Hypertext Markup Language BOF (HTML) Reported by Tim Berners-Lee/CERN Introduction A BOF was held to determine if a HyperText Markup Language Working Group should be formed. There were 59 attendees. Dan Connolly and David Ragget had expressed regret at not being able to attend. Paper documents distributed at the meeting were the draft charter of the proposed working group and the current (of July 21, dated July 31!) version of the HTML specification. Presentation The chairman stated that the purpose of the meeting was to consider the creation of a new working group to work on the HyperText MarkUp Language (HTML) specification. He began the meeting with the history of HTML: o The original HTML specification was kept on the web only, and edited by the author in response to discussion on the net. o Much work was later put in by Dan Connolly. He cleared up its relationship to SGML and tested it. o An Internet-Draft was produced. o The draft was discussed in the IIIR Working Group. There was much deliberation on the fact that it was an existing practice not designed within the IETF. The alternatives of Informational status or Proposed Standards status were discussed without resolution. The matter was put to the area directors who proposed it be put to the IESG. They did not come up with an answer. o The Internet-Draft expired. o David Ragget put in a lot of editorial work on the document and included a lot of the new features which were in common discussion on the net. It was not clear whether the result of this should in fact be a rigid superset of HTML so, in the meantime, it was known as HTMLPlus. o A group of vendors wishing for WorldWide Web compatible tools demanded a quotable specification for HTML. An informal HTML Implementors Group (HTML-IG) was formed. o HTML-IG met during the WWW94 conference in Geneva, which also contained an HTML workshop. This produced a useful understanding of the feature sets into which new developments could be grouped. o Paul Mockapetris, IETF Chair, encouraged the pursuance of WWW standards in the IETF context and, at the last moment, the present BOF was organized. o Karen Mulrow, colleague of Dan Connolly, edited the HTML specification of existing practice to increase its legibility and produced the draft which was distributed at the meeting. o An informal meeting of HTML-IG was held on 25 July at the offices of SCO, Toronto. A few technical but mostly editorial changes were proposed to the specification of existing practice. The essential points of a draft working group charter were drawn up. Proposed Charter The focus will be to: o Describe new features before developing them o Base the specification on existing practice o Express the relationship of HTML to URI, MIME, SGML and HTTP o Define conformance levels o Define transition possibilities and compatibilities between versions and levels Levels of HTML The conclusion of the WWW94 workshop was that the features could be grouped into levels such that software capable of implementing level N may reasonably be required to implement levels k < N. Therefore, a level number rather than a bit mask used to represent application capabilities. The levels proposed were as follows: o Level 0 - Mandatory. Headings, lists, anchors, etc. (Provides the least differences in presentation between platforms.) o Level 1 - Images and emphasis. (Can be confusing if used for semantics not evident also from text.) o Level 2 - Forms. (Requires greater implementation effort.) o Level 3 - Not an existing practice. Tables, figures and other effects breaking normal text flow. o Level 4 - Mathematical formulae. Levels 0, 1 and 2 have multiple implementations. Levels 3 and 4 are experimental as yet. Discussion The IESG now has a policy for incorporating existing practice on the IETF standards track. It will see whether the issues addressed had wider implications than the existing applications, and if so, would broaden the discussion. The specification should describe WWW's use of relative URIs, as they were not defined in the URL specification (which was in a final stage of discussion in the morning). A new mailing list has just been created which has around 300 members after three days. (Subscription requests should be sent to www-security-request@ns1.rutgers.edu.) If the kernel of interested people who are willing to work together can be found, then a working group on the issues would be useful. There are two independent implementations of secure additions to HTTP. The working group charter should state that the specification to be produced should mention the relationship (for example the mapping between equivalent concepts) between HTML and HyTime. The charter should be as clear as the transparency about the guidelines for the working group. Conclusion The BOF unanimously proposed that an IETF working group be created under the charter as amended to reflect the comments made where appropriate. Ed Levinson mentioned an effort underway to investigate the conventions for distributing SGML as a MIME type. It was pointed out that this involves resolution of identifiers used in references, and therefore has an impact on URIs. A mailing list exists for the discussion, and a BOF is proposed for the next IETF. To subscribe to the list, send mail to mime-sgml-request@infoods.unu.edu.