which HTML 5.1 is based) was actually done without the knowledge of the membership, and broke several aspects of W3C process while doing so. Why do they do this? Well, it seems to be largely an issue of institutional face-saving. See e.g. https://github.com/w3c/charter-html/issues/14#issuecomment-108606731 https://github.com/w3c/charter-html/issues/14#issuecomment-1...: "When the HTML WG co-chairs and Team presented our proposed After HTML5 plan to the W3C Advisory Board earlier this year, we received a clear message that it was not appropriate to delegate or assign the maintenance of a W3C Recommendation outside the organization." In other words, since they started copying and pasting back in the day with HTML 5.0, they can't stop now. Meanwhile there's actually a lot of interesting deliberation between web developers and browser vendors over in the WHATWG HTML Standard's bug tracker. https://github.com/whatwg/html/pulse https://github.com/whatwg/html/pulse might give a reasonable overview. Compare to https://github.com/w3c/html/pulse https://github.com/w3c/html/pulse. Some relevant corroborating links: - https://annevankesteren.nl/2016/01/film-at-11 https://annevankesteren.nl/2016/01/film-at-11 when this all started - https://wiki.whatwg.org/wiki/Fork_tracking https://wiki.whatwg.org/wiki/Fork_tracking monitoring the ongoing copy-and-paste-induced confusion - https://github.com/w3c/html/issues/364 https://github.com/w3c/html/issues/364 wherein they monitor our tree for things to copy and paste over - https://github.com/w3c/html/commit/19fcaf241f4417b2078bc26bf957b196e1d76154 https://github.com/w3c/html/commit/19fcaf241f4417b2078bc26bf... example commit of them copying and pasting our work en masse (Spot the bugs introduced! It's a fun game!)

deleted 10y ago
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kuschku 10y ago
So, when will the WHATWG finally fix the HTML standards? Get rid of all the backwards compatibility shit, and actually create strict, and simple standards, with no unexpected behaviour, that only parse valid documents, and where anyone can write an implementation? Because that’s the definition of a standard. That’s what a standard is supposed to be. Standards, from paper standards to screws to fucking cucumber regulations are supposed to be more strict than what came before them, so anyone can easily accept only one type, and know it will work. The WHATWG "standards" don’t fulfil the definition of standard in the least. They are a strict superset of everything all implementers accept, making it a larger and more complicated mess with every single iteration. So when will the WHATWG, as you say it’s now the legitimate standards body, do what it, as standards body is supposed to do, and deprecate currently used behaviour to replace it with stricter, simpler, standard behaviour? Yes, that will break the web, but yes, it will also improve it.
- yuhong 10y ago
  Because it would not be useful to any real web browsers.
  - kuschku 10y ago
    That’s not any justification – you standardize things so other people can easier work with them, create competing browsers, libraries, etc, and so more innovation happens. If you just document what already exists for the benefit of existing implementors, great, you just got Microsoft Office Open XML. That, and nothing more, is everything that can result from such a mindset.
- jdlshore 10y ago
  "Don't break the web" is a hard constraint. Any solution you propose that violates this constraint is unacceptable. There is nothing you can do to change this. Your comments are getting downvoted to hell and back because you either don't understand or are unwilling to accept this constraint.
  - newjersey 10y ago

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

kuschku 10y ago

So, when will the WHATWG finally fix the HTML standards? Get rid of all the backwards compatibility shit, and actually create strict, and simple standards, with no unexpected behaviour, that only parse valid documents, and where anyone can write an implementation? Because that’s the definition of a standard. That’s what a standard is supposed to be. Standards, from paper standards to screws to fucking cucumber regulations are supposed to be more strict than what came before them, so anyone can easily accept only one type, and know it will work. The WHATWG "standards" don’t fulfil the definition of standard in the least. They are a strict superset of everything all implementers accept, making it a larger and more complicated mess with every single iteration. So when will the WHATWG, as you say it’s now the legitimate standards body, do what it, as standards body is supposed to do, and deprecate currently used behaviour to replace it with stricter, simpler, standard behaviour? Yes, that will break the web, but yes, it will also improve it.

yuhong 10y ago
Because it would not be useful to any real web browsers.
- kuschku 10y ago
  That’s not any justification – you standardize things so other people can easier work with them, create competing browsers, libraries, etc, and so more innovation happens. If you just document what already exists for the benefit of existing implementors, great, you just got Microsoft Office Open XML. That, and nothing more, is everything that can result from such a mindset.
jdlshore 10y ago
"Don't break the web" is a hard constraint. Any solution you propose that violates this constraint is unacceptable. There is nothing you can do to change this. Your comments are getting downvoted to hell and back because you either don't understand or are unwilling to accept this constraint.
- newjersey 10y ago