targeting August for next working draft of HTML5

As has been noted in earlier discussions in the group about
publishing drafts, the W3C has a publishing "heartbeat"
requirement which directs working groups to regularly publish --
with the guideline for "regularly" being every three months if
possible -- updated working drafts of specifications in progress.

We have gotten a bit off schedule as far as that requirement goes,
publishing the second working draft on June 10 instead of April 22
(the three-month mark for the first public working draft), and not
having yet published the third working draft around July 22 (the
six-month mark). So I think we ought to aim to try to publish the
third working draft by early/mid-August at the latest, and then
try to get the fourth working draft published by October 22.

Given the number of changes that the editor has made since June
10, I think it would be good that have the next working draft out
sooner, in early/mid-August, rather than later -- for example,
rather than aiming for September 10. For details about the changes
made, see the HTML5 Publication Notes document:

  http://dev.w3.org/html5/pubnotes/

For a summary list, see the following section:

  http://dev.w3.org/html5/pubnotes/#summary_wd2

But do note that the Publications Notes document is currently out
of date by at least a week or so (I still need to go back a
document a number of changes).

As has been noted in previous discussions, publication of the
current draft spec as a W3C working draft does not indicate group
consensus about the entire contents of the draft. What is does do
is help us to meet our obligation of keeping the W3C membership
and the public up-to-date and informed about the current state of
the specification under discussion within the group and elsewhere,
and about the changes that have been made to it since previous
publication of it as a W3C working draft.

  --Mike

-- 
Michael(tm) Smith
http://people.w3.org/mike/

Received on Thursday, 31 July 2008 07:25:43 UTC