ISSUE-73 (predefined-voc): Overlap of "predefined vocabularies" with other specifications [HTML 5 spec]

ISSUE-73 (predefined-voc): Overlap of "predefined vocabularies" with other specifications [HTML 5 spec]

http://www.w3.org/html/wg/tracker/issues/73

Raised by: Julian Reschke
On product: HTML 5 spec

Recently, new sections have been added to the spec, defining embedding/extraction of data in various formats, such as vCard, iCalendar, Atom, and BibTex.

The issues mentioned below a primarily about the vCard related stuff, but similar concerns apply to iCalendar and Atom as well (which both are IETF specs as well).

Procedural - the WG is working on trying to find consensus on all 
sections of the spec; sections without consensus are to be removed (at 
least that's my understanding of the process). Also, the editor himself 
announced a "feature freeze" quite some time ago. So, why are we seeing 
these new sections without *any* prior discussion?

Spec Size - the spec already is big, and there is no evidence that this 
needs to be specified *inside* the HTML5 spec.

Extensibility - the current chapter copies terminology from RFC2426, but 
misses it's extensibility hooks, and thus fails to mention things that 
have been defined later, such as the IMPP type name.

Parsing - for some types, parsing rules are being rephrased from 
RFC2426. There is a risk that they diverge.

Versioning - the IETF is revising vCard, see 
<http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-vcarddav-vcardrev-07>. Is HTML5 
going to freeze the vocabulary at a version that the IETF is currently 
obsoleting?

Received on Wednesday, 3 June 2009 11:47:34 UTC