The scope of this list from Dan Connolly on 1998-03-11 (spec-prod@w3.org from January to March 1998) (original) (raw)

Roger Price wrote:

The many standards development organisations (SDO's) each have their own ways of physically producing standards. Some have chosen to go with word processors, others leave it to the ingenuity of the editors to produce camera-ready copy.

Occasionally SDOs share text e.g. ECMA and ISO/IEC, and sometimes they even share style e.g. ISO/IEC/ITU. From an editor's point of view, it would be ideal to have some common ground: some way of interchanging text while respecting each house style. Such common ground could also be the starting point for a common approach by editors.

Amen. That is exactly the purpose of this list: to explore the possibility of sharing the text of specs and the mechanisms for producing and managing that text.

I hope to take a "Think Globally, Act Locally" approach; i.e. we are particularly concerned about making the job of producing W3C specs easier, but in that the problems related to W3C specs are also relevant to specs of other SDOs, and moreover, since some of the individuals here have to write specs for multiple SDOs, we should favor solutions that are applicable outside of W3C as well.

Could (or should) the DTD used for XML be considered as a candidate?

Yes, I think so.

Is it even in the scope of this list to consider the exchange of text between SDO's?

Ultimately, the scope of this list is determined by the participants. I hope you feel this is just as much "Roger Price's spec-prod mailing list" as it is "Dan Connolly's spec-prod mailing list." (In fact, if you want to manage the administrivia such as bounced messages and such, you're more than welcome!)

But yes, my purpose in creating it was to consider the exchange of text between SDO's.

The subject of Dan's invitation dated Fri, 27 Feb 1998 was "New forum for discussion of W3C Spec Production Issues", but the invitation did mention the submission of text to other SDO's.

-- Dan Connolly http://www.w3.org/People/Connolly/

Received on Wednesday, 11 March 1998 11:29:49 UTC