[whatwg] Switching to an unversioned development model

[Philip Jägenstedt]

On Sat, 09 Jan 2010 11:12:29 +0100, Ian Hickson <ian at hixie.ch> wrote:

>
> 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.

That's unfortunate, but oh well. Is WHATWG HTML is intended to stay at  
"Working Draft" indefinitely, or does the spec status not really mean  
anything at this point?

> 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.

Yes, I was wondering if this was a bit of an accident or what. Is it the  
intention to keep these in the WHATWG HTML spec indefinitely and even add  
more vocabularies as they become needed/popular?

-- 
Philip Jägenstedt
Core Developer
Opera Software