xml-dev - Re: Realistic proposals to the W3C?

["Simon St.Laurent" <simonstl@simonstl.com>]

Mike Champion wrote:
>I think it would be great if this group could help the XML 
>community as a whole sort out what it wants from the W3C, what 
>it can realistically DEMAND of the W3C, and what it must find 
>elsewhere. If some reasonable consensus emerges, perhaps it 
>could be quasi-formally submitted to the W3C in some form.

I'm not sure if any DEMANDs will be taken seriously, but I think we could
at least make suggestions and hope the W3C understands why.

I'll try to be brief - this is quite a list, with a lot of good possibilities.

>MISSION 
>
>What does "leading the web to its full potential" mean 
>to YOU?  Charging forward toward the Semantic Web, 
>cleaning up the loose ends left behind by the Syntactic 
>Web (?) or what?  

I keep seeing the 'Semantic Web' used as a sarcastic term on various XML,
HTML, and RDF-related lists.  I think a lot of people would like to see the
Semantic Web come to fruition, but I'm not sure that a focus on that end
goal is necessarily a good thing for the intermediate standards.

It might make sense (from one perspective) for the W3C to split up its
work, with one group catering to the Web (writ large) development
community's more immediate needs and another focusing on the long-range
possibility of the SW.  The SW team might be able to evolve the SW out of
the rest of the work rather than directing it.

>PROPOSALS, RECOMMENDATIONS, AND STANDARDS? 
>
>What do you folks WANT a "W3C Recommendation" to signify?

I'd like it to signify what it claims, and feed explicitly into some other
STANDARD-stamping process for those who need STANDARDs.  It'd also provide
a phase of review after W3C completion.

>How much implementation experience from OUTSIDE a working group
>should be necessary to enshrine something as a Recommendation?

If the W3C isn't the last stop towards standards, I'd leave this up to it.
I like the IETF rule of two interoperable implementations, but I'm not sure
it's possible in the time frames the W3C seems to want.

>Should the W3C encourage Recommendations to be modular 
>components that can be assembled into anything from 
>minimal subsets to monolithic monstrosities, or should the 
>current "one size fits all" objective be maintained? 

I think the phrasing of the question reveals a bias, but I think there's an
opportunity there.  Gavin Thomas Nicol and others have bemoaned the growth
of large committees and suggested that smaller groups might be able to do
better. Modularization makes it easier to hand out smaller pieces, though
integration becomes a different kind of problem.

>Should Recommendations be treated as "standards," should there 
>be a something like a "Strong Recommendation" that has survived 
>the test of time and the market, should the W3C refer well-
>established Recommendations to the ISO, or what?

I'd want this part of the process referred to a different kind of
organization, preferably one with independent funding (endowment?
government?) and official responsibility to the public at large.  ISO was a
good idea at one time, but it doesn't seem to have kept up with the times.

>OPENNESS 
>
>The public lists are open to anyone and are used 
>(as near as I can see) mostly to solicit feedback 
>from the public.  Some working groups (the DOM anyway) 
>try hard to quickly answer/explain/acknowledge the posts 
>on the public mailing lists, others respond mainly in the 
>"disposition of public comments" section of the 
>Proposed Recommendation. 

I'd suggest soliciting input from the public earlier, perhaps by requiring
Requirements to go through a 'disposition of public comments' period.

>what could it do to maximize the benefits of "sunshine" 
>without drying up the information flow?  Make Interest 
>Group mailing lists open to qualified people who agree 
>to respect certain guidelines (such as not publicly 
>revealing who advocates what)? Eliminate Interest Groups 
>and encouraging all technical discussion to occur on the 
>public mailing lists and all member-confidential stuff 
>to remain on the WG mailing lists?

You've got a number of possibilities there, all of which suggest a greater
role for the public at that level.  I'm not sure that changing the current
balance is feasible, given the intellectual property concerns people seem
to have.  (Funny how they'll share with their largest competitors, but not
with the smaller folk, but whatever...)

>Farm out the public "brainstorming" of specs to OASIS TC's 
>and produce SAX-like "sense of the community" proposals, and 
>only setup Working Groups when the time comes for the heavy 
>hitters to go into the smoke-filled rooms to sort out who can 
>implement what when?  

This might be an interesting approach.  I wish there was more experience
with it.  XML-URI wasn't very promising as a brainstorming operation,
though I'd suggest that it came far too late in the decision-making
process.  SML-DEV has been more successful, as has XML-Dev itself.  

Formalizing those processes may be difficult, but acknowledging their
existence as a potential (non-member) contributor to the development
process would be a start.

>CLARITY OF SPECS 
>
>What should the W3C as an organization do to encourage 
>clearer specs?  Mandate a page limit?  

In the context of the modularization approach you described above, a page
limit might be plausible, but some kind of independent and continuous
referee operation (independent ombudsman?) might be a better idea.  Some
specs do take up a lot of space to get the work done, and some could have
used more than they got.

>Demand a relatively non-technical but "normative" 
>Tutorial/Background paper to accompany all specs 
>(at least at the Recommendation level)? 

It might be an interesting addition to the Candidate Recommendation
process.  If the spec can't be explained by a team of tech writers....  I
think this fits with Robin Cover's earlier suggestion.

>Insist on an open source reference implementation? 

I'd love to see it - the W3C's work on Amaya and Jigsaw has definitely had
an effect on my understanding of the specs, and I tend to wish they did
more.  I'm not sure that the reference implementation would have to come
_from_ the W3C, but it would be useful.

>Mandate some other formal language description?  

It's been suggested repeatedly, but I'm not sure there's a
one-answer-fits-all here.

>Remember, that whatever you suggest has to be implemented 
>within the resources of the W3C itself and the technical 
>(or literary) capabilities of the participants.

It seems like there's a lot of potential help out here that the W3C has
decided it doesn't want, which hasn't encouraged people to help more.  

It's a tough balance to handle, certainly.  I don't expect the walls to
come roaring down, but I'd like to address the costs those walls create.

Simon St.Laurent
XML Elements of Style / XML: A Primer, 2nd Ed.
XHTML: Migrating Toward XML
http://www.simonstl.com - XML essays and books