HTML and IETF

Tim Berners-Lee <timbl@oclc.org>
Date: Wed, 6 Jul 94 13:04:52 EDT
Message-id: <9407061658.AA05052@www3.cern.ch>
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From: Tim Berners-Lee <timbl@oclc.org>
To: Multiple recipients of list <html-ig@oclc.org>
Subject: HTML and IETF
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|From: "Daniel W. Connolly" <connolly@hal.com>

|In message <9407051525.AA04336@www3.cern.ch>, Tim Berners-Lee writes:

|>If this work is to be ratified by the IETF, some group
|>must be cast as an IETF working group to discuss it.
|>Experience shows that if the experts edita doc and turn it 

|>over to a random group to deliberate over, it falls
|>appart.  This means that this group who are doing the
|>work must be teh IETF working group.  There are some
|>pressures to do this.
|
|Could you elaborate? I'm a little confused. I thought that the whole
|reason why we started this excercise was that the IETF had proved to
|be the wrong place to publish the HTML spec. Perhaps I got the wrong
|impression -- perhaps the IIIR WG was a bad place for the HTML
|document, but the IETF is still the right place over all.

Well, now I have had a direct message from Phil Mackapetris, IETF
chair, saying they would welcome WWW standards work in the IETF.
I think what was wrong was that the IIIR group (and URI to a
certain extent) started out with the charter to invent the
Intergrated Internet Information Architecture.  This III was
clearly in a way a reinvent of WWW, so it didn't help WWW.
To work on WWW is quite a different thing.  The WWW groups
(HTML, HTTP, or just one WWW) would work specifically on WWW
protocols and formats.  Those taking part would be WWW
developers, not just droppers-in.
 

|>What do you think?  The meachnisms of archived dicsussion
|>are all there -- the group mailing list could be specified
|>as www-html, and this list could be kept an editor's list,
|>or the html-ig list could be opened as the working group list.
|
|I vote for www-html, based on quality of service. The newbie factor
|isn't too bad on that list either.

Ok, I'd go for that.

|>  We would establish a set of milestones
|>and a strict charter
|
|Blech. Oh well... whatever it takes to get all this mess overwith.

Hah! :-)  But a strict set of milestones and a strict charter is just
what you, Dan, having been insiting on for this group -- to its
great betterment.

Basically, I suggest charter:

	To produce standards for the HyperText MarkUp Language
	used in the world Wide Web.
	
Milestones:

	HTML Levels 1 and 2 -- desriptive specs.
	* Draft for discussion
	* RFC release as proposed standard
	
	Information RFC on principles

|>Who would be able to come to meetings at the next IETF
|>in Toronto July 25-29? 

|
|Dunno. I wasn't planning on it, but I'd like to be there, especially
|if the rest of "the players" will be there.

Sounds like Marray would have no problem,
Dan and Dave R ware in the "if everyone else does"
state, Phill Hallam-Baker also.
I will be there anyway.
Any more support from this group?

|Dan
|
|