[whatwg] Removing versioning from HTML

[Olli Pettay]

On 8/9/09 7:10 PM, Aaron Boodman wrote:
> [If this has been discussed before, feel free to just point me there]
>
> I frequently see the comment on this list and in other forums that
> something is "too late" for HTML5, and therefore discussion should be
> deferred.
>
> I would like to propose that we get rid of the concepts of "versions"
> altogether from HTML. In reality, nobody supports all of HTML5. Each
> vendor supports a slightly different subset of the spec, along with
> some features that are outside the spec.
>
> This seems OK to me. Instead of insisting that a particular version of
> HTML is a monolithic unit that must be implemented in its entirety, we
> could have each feature (or logical group of features) spun off into
> its own small spec. We're already doing this a bit with things like
> Web Workers, but I don't see why we don't just do it for everything.
If you say the HTML5 draft should be split to many smaller parts, I 
agree. We need to be able to say that some feature is stable i.e.
recommendation. Without stability it is pretty awkward to implement
anything, IMO
Currently there is the draft where one can just guess the stability of
the features.

HTML5 should contain just the core features of the web platform.
Everything else should go to some other specifications.
Also, I believe splitting the spec would make it more readable.

-Olli