It might sound trite, but the end of a year always creeps up on me quickly. Was it really a year ago that we read about the latest declassified Australian government documents, or that I was predicting a mere six more months until my thesis submission? Seems like only yesterday.
Speaking of thecal matters, I must congratulate Peter Sbarski (one of my officemates) and Nathan Hurst (a former officemate) on their end-of-year submissions. Nathan started his PhD a couple of years before me, so it was always comforting in a way, knowing that regardless of the time I’ve spent at Monash working on this thing, that I wasn’t breaking some sort of record. Now that he has submitted, I can really start my stopwatch and get on with it!
A couple of W3C publications were made just before Christmas that are worth mentioning from my perspective:
- SVG Tiny 1.2 was published as a Recommendation. Considering that the first draft of what was then known as SVG 1.2 was published in late 2002, it certainly is satisfying to have it finished so that progress can be made on other things within SVG working group. While not everything in SVG Tiny 1.2 will appeal to the desktop browser vendors, there is much from SVG 1.1 that has been clarified and improved upon that still deserves attention. Also, check out the delicious PDF produced using Prince!
- Web IDL had another working draft publication. Most of the changes since the last draft have been to bring the ECMAScript bindings closer into alignment with reality, and to add some more extended attribute hooks for use by other specifications, such as HTML 5. The next publication will be a last call working draft, by my estimates.
In related news, I’ve been appointed co-chair of the SVG working group from the beginning of 2009, taking over from Andrew Emmons, who has done a fine job herding us all into getting SVG Tiny 1.2 out the door. Erik Dahlström from Opera is continuing in his role as the other co-chair.