3 ms·

What in that excerpt conveys smugness to you?

by mwfunk 10y ago

wolfgke 10y ago
* the W3C wanted to publish a "finished" version of "HTML5" Putting "finsished" into quotes is a hint of sarcasm of the WHATWG side. * continuously maintaining the specification Fixing known bugs is also a kind of continuous maintaining of a standard (this is what the W3C and other standard bodies do). That the WHATWG writers put this into contrast of the approach of the W3C is smugness again. * rather than freezing it in a state with known problems Fixing bugs and publishing errata is common for standards. The wording implies that this is something the W3C does not do. * and adding new features as needed to evolve the platform Having a stable standard which one can refer to (say in project contracts or for tooling) is also an important feature. The WHATWG connives over this and only considers the things that they do as features. * Since then, the WHATWG has been working on this specification (amongst others), and the W3C has been copying fixes made by the WHATWG into their fork of the document A very smug way to say "WHATWG does all the work and W3C is a copycat". Though the facts might be true, there are more humble ways to express that. * (which also has other changes). OK, what the W3C does is not really important - we can skip over these changes as they are not important (only the WHATWG version is).
- gsnedders 10y ago
  Re: > Fixing known bugs is also a kind of continuous maintaining of a standard (this is what the W3C and other standard bodies do). And: > Fixing bugs and publishing errata is common for standards. The wording implies that this is something the W3C does not do. There are countless W3C specs that don't have errata kept up-to-date, and, hell, the 5.1 errata is just <https://github.com/w3c/html/issues> https://github.com/w3c/html/issues> (if they fix a bug in 5.2 drafts, will they keep the issue open so it continues to appear on that (paginated) list of issues or not? because both options seem terrible!). Similarly, the W3C almost never issues revised recommendations to incorporate errata, which means even for specs where there have been no errata for years you have to cross-reference two documents. Another example is CSS 2.1, which doesn't have errata published any more: they're just fixed in the editor's draft of 2.2, and left to linger in the 2.1 Recommendation and errata. For plenty of W3C specs the only "errata" is an editor's draft of the next revision.
  - wolfgke 10y ago
    Counterexample: XML 1.0, which is currently in Fifth Edition: > https://www.w3.org/TR/xml/ https://www.w3.org/TR/xml/ (click under "Previous versions" to go to older editions).
    - gsnedders 10y ago
      Oh, yes, there are absolutely counter-examples. It's essentially down to each WG whether they issue errata or revised recommendations, and when plenty of (admittedly more obscure) WGs have their charter allowed to expire when all of their deliverables have become recommendations there's at times nobody to maintain the document per the W3C process. An aside: XML 1.0 Fifth Edition is actually a weird case: there are documents that are well-formed XML according to the Fifth Edition and not well-formed according to the Fourth Edition, because the characters allowed in places like tag names went from being based on Unicode 2.0 to Unicode 5.0-or-any-later-version (which was originally the difference between XML 1.0 and XML 1.1, except 1.1 was originally 3.0-or-any-later-version); as such, two XML 1.0 implementations are no longer guaranteed to consider the same set of documents well-formed, as it depends on the Unicode version each uses. As a result, plenty of implementations of XML 1.0 have no plan on changing away from their Forth Edition implementations.

What in that excerpt conveys smugness to you?

by mwfunk 10y ago

What in that excerpt conveys smugness to you?

* the W3C wanted to publish a "finished" version of "HTML5" Putting "finsished" into quotes is a hint of sarcasm of the WHATWG side. * continuously maintaining the specification Fixing known bugs is also a kind of continuous maintaining of a standard (this is what the W3C and other standard bodies do). That the WHATWG writers put this into contrast of the approach of the W3C is smugness again. * rather than freezing it in a state with known problems Fixing bugs and publishing errata is common for standards. The wording implies that this is something the W3C does not do. * and adding new features as needed to evolve the platform Having a stable standard which one can refer to (say in project contracts or for tooling) is also an important feature. The WHATWG connives over this and only considers the things that they do as features. * Since then, the WHATWG has been working on this specification (amongst others), and the W3C has been copying fixes made by the WHATWG into their fork of the document A very smug way to say "WHATWG does all the work and W3C is a copycat". Though the facts might be true, there are more humble ways to express that. * (which also has other changes). OK, what the W3C does is not really important - we can skip over these changes as they are not important (only the WHATWG version is).

gsnedders 10y ago
Re: > Fixing known bugs is also a kind of continuous maintaining of a standard (this is what the W3C and other standard bodies do). And: > Fixing bugs and publishing errata is common for standards. The wording implies that this is something the W3C does not do. There are countless W3C specs that don't have errata kept up-to-date, and, hell, the 5.1 errata is just <https://github.com/w3c/html/issues> https://github.com/w3c/html/issues> (if they fix a bug in 5.2 drafts, will they keep the issue open so it continues to appear on that (paginated) list of issues or not? because both options seem terrible!). Similarly, the W3C almost never issues revised recommendations to incorporate errata, which means even for specs where there have been no errata for years you have to cross-reference two documents. Another example is CSS 2.1, which doesn't have errata published any more: they're just fixed in the editor's draft of 2.2, and left to linger in the 2.1 Recommendation and errata. For plenty of W3C specs the only "errata" is an editor's draft of the next revision.
- wolfgke 10y ago
  Counterexample: XML 1.0, which is currently in Fifth Edition: > https://www.w3.org/TR/xml/ https://www.w3.org/TR/xml/ (click under "Previous versions" to go to older editions).
  - gsnedders 10y ago
    Oh, yes, there are absolutely counter-examples. It's essentially down to each WG whether they issue errata or revised recommendations, and when plenty of (admittedly more obscure) WGs have their charter allowed to expire when all of their deliverables have become recommendations there's at times nobody to maintain the document per the W3C process. An aside: XML 1.0 Fifth Edition is actually a weird case: there are documents that are well-formed XML according to the Fifth Edition and not well-formed according to the Fourth Edition, because the characters allowed in places like tag names went from being based on Unicode 2.0 to Unicode 5.0-or-any-later-version (which was originally the difference between XML 1.0 and XML 1.1, except 1.1 was originally 3.0-or-any-later-version); as such, two XML 1.0 implementations are no longer guaranteed to consider the same set of documents well-formed, as it depends on the Unicode version each uses. As a result, plenty of implementations of XML 1.0 have no plan on changing away from their Forth Edition implementations.