IRC log of tagmem on 2008-06-12

Timestamps are in UTC.

16:49:21 [RRSAgent]
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logging to http://www.w3.org/2008/06/12-tagmem-irc
16:49:32 [Stuart]
agenda: http://www.w3.org/2001/tag/2008/06/12-agenda
16:49:45 [Stuart]
meeting: TAG Weekly
16:49:54 [Stuart]
chair: Stuart Williams
16:50:02 [Stuart]
Scribe: Henry Thompson
16:54:20 [raman]
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16:55:54 [Zakim]
TAG_Weekly()1:00PM has now started
16:56:01 [Zakim]
+Raman
16:58:03 [Zakim]
+??P5
16:58:22 [Stuart]
zakim, ??P5 is me
16:58:22 [Zakim]
+Stuart; got it
16:59:20 [Ashok]
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17:01:11 [Zakim]
+[IPcaller]
17:01:27 [ht]
ht has joined #tagmem
17:01:39 [Stuart]
zakim, +[IP is jar
17:01:39 [Zakim]
sorry, Stuart, I do not recognize a party named '+[IP'
17:01:48 [Stuart]
zakim, + is jar
17:01:48 [Zakim]
sorry, Stuart, I do not recognize a party named '+'
17:01:50 [jar]
jar has joined #tagmem
17:01:55 [ht]
zakim, please call ht-781
17:01:55 [Zakim]
ok, ht; the call is being made
17:01:57 [Zakim]
+Ht
17:02:04 [ht]
zakim, who is on the call?
17:02:04 [Zakim]
On the phone I see Raman, Stuart, [IPcaller], Ht (muted)
17:02:12 [Stuart]
zakim, [ is jar
17:02:12 [Zakim]
+jar; got it
17:02:27 [Stuart]
zakim, who is here?
17:02:27 [Zakim]
On the phone I see Raman, Stuart, jar, Ht
17:02:28 [Zakim]
On IRC I see jar, ht, Ashok, raman, RRSAgent, Stuart, DanC, trackbot, Zakim
17:02:41 [Zakim]
+DanC
17:02:49 [Zakim]
+Ashok_Malhotra
17:03:58 [ht]
Topic: Admin
17:04:07 [ht]
Regrets: TimBL, Norm
17:04:39 [ht]
SW: Minutes from last week: http://www.w3.org/2001/tag/2008/06/05-minutes
17:04:45 [ht]
SW: Approved as circulated
17:04:57 [ht]
SW: Agenda for today: http://www.w3.org/2001/tag/2008/06/12-agenda.html
17:05:06 [ht]
SW: Approved as circulated
17:05:27 [ht]
SW: Next meeting 19 June, DanC to scribe
17:05:54 [ht]
... Regrets from NM for 19 June
17:06:02 [Zakim]
+[IBMCambridge]
17:06:16 [ht]
Topic: Minutes from F2F of 2008-05-19 et seq.
17:06:34 [ht]
zakim, [ is Noah
17:06:34 [Zakim]
+Noah; got it
17:06:51 [noah]
noah has joined #tagmem
17:07:07 [noah]
zakim, [IBMCambridge
17:07:07 [Zakim]
I don't understand '[IBMCambridge', noah
17:07:09 [noah]
zakim, [IBMCambridge] is me
17:07:09 [Zakim]
sorry, noah, I do not recognize a party named '[IBMCambridge]'
17:07:10 [ht]
SW: I've added some links, propose to approve with a typo correction as noted by JR
17:07:16 [noah]
zakim, who is here?
