Change proposal for ISSUE-173: split-appcache

[ Apologies for lateness, I've been both travelling and sick, and was not informed of the deadline. ]

• Summary: Remove the "Offline Web Applications" section from the HTML5 specification and publish it as a separate draft.

• Rationale: AppCache is clearly not of the same maturity and quality as the rest of the HTML5 specification; take-up has been quite slow, and it's often remarked that it's confusing and surprising to developers. While the W3C is planning a workshop to help adoption, it's not at all clear that AppCache is a suitable base for offline Web applications. Furthermore, it is a clearly separable part of the HTML specification.

• Proposal Details:
     1. "Cut Offline Web applications" from the HTML5 specification, along with all references to it.
     2. Create a new WD and paste the cut text into it as a separate, standalone draft. Note that W3C has already published a draft at <http://www.w3.org/TR/offline-webapps/>, so this would effectively be reverting its incorporation into HTML5.

• Impact: This decouples AppCache from HTML5, allowing it to evolve separately. This will allow the WG to focus on getting HTML5 out the door, and helps assure that if further work on AppCache is necessary, that can proceed without putting HTML5 itself at risk. 


--
Mark Nottingham   http://www.mnot.net/

Received on Wednesday, 12 October 2011 04:56:41 UTC