On Letting Specifications Bloom…
February 10th, 2009
That there was controversy on the W3C Public HTML5 listserv shouldn’t surprise anybody. The future of the web platform attracts standards mavens and generally interested parties by the scores. January 2009 saw 694 messages exchanged on public-html@w3.org; some of them were ever so slightly laced with vitriol. Controversy is par for the course, as is spirited discussion that sometimes gets personal. On the subject of HTML5 (the markup and the APIs), even within Mozilla we aren’t necessarily unanimous about what’s good for the web, and what should be in the specification. Or how it should be written.
The topic this time around was intriguing. Mike Smith released a document called HTML5: The Markup Language. Should it be a normative specification, or merely an informative document? That is, should it help the Web Community by being one of the definitive references on HTML5 or should it merely be an informative document for people wishing to learn more? Also, who was the intended audience?