17:07:16 [Zakim]
On the phone I see Raman, Stuart, jar, Ht, DanC, Ashok_Malhotra, Noah
17:07:17 [Zakim]
On IRC I see noah, jar, ht, Ashok, raman, RRSAgent, Stuart, DanC, trackbot, Zakim
17:07:17 [ht]
zakim, Noah is noah
17:07:17 [Zakim]
+noah; got it
17:07:26 [ht]
zakim, disconnect me
17:07:26 [Zakim]
Ht is being disconnected
17:07:28 [Zakim]
-Ht
17:07:43 [dorchard]
dorchard has joined #tagmem
17:07:44 [ht]
zakim, please call ht-781
17:07:53 [Zakim]
ok, ht; the call is being made
17:07:55 [Zakim]
+Ht
17:08:17 [Zakim]
+??P3
17:08:36 [ht]
RESOLVED: F2F Minutes (http://www.w3.org/2001/tag/2008/05/19-minutes, 20-minutes, 21-minutes) approved
17:08:55 [ht]
Topic: News, new topics
17:09:57 [ht]
SW: A new standing agenda topic to allow for late-breaking news
17:10:12 [ht]
Topic: namespaceDocument-8 status
17:10:17 [dorchard]
I'm sending in highly probable regrets for next week, so also no scribing for me.
17:10:57 [ht]
Going to publish it Real Soon Now
17:11:35 [ht]
Topic: passwordsInTheClear-52 status
17:12:03 [ht]
DO: Haven't yet solicited external reviewers' comments on the most recent draft: http://www.w3.org/2001/tag/doc/passwordsInTheClear-52-20080602
17:12:15 [ht]
SW: Some positive feedback from MEZ
17:12:40 [DanC]
q+
17:13:01 [DanC]
"Every scenario that involves possibly transmitting passwords in the clear can be redesigned for the desired functionality without a cleartext password transmission."
17:13:10 [ht]
ack DanC
17:13:51 [ht]
DC: I explored the W3C's situation wrt passwords in the clear
17:14:55 [ht]
... Spellchecker tool, for example, uses a form to collect name/pwd for access to a member-only document
17:15:27 [ht]
... We have never found a way to provide this functionality w/o pwd in the clear
17:16:06 [dorchard]
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17:16:32 [ht]
DO: Rather than hold up/change the doc't, we should ask the Sec'ty Context WG folks on how to get this functionality w/o pw in the clear
17:16:38 [DanC]
yes, jar, I suppose capabilities are about the only thing I've seen that could work
17:17:19 [jar]
Since Dan brings this up, the reference for capabilities would be erights.org.
17:17:31 [ht]
SW: DanC, can you bring that up on our list, as a direct question to Security Context WG?
17:17:35 [ht]
DC: Will do
17:17:45 [jar]
well... yes, I brought it up. Let me turn that into a hyperlink: http://erights.org/
17:18:15 [ht]
Topic: tagSoupIntegration-54
17:18:21 [DanC]
nifty stuff, in theory, though it involves a whole new operating system etc.
17:18:32 [jar]
right.
17:19:19 [jar]
well, it can all be done in user mode of course, but it is a sort of mini OS kernel to manage the object-capabilities.
17:19:30 [Stuart]
q?
17:19:59 [ht]
TVR: Deep questions behind specific integration issues, e.g. SVG, : vs. -, MathML
17:20:44 [ht]
... HTML4 had problems, we said we would move to XML, which gave us XHTML, HTML5 is a temporary blip but XML is the long-term goal
17:20:52 [ht]
that's one extreme
17:21:13 [ht]
... The other extreme is that XML has no future on the Web, all we need is HTML, HTML5 is the future
17:21:53 [ht]
... Maybe there's a middle way, as suggested by Tim's statements 18 months ago and at the Beijing AC meeting
17:23:06 [ht]
The hard question, as at the end of the last weeks call, is how can XML change a bit, HTML change a bit, to foster a convergance
17:23:32 [Stuart]
q?
17:24:03 [Ashok]
q+
17:24:07 [ht]
... My concern is that the parts of the two communities willing to consider change is so small that it doesn't matter whether we can find a technical solution or not
17:24:20 [Stuart]
ack As
17:24:31 [ht]
... So maybe we have to just accept that we are going to have two parallel tracks indefinitely
17:24:42 [noah]
I'm afraid I agree with Raman, at least on the XML side. I think that in practice the XML community values its base of installed code to such a significant degree that changes will be very hard to deploy in practice.
17:24:46 [ht]
AM: But what's _your_ opinion?
17:25:16 [ht]
TVR: I'm reserving my position to avoid prejudicing the discussion
17:25:32 [Stuart]
noah... is that not true of both worlds: install base restricts flexibility, both way round.
17:26:11 [Stuart]
q?
