[whatwg] Correcting some misconceptions about Responsive Images

Matthew Wilcox mail at matthewwilcox.com
Thu May 17 08:39:15 PDT 2012


On 17 May 2012 16:07, Tab Atkins Jr. <jackalmage at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, May 17, 2012 at 2:18 AM, James Graham <jgraham at opera.com> wrote:
>> FWIW I think that forming community groups that are limited in scope to
>> gathering and distilling the relevant use cases could be a functional way of
>> working. For example if, in this case, people had said "we will form a group
>> that will spend 4 weeks documenting and prioritising all the use cases that
>> a responsive images feature needs to cover" and then the results of that
>> work had been taken to a forum where browser implementors are engaged (e.g.
>> WHATWG), I think we would have had a relatively smooth ride toward a
>> universially acceptable solution.

While this is true in some form, in order to be useful we had to
consider different approaches and get the feedback about those
approaches. It wasn't just "get use cases" so much as "get use cases,
decide whether a pattern we are suggesting answers them, and then
canvas authors to see if they actually understand it and react well to
it?".

If the WHATWG are not willing to join CG's in order to give their
input then the route would effectively end up being:

1) Spin off a CG to gather use cases
2) grab info and apply back to WHATWG mail list
3) WHATWG mail list decides on possible approaches
4) Spin the approaches off to CG and gather wider feedback
5) goto 2

I don't mind that approach, but the problem is once you involve a
wider community you *will* get that community discussing technical
stuff there - divorced from the WHATWG members.

The fact of the matter is that the wider public find a website in the
format of the CG far easier to access and engage than mail lists.
That's neither a good or bad thing, it just is. How it should be
managed is where it gets difficult.

> Yup.  This is basically what the CG *did*, in practice, and it was
> very useful.  There was an unfortunate expectation that their goal was
> to write spec text that would be simply adopted into the spec, though.
>  Making sure the expectations are clearer in the future would be a
> good move.

That would have been a hugely beneficial thing.

> ~TJ



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