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W3C and the WHATWG sign agreement to collaborate on single version of HTML, DOM

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Re: W3C and the WHATWG sign agreement to collaborate on single version of HTML, DOM

#231

Post by steveax »

BinaryIdiot wrote: post #188

It's probably an unpopular opinion but I'm all for progress that may eventually lead to W3C's complete irrelevance. I've talked with folks at the WHATWG before, _Anyone_ can provide input and work with them. With the W3C it's, what, like $30k for the cheapest option and that barely gets you in the door. The W3C is too expensive to ever let small businesses or individuals have impact. I'd love to see more groups like…

Invited experts don’t pay any fees: https://www.w3.org/participate/invited-experts/

Re: W3C and the WHATWG sign agreement to collaborate on single version of HTML, DOM

#232

Post by BinaryIdiot »

steveax wrote: post #231
BinaryIdiot wrote: post #188

It's probably an unpopular opinion but I'm all for progress that may eventually lead to W3C's complete irrelevance. I've talked with folks at the WHATWG before, _Anyone_ can provide input and work with them. With the W3C it's, what, like $30k for the cheapest option and that barely gets you in the door. The W3C is too expensive to ever let small businesses or individuals have impact. I'd love to see more groups like…

Invited experts don’t pay any fees: https://www.w3.org/participate/invited-experts/

I mean, I get that. But if you're a business or even an individual who was an interest in how the internet is being shaped you have to either pay a ton of money or somehow get them to invite you.

WHATWG seems to have found a way to manage the noise of allowing essentially anyone in to comment and contribute.

Re: W3C and the WHATWG sign agreement to collaborate on single version of HTML, DOM

#233

Post by xg15 »

Out of couriosity, does the WHATWG have any commitment to keep the "review drafts" meaningful (e.g., by orienting the things that are actually supported by browsers along them)?

Will it mean anything if one of them becomes a W3C Recommendation?

If the W3C sends a draft back with requests for corrections, will anyone from WHATWG actually be motivated to make those corrections?

Or is this more of a "pick any commit you like and we can declare it the 'review draft' if that makes you happy" kind of thing?

Also, by this agreement, does the W3C have any avenues to influence HTML/DOM design work that exceed those of an average volunteer an the WHATWG mailing list?

Re: W3C and the WHATWG sign agreement to collaborate on single version of HTML, DOM

#234

Post by sureaboutthis »

gsnedders wrote: post #228
sureaboutthis wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not true. XHTML and HTML have validators to check your markup for proper syntax and usage. You know that. You made one of them! Good writers of markup will always check with those before they ship it. In the case of user supplied markup, that's still an issue today with HTML.

I've been involved with multiple HTML and XML parsers, but never validators. :) The reality ten years ago, when a number of prominent XML advocates were using XHTML (and actually using it as such, serving it as such), almost all of their sites had user input means where the input was sanitized well enough for HTML to be secure (and not have any markup injection), but not for XML well-formedness (they got all the mark…

Yes. It was your outliner I was thinking of, not a validator but weren't you involved with the original http://validator.w3.org/nu/ at least in part?

I, too, served my web pages as "real" xhtml 10 years ago and loved it :)

Re: W3C and the WHATWG sign agreement to collaborate on single version of HTML, DOM

#235

Post by antod »

bmn__ wrote: post #93
cotelletta wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are the same people who created XHTML, an ivory tower idea nobody was waiting for... who didn't support the most popular layout method at the time, tables, in their new styling language CSS. W3C became irrelevant because they kept thinking they could just tell the entire web what to do, that they'd make enormous technical investments to satisfy the W3C's latest fashions. I interacted with them once, over their…

> who didn't support the most popular layout method at the time, tables, in their new styling language CSS. That's quite a misunderstanding of the past. Your proposition is only technically correct: CSS1 (Dec 1996) did not have table display properties, but they were added in CSS2 (Mar 1998). They were available early enough to matter. The reason why many Web authors did not design with these properties is not the fa…

Thank you - saved me typing it. CSS support for table display predated XHTML 1.0 by nearly 2 years, and worked in XHTML with non IE browsers.

Re: W3C and the WHATWG sign agreement to collaborate on single version of HTML, DOM

#236

Post by wahern »

tialaramex wrote: post #225
lucideer wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, this is pretty great. It's also comes from the W3C, not the WHATWG. (it might be a bit lost in the hierarchy of the thread by now, but the original comment was about the WHATWG taking over and monopolising the normal considered and democratic standardisation process of the W3C with their HTML5 "living" spec.)

