[whatwg] [WA1] Markup for vCalendar and vCard

[Ian Hickson]

On Tue, 22 Feb 2005, Matthew Raymond wrote:
>> 
>> Please discuss hCalendar and hCard issues with Tantek;
> 
> Why?

Because Tantek is the editor of those specs.


> I have no intention of developing a Calendar/Card system for HTML5 
> outside of a public forum, and the Wikis are outside of my control.

Neither do I. I don't intend to develop a Calendar/Card system for HTML5 
at all, in fact, since someone else is already working on a system for 
this. When it comes to editing that part of the WA1 spec, if there exist 
proposals that can just be imported wholesale, I would much rather do that 
than come up with yet another way of doing things.


> > I'm not planning on touching the relevant sections of WA1 until 
> > Tantek's drafts are much more stable.
> 
> Why are we holding up the Calendar/Card portion of WA1 based entirely on 
> the work of a single individual who is not a member of WHATWG?

We're not. WA1 is likely to become a huge spec. I expect to be quite busy 
doing lots of WA1 work for months. I hope that hCalendar and hCard will be 
stable once most of the rest of the WA1 spec is ready; if it is, then we 
will be able to re-use that work and save ourselves a lot of time and 
effort.


> Granted, he's vastly more qualified than I am, but with regards to the 
> WHATWG charter, he has no more authority than I do. Are we going to 
> start carving up WHATWG specs and handing out pieces to specific 
> individuals outside of the WHATWG for them to control?!? If someone who 
> worked on Browser-X comes up with a menu system for WA1, do we just put 
> everything on hold until he finishes that draft?!?

There's no "carving up" here; it's just a matter of not reinventing the 
wheel. You'll notice that the <canvas> part of WA1 is almost identical to 
the Apple implementation in early Tiger betas. This is not coincidental. 
Similarly, we're reusing much of the work that the HTML and DOM working 
groups have done over the past few years in terms of HTML and DOM errata. 
And we're using suggestions from www-html, Slashdot, and bug systems; not 
just in this mailing list.

I'm not saying that your suggestions on <calendar> aren't welcome; quite 
the opposite. However, at the moment, your suggestions would be best given 
to Tantek, since Tantek is actively working on this kind of work, and has 
studied the requirements in detail. I myself will not be working on the 
calendar and business card parts of the spec for a long time.

You are of course more than welcome to make independent proposals for 
including calendar data and "business card" data in HTML(5). If your 
proposals are technically superior to other proposals, then, once it comes 
to including a calendar mechanism in the WA1 spec, the WHATWG members 
(probably represented by me) will use your proposals.


> Might I also point out that the wikis you posted URLs to have NO 
> COPYRIGHT NOTICES, NO OBVIOUS LINKS TO A COPYRIGHT POLICY and NO 
> COPYRIGHT METADATA, and that the domain is that of THE COMPANY 
> TECHNORATI. Who's to say his company won't just turn around and claim 
> copyrights and patents to the whole mess?

All good points to raise with Tantek.


> If you and Tantek want hCalendar and hCard as part of a WHATWG 
> specification, you should post material here and allow people to comment 
> on it publicly. A specific solution should not get special treatment 
> regardless of who came up with it. I wouldn't mind seeing Tantek as a 
> member of WHATWG personally, but freezing a portion of the spec so that 
> a single individual can work on it completely outside of this working 
> group is just wrong.

I hope this e-mail has clarified any misunderstandings; specifically, that 
comments are indeed welcome here, that Tantek's proposals aren't getting 
special treatment, and that the relevant parts of the spec aren't frozen.


> P.S.: I will be directing all my comments and ideas with regards to 
> Calendar/Card markup to this mailing list only. I invite Tantek to do 
> the same.

Tantek's proposals are also, as I understand it, aimed at areas that are 
out of scope for WHATWG, such as adding calendar metadata to existing 
HTML4 documents that can be processed by Web crawlers such as 
Technorati's. Thus I wouldn't be surprised if he did not feel it 
appropriate to do the work in this forum.

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