[whatwg] Switching to an unversioned development model

[Ian Hickson]

Just a quick update:

On Fri, 11 Dec 2009, Ian Hickson wrote:
> 
> Since the W3C is still focused on getting HTML5 to last call, I'll 
> maintain a WHATWG copy of the HTML spec that matches what the W3C HTML 
> WG is working on:
> 
>    http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/html5/

With the recent churn of modules in the HTML WG, in particular with the 
HTML WG's decision to publish Microdata separately from HTML5 (if at all), 
I've given up trying to keep a WHATWG copy of the HTML5 spec that matches 
what the W3C publish (it would have to be several documents, and that is a 
pain to maintain).

I'll continue to keep the WHATWG HTML draft a superset of the W3C draft, 
meaning that anything that's in HTML5 at the W3C will also be in the 
WHATWG HTML draft. Right now, the only thing that's in the WHATWG HTML 
draft only (and not in any other spec elsewhere) is the <device> element, 
which is purely experimental and might not go anywhere.

For people who were paying _really_ close attention, the separate WHATWG 
Microdata Vocabularies draft is also gone (the vocabularies are now 
defined in the WHATWG HTML spec itself again). I got rid of them as part 
of a simplification of the specs being generated, and because the W3C's 
equivalent specs were all merged into a single HTML5 Microdata subspec.


> I've updated the FAQ's explanation of what specs exist, in case you want 
> to get an overview (it's getting somewhat complicated!):
> 
>    http://wiki.whatwg.org/wiki/FAQ#What_are_the_various_versions_of_the_spec.3F

Thanks to Lachy and others the entry above has been simplified and 
clarified a bit.


There's just over 1000 pending e-mails in the queue again (and we were at 
zero last October!), so over the next few months I hope to resume replying 
to these and get the number back down again. Right now my higher priority 
is dealing with the bugs filed in the W3C HTML WG's bug tracker, so if you 
have something urgent please either e-mail me to tell me, or file a bug 
and I'll get to it probably relatively soon.

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'