Declare CSS2 as superseded

[gsnedders]

The process now allows us to declare specifications as superseded; I hope we can all agree that CSS 2.1 superseded 2.

I suggest we request the Director begin an Advisory Committee review of a proposal to supersede CSS2 (and the edited recommendation published in 2008).

Proposed rational: CSS 2.1 heavily revises CSS2 and is a far better specification for documented behaviour, as is shown by its implementation report.

[svgeesus]

LGTM

[astearns]

We probably do not need to use meeting time for this.

This comment is a call for consensus on the proposal in the first comment. Please reply before the end of May 1 2018 either with a thumbs-up or a comment stating your objection.

[fantasai]

I thought we effectively did that when we published https://www.w3.org/TR/2009/CR-CSS2-20090423/ and merged the shortnames. I mean, where would we publish the superseded REC? We're publishing CSS2.1 at /TR/CSS2 already.

[astearns]

We did effectively do that. This is just formally doing it again, since the formal process is now available to us.

Unfortunately, it looks to me like the process doc is completely silent on whether/how to publish a superseded rec. The bit about publishing only refers to obsolete or rescinded recs. I suspect that's an oversight.

[gsnedders]

@fantasai

Presumably at https://www.w3.org/TR/2018/REC-CSS2-2018mmdd/, which I admit is somewhat confusing when it's essentially an older document than https://www.w3.org/TR/2011/REC-CSS2-20110607/ albeit sharing the short name. Will need to make sure tr.rdf reflects the proper reality of the world.

@astearns It does:

The process for declaring a Recommendation Superseded is the same as for declaring it Obsolete, below; only the name and explanation change.

So you just follow the bit about Obsolete Recs.

[dbaron]

(As a side note, https://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS2/ still points to CSS 2, not 2.1, but it was a commonly-cited "latest version" url around 1998-2003, so it should be updated as the WG resolved.)

[fantasai]

Yeah, I think we should handle this by just fixing the places where CSS2 still points at CSS2.0 to point at CSS2.1, as we intended when we merged the shortnames. What we did is not intrinsically different from taking a REC back to WD/CR and then putting it back in REC again; this is different from superseding a REC, it's maintenance of the REC.

We will use the superseded status on CSS2 once we've finished replacing it with CSS3 modules and no longer need to maintain it.

[astearns]

I'm reading @fantasai's comments as an objection to superseding CSS2, since CSS2 encompasses 2.0, 2.1 and the ongoing maintenance. Anyone care to argue further on this? I confess that aside from fixing confusing links I don't have a strong opinion on this.

[css-meeting-bot]

The Working Group just discussed Declare CSS2 as superseded, and agreed to the following resolutions:

• RESOLVED: say we want it (css2.1) to be the same shortname and that auto obsoletes the older

The full IRC log of that discussion

<dael> Topic: Declare CSS2 as superseded
<dael> github: https://github.com//issues/2589
<gsnedders> q+
<dael> fantasai: Proposal was to declare css 2 as superceeded. However as it stands now it's the css 2.1 spec. What we did is at the end of the css2.1 cycle we thought having css 2 around was bad and we merged the shortnames in. We've done that for other specs before. So I don't htink we can declare css2 superceeded because we're using that short name for 2.1
<dael> fantasai: There were resolution to make sure that various shortcuts point to the right version. We need to make sure they're impl. tr/rec/css2 points to old. We need webrec to movet hat alias to point to same as tr/css2
<dael> fantasai: Old css2 publication should show the I'm out of date notifications. But it's an older date of same spec so not superceeded.
<dael> florian: I agree most important is redirect. That said it's not short names that are superceeded, it's rec. We could call the 1998 rec superceeded. I'm not sure what that gets us.
<dael> fantasai: Question. I have a rec about something like css namespaces. THen we see an error, go to cr, and then go to rec. Do we have to make the old rec superceeded?
<dael> florian: Process doesn't take into acocunt levels.
<dael> fantasai: Not relevent.
<dael> gsnedders: I think significant thing in 2.1 was there is a change in feature set. I think we added features to 2.1 so it's a different document as defined by the process. It's the presense of new features that's significant.
<dael> gsnedders: My view here is we should makes sure we have the right base data and I don't care how we achieve that. If the process makes no sense for what we do that's a bug in the process.
<dael> dbaron: I'm not sure how well throught through the process is. I think superceded came about because there were people that wanted to make it as obsolete because there were new versions but they didn't want to call it obsolete. This was we don't want to mark the short name as the same thing. I'm inclined to think we should come up with what we think process should be. And I think we should make sure short names redirect, not mark as superceed.
<dael> gsnedders: And that we get the correct this is out of date notice.
<dael> florian: I think we need to do that and fix the short name first. THen we should get proccess fixed to say any newer rec of the same name superceeds previous.
<dael> gsnedders: CSS 2 and 2.1 are in a slightly odd state because most things under the same short name don't both appear in tr. There's a bunch of things to fix around this.
<gsnedders> s/in tr/in tr.rdf/
<dael> florian: From the csswg pov we just need to say we want it to be the same shortname and that auto obsoletes the older. The rest is tooling bugs.
<dael> Rossen_: I like that summary. Do others agree?
<dael> Rossen_: Objections to say we want it (css2.1) to be the same shortname and that auto obsoletes the older
<fantasai> Florian: We just need to say we want CSS2.0 and 2.1 to be the same shortname (CSS), and that newer RECs of the same shortname supersede the old ones, and the rest is just tooling bugs
<dael> RESOLVED: say we want it (css2.1) to be the same shortname and that auto obsoletes the older
<fantasai> (correction to above)
<dael> gsnedders: What should tr/css21 to point to oncec 2.2 is published?
<dael> florian: perm redirect?
<dael> fantasai: Or call it 2.1 forever.
<dael> florian: That's also okay.
<dael> gsnedders: But no one wants it to point to 2.1.
<dael> florian: Sure.