HTML5 Tracker

Short URL: http://html5.org/r/5995

Index: source
===================================================================
--- source	(revision 5994)
+++ source	(revision 5995)
@@ -60,23 +60,41 @@
   document, and some of which have only ever been tangentially
   related.</p>
 
-  <p>This specification actually now defines the next generation of
-  HTML after HTML5. HTML5 reached Last Call at the WHATWG in October
-  2009, and shortly after we started working on some experimental new
-  features that are not as stable as the rest of the
-  specification. The stability of sections is annotated in the
-  margin.</p>
+  <p>This specification, published by the WHATWG and developed in
+  conjunction with the W3C, defines the core HTML language and some
+  the infrastructure on which it relies. The W3C also publishes parts
+  of this specification. One of these parts is called "HTML5".</p>
 
-  <p>The W3C has also been working on HTML in conjunction with the
-  WHATWG; at the W3C, this document has been split into several parts,
-  and the occasional informative paragraph or example has been removed
-  for technical or editorial reasons. For all intents and purposes,
-  however, the W3C HTML specifications and this specification are
-  equivalent (and they are in fact all generated from the same source
-  document). The minor differences are:</p>
+  <p>This specification and the specifications published by the W3C
+  differ in a small number of ways. The main difference is that the
+  W3C version does not include some newer features, such as:</p>
 
   <ul class="brief">
+   <li>The <code>PeerConnection</code> API and related video-conferencing features.</li> <!--DEVICE-->
+   <li>The <code title="attr-hyperlink-ping">ping</code> attribute and related <span>hyperlink auditing</span> features.</li> <!--PING-->
+   <li>The <span>WebVTT</span> format and some <span>text track</span> API features.</li> <!--TT--> <!--TTVTT-->
+   <li>Rules for <a href="#atom">converting HTML to Atom</a>.</li> <!--MD-->
+   <li>The <code title="dom-document-cssElementMap">cssElementMap</code> feature for defining <span title="CSS element reference identifier">CSS element reference identifiers</span>.</li> <!--CSSREF-->
+  </ul>
 
+  <p>This is a result of the specifications having different
+  development modalities. The WHATWG specification is a continuously
+  maintained living standard, with maturity managed at a very granular
+  per-section scale, indicated by markers in the left margin; this is
+  intended to model the way in which specifications are approached in
+  practice by implementors and authors alike. The W3C specification
+  follows a more traditional style, with versioned releases of the
+  specification, and with maturity management being done only at the
+  document level; this means that the W3C specification has a version
+  number (currently "5") and necessarily goes through periods of
+  "feature freeze" where new features are not added, so that the
+  specification can as a whole reach a more mature state.</p>
+
+  <p>In addition to the above, there are some small differences,
+  mostly editorial, between the two versions of the specification:</p>
+
+  <ul class="brief">
+
    <li>Instead of this section, the W3C version has a different
    paragraph explaining the difference between the W3C and WHATWG
    versions of HTML.</li> <!-- in the status section -->
@@ -89,6 +107,16 @@
    href="http://www.w3.org/2005/07/pubrules?uimode=filter&amp;uri=#format">W3C
    publication policies</a>.</li>
 
+<!--
+   <li>The W3C version defines conformance for documents in a more
+   traditional (version-orientated) way, because of <a
+   href="http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2011Mar/0574.html">a
+   working group decision from March 2011</a>. This specification, in
+   part driven by its versionless development model, instead uses a
+   conformance definition that more closely models how specifications
+   are used in practice.</li>
+-->
+
    <li>The W3C version omits a paragraph of implementation advice
    because of <a
    href="http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2010Jun/0001.html">a
@@ -107,18 +135,6 @@
 
   </ul>
 
-  <p>Features that are considered part of the next generation of HTML
-  beyond HTML5 (and that are therefore not included in the W3C version
-  of HTML5) currently consist of:</p>
-
-  <ul class="brief">
-   <li>The <code>PeerConnection</code> API and related video-conferencing features.</li> <!--DEVICE-->
-   <li>The <code title="attr-hyperlink-ping">ping</code> attribute and related <span>hyperlink auditing</span> features.</li> <!--PING-->
-   <li>The <span>WebVTT</span> format and some <span>text track</span> API features.</li> <!--TT--> <!--TTVTT-->
-   <li>Rules for <a href="#atom">converting HTML to Atom</a>.</li> <!--MD-->
-   <li>The <code title="dom-document-cssElementMap">cssElementMap</code> feature for defining <span title="CSS element reference identifier">CSS element reference identifiers</span>.</li> <!--CSSREF-->
-  </ul>
-
   <p>Features that are part of HTML (and this specification) but that
   are currently published as separate specifications as well, and are
   not included in the W3C HTML5 specification, consist of:</p>

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