[microformats-discuss] UA requirements for microformats

[Ian Hickson]

On Wed, 13 Jul 2005, Tantek Çelik wrote:
> 
> First, I agree we need to write up the exact UA conformance 
> requirements.  I believe the microformats community (editors, authors, 
> publishers) accepts that responsibility.

I know, I just thought I'd raise it again to remind y'all. ;-)


> > and is the second biggest problem stopping microformats being adopted 
> > in the HTML5 specs. (The primary reason is I haven't had the time to 
> > get around to working on those parts of the spec yet.)
> 
> Do the HTML5 specs have any sort of specific timeline?

WF2 was supposed to be in CFI last August, but will probably reach CFI 
this August. So that's roughly twice as long as predicted. (CFI = call for 
implementations, although of course WF2 is being implemented already.)

So if I say that WA1 (aka HTML5) should be ready for CFI in December 2006, 
it'll probably actually reach CFI in mid 2008.

But of course implementations of _that_ have started already as well.

Maybe a more useful answer to your question would be to consider what 
order I'll be working on things. I expect the next few weeks to be spent 
on the Window interface (I just did window.history, I'm doing 
window.location now; I may do other window properties before moving on to 
other things). After that I expect I'll look at the Parsing chapter, 
followed probably by looking at events and the attribute event handlers 
and defining those. After that I expect I'll look at the new widgets, like 
<gauge> and <progress>. At this point I'll probably be looking at 
<calendar> and <vcard>. My ETA on that would be end of this year. My 
productivity is likely to soar after the damp of the Oslo summer is over.

However, it depends on demand. If suddenly there is a big demand for a 
spec for a calendar widget, then I'll jump straight to <calendar>. So...:

> I hypothesize that by the time you get to working on those parts of the 
> spec (specifically hCard and hCalendar), that those specs will be frozen 
> enough for you to depend on them.

...I could start working on those parts next week. ;-)

(Note that there is no guarentee that hCard and hCalendar will be used for 
the HTML5 vCard and iCalendar integration. Currently it seems to be the 
most mature option and I don't see any reason to make up our own, but if 
better proposals come along of course they would be considered too. I'm 
making this explicit because otherwise people say that I'm giving hCard 
and hCalendar preferential treatement and ignoring feedback, which is not 
my intention at all.)

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'