W3C was a good fit for WebAuthn because the W3C is a body for corporations and by its nature WebAuthn is built and primarily implemented by corporations. Not a criticism, by the way, sometimes that's just the right fit.

Huh? The WHATWG steering committee is Apple, Mozilla, Google, and Microsoft. WHATWG's legitimacy (such as it is) doesn't come from being non-corporate, it comes from being entirely controlled by the top corporate browser vendors and thus reflecting the de facto state of affairs regarding how and when and why features are defined and implemented. If the WHATWG disappeared nothing would change because the top vendors are going to pick & choose W3C standards, anyhow.

Re: W3C and the WHATWG sign agreement to collaborate on single version of HTML, DOM

#237

Post by gsnedders »

sureaboutthis wrote: post #234
gsnedders wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been involved with multiple HTML and XML parsers, but never validators. :) The reality ten years ago, when a number of prominent XML advocates were using XHTML (and actually using it as such, serving it as such), almost all of their sites had user input means where the input was sanitized well enough for HTML to be secure (and not have any markup injection), but not for XML well-formedness (they got all the mark…

Yes. It was your outliner I was thinking of, not a validator but weren't you involved with the original http://validator.w3.org/nu/ at least in part? I, too, served my web pages as "real" xhtml 10 years ago and loved it :)

Promise I've never worked on a validator!

Re: W3C and the WHATWG sign agreement to collaborate on single version of HTML, DOM

#238

Post by tialaramex »

wahern wrote: post #236
tialaramex wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

W3C was a good fit for WebAuthn because the W3C is a body for corporations and by its nature WebAuthn is built and primarily implemented by corporations. Not a criticism, by the way, sometimes that's just the right fit.

Huh? The WHATWG steering committee is Apple, Mozilla, Google, and Microsoft. WHATWG's legitimacy (such as it is) doesn't come from being non-corporate, it comes from being entirely controlled by the top corporate browser vendors and thus reflecting the de facto state of affairs regarding how and when and why features are defined and implemented. If the WHATWG disappeared nothing would change because the top vendors a…

Sorry, I was thinking out loud, I was contrasting the other obvious place to standardise this - the distinctly non-corporate IETF. WHATWG makes no sense for something like WebAuthn

Re: W3C and the WHATWG sign agreement to collaborate on single version of HTML, DOM

#239

Post by thaumasiotes »

cygx wrote: post #89
geezerjay wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like the complains are targetted at faulty implementations, not the document standard.

What good is a standard you can't use in practice? There also were other issues: XHTML was chasing the dream of the semantic, well-formed, machine-readable web, but it didn't do enough to help with pragmatic problems web designers trying to deliver a product actually faced. As much as I like the idea myself from a theoretical perspective, the market had other priorities.

I don't think the idea works from a theoretical perspective.

The browser is a communication channel between a publisher and a reader. They may want different things...

But the "semantic, well-formed, machine-readable web" idea is, in theory, a demand that the channel imposes on both parties. It's not something the publisher wants. It's not something the reader wants. Nobody cares what the channel wants; demanding extra information that isn't relevant to what any party to an actual transaction is trying to accomplish is always going to be doomed.

Readers care about positional information at a fairly minor level. Publishers care about it a lot. And hey, positional information has robust, if annoying, implementations.

Re: W3C and the WHATWG sign agreement to collaborate on single version of HTML, DOM

#240

Post by AgentME »

kijin wrote: post #152
ChrisSD wrote: post #9

I still maintain that the "living standard" is an oxymoron. It's a collaborative browser dev document. Don't get me wrong, that's great. However for everyone else an unversioned document, any part of which can change at any moment, is not what's usually thought of as a standard.

I don't mind a changing standard as long as two people can agree on exactly which version of the standard they're talking about and actually use that version. I should be able to build my web app against an LTS version of the standard and expect it to behave identically in all future versions of all major browsers, until the EOL date of said version, no matter what changes they make in future versions. I want this fo…

>I should be able to build my web app against an LTS version of the standard and expect it to behave identically in all future versions of all major browsers, until the EOL date of said version, no matter what changes they make in future versions.

That's already true of HTML5. Breaking changes in standardized features almost never happen. HTML5 actually goes further than what you suggest: they aim to never have breaking changes.

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