17:26:13 [ht]
... Where I am isn't the question, the question is whether there is _any_ possiblity of a critical mass forming to support convergence
17:26:17 [noah]
Probably. I just don't feel that I am as well informed regarding the HTML community.
17:27:49 [ht]
q+ to ask about what changes are required from the XML side
17:28:18 [ht]
SW: So you want us to say whether we think convergence is possible
17:28:53 [ht]
TVR: No, that's not the question, we have technological solutions, the question is about willingness to _adopt_ those solutions
17:29:31 [ht]
... Attribute quotation, for instance, is not the issue that matters. What matters is things like document.write
17:29:57 [noah]
q+ to agree with Raman
17:30:01 [ht]
... The HTML world is not waiting for unquoted attributes and then they'll say Yes, we're ready to converge
17:30:09 [Stuart]
ack ht
17:30:09 [Zakim]
ht, you wanted to ask about what changes are required from the XML side
17:30:14 [ht]
... The major issue is social, not technical
17:30:55 [ht]
HT: A lot of the issues are social
17:31:28 [ht]
... I think it's none-the-less worth getting clear on what the substantive technical issues are
17:31:48 [ht]
... because they are the hooks the social dynamic is going to swing from
17:31:51 [Stuart]
q+ to introduce a question arising from Steve Pemberton's message http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-tag/2008Jun/0037
17:34:12 [ht]
... mime-type-based ns-declarations seems viable, and would probably be accepted by the core XML community because it wouldn't affect them
17:34:16 [ht]
... What else?
17:34:36 [Stuart]
q+ daveo
17:34:48 [ht]
TVR: Well-formedness -- a real problem from the HTML side
17:35:16 [raman]
xml community: clarity around namespaces, especially null namespace vs no-namespace
17:35:24 [ht]
... ns decls from mime type, yes, although that doesn't get us all the way to distributed extensiblility, where someone designs there own mini-language
17:35:33 [ht]
HT: That's needs a chagne on the HTML side
17:35:36 [ht]
TVR: Right
17:35:58 [ht]
[Scribe: also, TVR: lots of 'real' namespace use in business/commerce]
17:36:01 [Stuart]
ack noah
17:36:01 [Zakim]
noah, you wanted to agree with Raman
17:37:04 [ht]
NM: A lot of sympathy with TVR's concerns, we've gone too far in the past ignoring implementation/deployment concerns
17:37:18 [ht]
... But not sure separating issues in two piles is helpful
17:38:01 [ht]
... For many of our users, what you call it matters: XML means very high expectations of interoperability
17:38:23 [ht]
... Unlike, for example, C
17:39:01 [ht]
... So it's _really_ hard to get change through on the XML side, and that's right at the boundary between technical and social
17:40:08 [ht]
... Asking "Will the community accept media-type-ns-defaulting, or unquoted attrs?" I don't know -- maybe more likely for the first, but possibly hard for both
17:40:39 [ht]
... People worry about _any_ change destabilising the interop guarantee
17:40:40 [DanC]
q+
17:40:40 [Stuart]
ack daveo
17:41:20 [DanC]
q-
17:41:35 [ht]
DO: Simple use case I hit -- The BEA Aqualogic Portal project, has remote portlets, you can drag and drop XML on them
17:42:34 [ht]
... The engineers said: We can't mix HTML and XML easily, what do we do? The XML guy won, and enforced strict well-formedness
17:42:54 [ht]
... But the product managers were upset, because the said customers' expectations would not be met
17:44:18 [ht]
DO: Can we rev XML? Suppose we relaxed a bunch of constraints, maybe that would make a bunch of the HTML folks happy.
17:44:47 [ht]
... The core issue for some of the HTML WG is namespaces/distributed extensiblity -- they don't want it in any form
17:45:18 [ht]
... Because the two worlds are _so_ different, it's easy to reject any kind of convergence
17:45:18 [Stuart]
q?
17:45:36 [ht]
... but if we relaxed some of the XML constraints, that might make a change
17:45:42 [Stuart]
ack Stuart
17:45:42 [Zakim]
Stuart, you wanted to introduce a question arising from Steve Pemberton's message http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-tag/2008Jun/0037
17:45:59 [Stuart]
With these things in mind, we feel the best course of action is to declare
17:46:00 [Stuart]
that all documents using the xhtml namespace http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml
17:46:00 [Stuart]
are capable of being interpreted to produce RDF triples.
