update ISSUE-41

http://www.w3.org/2001/tag/group/track/issues/41

I renamed this issue from “XML Versioning” to “Language Versioning”, updated the description, and added a note about the direction I hope our discussion will take.

Re ACTION-259, at the TAG meeting,  I was asked to be more specific about what questions I’m asking. So here’s a list of questions:

• Is my reformulation of Issue-41 OK with you? I know it broadens the topic, but in this case, broadening might make it easier to understand policy.
•  Is Jonathan’s framework complete enough to use it as a basis for evaluation of versioning mechanisms? What else do we need to do ? Does it supply sufficient design principles for versioning?
•  What constitutes a “Version” of HTML? Of course we have the specifications as they are released by W3C (HTML 1, 2, 3, 4, 4.01 etc), but there are also the distributed extensions of new tags, values? New MIME types for included content?
• I think it would be productive to focus on HTML, but also consider CSS, JavaScript, and plugin-based extensions as well, as we think about web evolution. Do you agree?
• What are the versioning mechanisms of CSS, JavaScript, JavaScript APIs, plugins, etc.
•  What are the means by which old readers *could* recognize new content and *could* do something useful other than ‘fail’ (for web content in particular, HTML, CSS, etc.)
• enter a special mode (“standards mode”)
• ignore new features and select alternate content
• warn the user that the content isn’t displayable properly
• What are the version indicators available in HTML for signifying new versions? DOCTYPE, namespace indicators, new tag names, special tags, etc?
• Are you willing to do a research literature search on the general issue of language versioning? Somehow I think this must be a topic that has been studied in the last 60 years of computer language definition and evolution.   I’d rather now plow new ground if there is a bibliography… can you find any useful references?

Unfortunately, I’m not worn down by the last 8 years of discussion of versioning, so maybe these are all well-plowed topics.

Larry

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http://larry.masinter.net