Hi, CDF folks-
While we had hoped that more implementations might emerge that passed
the CDF and WICD test suites [1], such that these specifications would
meet the criteria as W3C Recommendations, it does not seem that this
will happen in a reasonable timeframe. Despite good partial
implementation experience, implementers have not show sufficient
interest to justify further investment of W3C resources into this group,
even at a background level.
In order to clarify the status of the CDF WG specifications, including
Compound Document by Reference Framework 1.0 [2], Web Integration
Compound Document (WICD) Core 1.0 [3], WICD Mobile 1.0 [4], and WICD
Full 1.0 [5], all in Candidate Recommendation phase since July 2007, we
have decided to publish them as Working Group Notes instead, and to
close the Compound Document Formats Working Group.
This event speaks loudly to how little interest browser developershave in interoperable web solutions. One-way compatibility wins and the ability of web applications to round-trip data loses. For those that did not realize it, the Compound Document by Reference Framework not only allowes but requires that more featureful implementations round-trip the output of less featureful implementations without data loss. See http://www.w3.org/TR/2007/CR-CDR-20070718/#conformance ("A conformant user agent of a superset profile specification must process subset profile content as if it were the superset profile content").