17:47:13 [ht]
SW: This is an ambition for _all_ documents -- doesn't that mean there's a need for liaison between the two developers of languages in the namespace, i.e. XHTML2 and HTML5
17:48:04 [ht]
TVR: There is a lot of opposition to RDFa from people in the HTML WG, partly because of its use of namespaces, partly because of an antipathy to RDF itself
17:48:39 [ht]
SW: HTML5 WG is positioning itself as the successor to both HTML4 and XHTML1
17:48:51 [ht]
DC: The WGs were chartered to compete
17:49:58 [ht]
TVR: From a TAG perspective, the question is, is the community which is commited to finding a convergent path large and significant enough to make a difference
17:50:26 [ht]
... Bearing in mind the TimBL counts for a lot
17:51:14 [ht]
... Alternatively, if we are resigned to the two tracks running in parallel, can we see any route towards peaceful co-existence
17:51:59 [ht]
TVR: Both these technologies have a place on the Web, and will survive, with or w/o the W3C
17:52:58 [Zakim]
-noah
17:54:21 [Zakim]
+[IBMCambridge]
17:54:22 [ht]
DO: Helping to reconcile the XML and HTML communities should get a lot of our attention
17:54:36 [ht]
zakim, [ is noah
17:54:36 [Zakim]
+noah; got it
17:55:33 [ht]
Topic: URNsAndRegistries-50
17:55:47 [ht]
SW: HST, can you summarize activity on relevant email threads?
17:55:56 [noah]
q?
17:56:03 [ht]
HST: No, sorry, have not had time to give the threads the attention they need
17:58:02 [Zakim]
-??P3
17:58:02 [ht]
NM: There have been concerns expressed about how well the TAG coordinated in the lead-up to our announcement
17:58:24 [Ashok]
q+
17:58:41 [ht]
... I'm happy with what we did on the technical front, but our timing could have been improved
17:58:49 [Zakim]
+ +1.604.709.aaaa
17:58:53 [ht]
... We should take note of the coordination concern
17:59:10 [Stuart]
acj Ashok
17:59:11 [dorchard]
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17:59:12 [ht]
... and try to have a "no surprises" approach to communication
17:59:16 [Stuart]
ack Ashok
17:59:36 [noah]
s/announcement/note to the community/
17:59:49 [ht]
AM: What response is now appropriate?
17:59:52 [dorchard]
q+
18:00:04 [noah]
s/timing/care in ensuring that people aren't blindsided/
18:00:10 [ht]
HST notes that Stuart and Tim are working on an official response
18:00:29 [DanC]
q+ to sympathize with the concern that we didn't close the loop with the XRI TC.
18:00:43 [ht]
SW: Should we encourage any kind of dialogue? I think we should
18:00:49 [noah]
NM: I would like to do what we can moving forward to ensure that we can work cooperatively with the Oasis community to find whatever is the right answer in the long term.
18:01:13 [ht]
... On the basis that we will try to understand their requirements, and to help them understand our concerns
18:01:31 [DanC]
+1 invite XRI folk to a telecon
18:01:37 [ht]
q+ to say what I said last week
18:01:40 [Stuart]
ack david
18:01:45 [Stuart]
ack dorchar
18:02:33 [ht]
DO: The idea that XRI was surprised that the TAG should speak out against XRI is itself surprising
18:03:04 [noah]
FWIW, I also think the XRI community could have done a >much< better job over the preceding months of taking our concerns seriously, and indeed operating from a perspective that the burden is on any community proposing a new scheme to justify the need, given the many downsides.
18:03:24 [ht]
... HST and DO engaged with them over URNsAndRegistries-50 two years ago, and it was clear at that time that they were not going to be convinced of our position wrt the potential utility of http: to meet their needs
18:03:58 [ht]
... So they can't have been under any illusions that we weren't happy
18:04:11 [raman]
the technical community is always guilty of doing the type of marketing that Dave is describing, e.g. use SOAP, you can get through firewalls is one bogus argument I remember from the past;-)
18:04:26 [ht]
... I doubt the utility of engaging in a huge amount of effort to end up where we started
18:04:31 [raman]
I dont think what DO is saying here is material to making positive progress
18:04:37 [ht]
... I don't think we have anything to apologise for
18:05:24 [Stuart]
q?
