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I'm not too knowledgeable on the background here, or on how the politics of standards organizations work, but my understanding is that the EU standards bodies (

I'm not too knowledgeable on the background here, or on how the politics of standards organizations work, but my understanding is that the EU standards bodies (presumably as well as similar organizations for other governments) consider the W3C to be authoritative. Even if all the browsers prefer WHATWG's spec, won't they be forced to adopt W3C in the same way phones have to support USB charging[0]? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_external_power_supply https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_external_power_supply

cptskippy 9y ago
> in the same way Apple was forced to adopt USB Type-C? What in the what now? Apple adopted the latest USB standard as a way to reduce the BOM on it's devices by consolidating ports. They did the same thing with the iMac almost 20 years ago. No one is twisting their arm on it, if anything people are asking them to not jump whole hog on USB Type-C but instead take a gradual approach to adopting it.
- dooglius 9y ago
  Clarified; I had mistakenly thought this was the result of EU regulation, but it looks like they were already considered in compliance before that[0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_external_power_supply#Reception https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_external_power_supply#R...
  - cptskippy 9y ago
    That legislation was specific to mobile phones and has since expired. It asked that chargers either have USB Type A Female or USB Type Micro B Male connectors, Apple already offered Type A Female and thus was always in compliance. It would not surprise me if there were similar legislation around Type C however the industry is still coming to terms with Type C and so I don't anticipate that happening for a few years.
JeremyBanks 9y ago
[edit: maybe entirely wrong? see reply.] USB-C was enthusiastically coinvented by Apple, not forced on them. They just let the standards orgs lead publicly to get broader suppot.
- DannyBee 9y ago
  This is definitely not accurate. Apple didn't get on board until well after the connector and other things had been just about finalized. The price of making that connector a standard that Apple was willing to use was not pointing out it was made by a staunch competitor. I don't even think they were attending meetings. (Gruber said something completely and totally wrong about this, which is usually the source of people's thinking apple did it. The history here is well documented, just not well known or well publicized, deliberately, so Apple could save face)
  - ksec 9y ago
    Because I find it rather hard to believe USB group actually design the plug that is reversible.
larkeith 9y ago
I'm rather unfamiliar with the history of EPS, but its success seems to have been predicated on the preexisting willingness of a majority of mobile phone manufacturers to adopt it. On the other hand, as far as I'm aware, no major browser supplier currently supports publishing or implementing DOM 4.1, thus providing no pressure on the other browser developers to do so. The EU standards bodies' opinion regarding the authoritative standard seems somewhat irrelevant given this situation - attempted enforcement of a DOM implementation with such little support via legislative means is unlikely and infeasible.
mattur 9y ago
The W3C's HTML standard is a buggy, outdated copy of the upstream WHATWG standard. In the copy-and-paste process the W3C regularly introduces errors which prevent the W3C copy from being used as an implementation reference, even as an outdated standard. Example: https://github.com/w3c/webauthn/issues/257 https://github.com/w3c/webauthn/issues/257 So the W3C copy is not authoritative, nor can it be in its current state, regardless of what the EU or anyone else says. The WHATWG standards are the authoritative implementation references. The W3C specs are buggy, outdated, incomplete copies and that looks unlikely to change for HTML, DOM or any other specs the W3C takes from WHATWG and republishes with the W3C logo.

cptskippy 9y ago

> in the same way Apple was forced to adopt USB Type-C? What in the what now? Apple adopted the latest USB standard as a way to reduce the BOM on it's devices by consolidating ports. They did the same thing with the iMac almost 20 years ago. No one is twisting their arm on it, if anything people are asking them to not jump whole hog on USB Type-C but instead take a gradual approach to adopting it.

dooglius 9y ago
Clarified; I had mistakenly thought this was the result of EU regulation, but it looks like they were already considered in compliance before that[0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_external_power_supply#Reception https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_external_power_supply#R...
- cptskippy 9y ago
  That legislation was specific to mobile phones and has since expired. It asked that chargers either have USB Type A Female or USB Type Micro B Male connectors, Apple already offered Type A Female and thus was always in compliance. It would not surprise me if there were similar legislation around Type C however the industry is still coming to terms with Type C and so I don't anticipate that happening for a few years.

JeremyBanks 9y ago

[edit: maybe entirely wrong? see reply.] USB-C was enthusiastically coinvented by Apple, not forced on them. They just let the standards orgs lead publicly to get broader suppot.

DannyBee 9y ago
This is definitely not accurate. Apple didn't get on board until well after the connector and other things had been just about finalized. The price of making that connector a standard that Apple was willing to use was not pointing out it was made by a staunch competitor. I don't even think they were attending meetings. (Gruber said something completely and totally wrong about this, which is usually the source of people's thinking apple did it. The history here is well documented, just not well known or well publicized, deliberately, so Apple could save face)
- ksec 9y ago
  Because I find it rather hard to believe USB group actually design the plug that is reversible.

larkeith 9y ago

I'm rather unfamiliar with the history of EPS, but its success seems to have been predicated on the preexisting willingness of a majority of mobile phone manufacturers to adopt it. On the other hand, as far as I'm aware, no major browser supplier currently supports publishing or implementing DOM 4.1, thus providing no pressure on the other browser developers to do so. The EU standards bodies' opinion regarding the authoritative standard seems somewhat irrelevant given this situation - attempted enforcement of a DOM implementation with such little support via legislative means is unlikely and infeasible.

mattur 9y ago

The W3C's HTML standard is a buggy, outdated copy of the upstream WHATWG standard. In the copy-and-paste process the W3C regularly introduces errors which prevent the W3C copy from being used as an implementation reference, even as an outdated standard. Example: https://github.com/w3c/webauthn/issues/257 https://github.com/w3c/webauthn/issues/257 So the W3C copy is not authoritative, nor can it be in its current state, regardless of what the EU or anyone else says. The WHATWG standards are the authoritative implementation references. The W3C specs are buggy, outdated, incomplete copies and that looks unlikely to change for HTML, DOM or any other specs the W3C takes from WHATWG and republishes with the W3C logo.