[whatwg] Dates and coordinates in HTML5

[Tab Atkins Jr.]

On Sat, Feb 28, 2009 at 4:39 PM, Andy Mabbett <andy at pigsonthewing.org.uk> wrote:
> Do we
> really have to illustrate use cases in action, before we can develop the
> technology which allows them to be demonstrated exists?

Though I admit it seems ass-backwards until you "get it", the answer
is yes, you do have to provide such use-cases.  More precisely, you
have to show that such an addition/change to the language would be of
significant help to authors, where "significant" is somewhat vague and
depends on the difficulty of the change.

It just so happens that one of the easiest ways to show that something
would help authors is showing that authors are currently hacking
around the problem, and that their efforts could be made significantly
easier with language support.  That establishes that there *is* a
problem in need of solving, so that we don't spend time on
insignificant problems when there are more important things to do.  It
also shows what authors think the solution is shaped like, so we don't
end up implementing something that doesn't actually help authors in
their real use-cases.

http://wiki.whatwg.org/wiki/FAQ#Is_there_a_process_for_adding_new_features_to_the_spec.3F

~TJ