Blueberry is not "closed" (was: Closing Blueberry)

[John Cowan <jcowan@reutershealth.com>]

Elliotte Rusty Harold wrote:

 > I am particularly concerned that all my proposals for harm reduction
 > in Blueberry are getting naysayed (particularly requiring that XML
 > 1.0 legal infosets not carry an unnecessary Blueberry mark).

When I post here, I don't speak for the Core WG, only for myself.
So if I don't like something, I say so; but that only means that
*I* don't like it.  I am forwarding many postings to the Blueberry
comments list, so that their content will be considered by the
Core WG.  I am trying not to discriminate on the basis of whether
I agree with a proposal, but forwarding whatever *is* either a
proposal or else relevant data.

 > However, these are only problems when
 > somebody is choosing to generate a Blueberry document but does not
 > know whether or not they will actually be generating Blueberry
 > characters. I think this is a very small fraction of the potential
 > uses.

My problem with it is that in the world of componentized XML generation,
the top level may not even know what names a component generates.

 > I also proposed as a more limited version of this that did not have
 > streaming issues; specifically that only documents actually labeled
 > with a Blueberry character encoding such as UTF-8 or UTF-16 be
 > allowed to carry a Blueberry mark. This was denied on the very weak
 > grounds that additional encodings might be defined in the future.

I didn't "deny" it (I can't), and I merely said that we didn't have
an authoritative list.  If someone wants to produce such a list, I
will be happy to be sure the idea is considered.  As it is, the notion
is an uncashable cheque.

 > Already, on this mailing list, we've seen
 > repeated misconceptions about what Blueberry accomplishes.

How not?  After all, there is no actual draft Blueberry spec yet.
We are at the very *beginning* of the process.  There will be
at least one more draft of the requirements; then a Working Draft
for Blueberry itself, then a Candidate Recommendation (at this
point, we look for early implementers), then a Proposed Recommendation,
then the W3C members vote and only then do we get a Recommendation.
It wouldn't astonish me if this took a year all told.

 > (This could perhaps be partially averted by naming Blueberry, XML
 > 1.0.1. Most publishers are loathe to release books based on .0.x
 > releases.)

That was indeed my original name: the connotation of "1.0.1" is
"a very small change" which is indeed the idea.

-- 
There is / one art             || John Cowan <jcowan@reutershealth.com>
no more / no less              || http://www.reutershealth.com
to do / all things             || http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
with art- / lessness           \\ -- Piet Hein