18:05:42 [ht]
... I have finally heard an interesting usecase in the area of synonym identifiers, but it's still not clear that that is worth the cost of creating a whole parallel naming authority mechanism
18:06:39 [ht]
... Going forward, the XRI TC are already looking towards the question of when they can go to ballot again
18:06:51 [ht]
... Does that mean they've heard our message?
18:06:53 [noah]
q?
18:07:03 [ht]
SW: They have gotten the message that they should talk to us more
18:07:50 [noah]
q+ to talk about better coordination vs. we own the Web
18:08:08 [ht]
TVR: Allowing a confusion between the TAG speaking technically and the W3C speaking hurts both sides
18:08:24 [Stuart]
ack danc
18:08:24 [Zakim]
DanC, you wanted to sympathize with the concern that we didn't close the loop with the XRI TC.
18:08:50 [ht]
DC: We still owe the XRI TC a response to their email of 29 Feb
18:09:08 [Stuart]
ack ht
18:09:08 [Zakim]
ht, you wanted to say what I said last week
18:09:12 [DanC]
29 Feb msg http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-tag/2008Feb/0104.html
18:09:22 [ht]
SW: You happy with the goals I suggested above for a call?
18:09:24 [ht]
DC: Yes
18:09:45 [ht]
s/Feb/Feb, and asking people to a telcon sounds good/
18:09:53 [jar]
q+ to float the idea of eventually putting application of http: to naming problems on rec track
18:11:23 [noah]
q?\
18:11:37 [ht]
HST: We have to be carefully not to suggest to them that there are things they can do to 'fix' XRIs
18:12:02 [Stuart]
ack noah
18:12:02 [Zakim]
noah, you wanted to talk about better coordination vs. we own the Web
18:12:25 [ht]
SW: If we don't talk to them, the likely outcome is that our concerns will be lost sight of, because we will appear to be uncooperative
18:13:45 [ht]
NM: There is a real positive inclination on the part of the XRI TC to talk to us, and we should meet them on that basis
18:14:26 [DanC]
(re "doing nothing is a good answer" ... well, I think doing something on top of http/dns is the sweet spot.)
18:14:34 [ht]
... They need to change how they think about this, so that their job is to prove that there is enough value to overcome the very real costs
18:14:47 [raman]
dropping off
18:15:02 [Zakim]
-Raman
18:16:01 [Stuart]
ack jar
18:16:01 [Zakim]
jar, you wanted to float the idea of eventually putting application of http: to naming problems on rec track
18:16:46 [ht]
JR: A durable solution needs more than a TAG finding - there needs to be a manual or something that helps groups like XRI when they have a need for a naming scheme
18:17:04 [DanC]
not obvious? really? everybody and his brother makes namespaces out of http/dns. It might be worth writing up/down, but LOTS of people figure it out by themselves.
18:17:13 [noah]
NM: Maybe time to tilt at the Scheme/Protocols finding again?
18:17:19 [jar]
s/I brought it up/I brought up capabilities/
18:17:22 [DanC]
e.g. flickr tags, wikipedia pages, and zillions of others
18:17:24 [Zakim]
- +1.604.709.aaaa
18:17:30 [ht]
RRSAgent, make logs world-visible
18:17:35 [ht]
RRSAgent, draft minutes
18:17:35 [RRSAgent]
I have made the request to generate http://www.w3.org/2008/06/12-tagmem-minutes.html ht
18:17:40 [ht]
zakim, bye
18:17:40 [Zakim]
leaving. As of this point the attendees were Raman, Stuart, [IPcaller], Ht, jar, DanC, Ashok_Malhotra, [IBMCambridge], noah, +1.604.709.aaaa
18:17:40 [Zakim]
Zakim has left #tagmem
18:17:44 [ht]
RRSAgent, bye
18:17:44 [RRSAgent]
I see no action items