Fork tracking

This page exists to document the status of the outdated forks of various WHATWG specifications, and any progress toward clarifying their out-of-dateness.

Confusion persists

• Fetch: https://fetch.spec.whatwg.org/
  • Obsolete subsections published as http://www.w3.org/TR/cors/
  • Status: still exists as an outdated specification with no warning, causing confusion.
• DOM: https://dom.spec.whatwg.org/
  • Forked to http://www.w3.org/TR/dom/
  • Forked to https://w3c.github.io/dom/
  • Status: still exists as an outdated snapshot (and modified in undocumented ways) with no warning, causing confusion. And has a weird rename ("DOM4") too. Editors draft has renewed forking efforts with particularly bad copy-and-paste practices.
• XMLHttpRequest: https://xhr.spec.whatwg.org/
  • A subset was forked to https://www.w3.org/TR/progress-events/. (ED redirects)
• Notifications: https://notifications.spec.whatwg.org/
  • Forked to http://www.w3.org/TR/notifications/
  • Status: still exists as an outdated snapshot with no warning, causing confusion. The spec model has diverged significantly in the meantime, and the outdated version is actively wrong, not just incomplete.

Confusion persists with some mitigation

• Encoding: https://encoding.spec.whatwg.org/
  • Forked to http://www.w3.org/TR/encoding/
  • Status: still exists as an outdated snapshot, with a floating notice that it's an outdated snapshot at the bottom, but pretending that it provides a "stable reference"
• HTML: https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/
  • Forked to https://www.w3.org/TR/html51/ as an outdated fork of a subset frozen in 2015.
  • Forked to https://www.w3.org/TR/html52/ as an outdated fork of a subset frozen in 2017.
  • In general all of these attempt to copy-and-paste HTML and then apply forked patches on top, but the scripts are wonky, leading to lots of errors.
  • Status: Memorandum of Understanding between W3C and WHATWG; ED URL is WHATWG URL, former TR and ED URLs (https://www.w3.org/TR/html/, https://www.w3.org/TR/html5/, http://w3c.github.io/html/) redirect
  • Subsets of HTML split out into other outdated forks, none with appropriate warnings:
    • https://www.w3.org/TR/webstorage/ (ED is nice at least https://w3c.github.io/webstorage/)
    • https://www.w3.org/TR/workers/ (ED also: https://w3c.github.io/workers/)
    • https://www.w3.org/TR/webmessaging/ (ED is nice at least https://w3c.github.io/webmessaging/)
    • https://www.w3.org/TR/websockets/ (ED is nice at least https://w3c.github.io/websockets/)
    • https://www.w3.org/TR/eventsource/ (ED is nice at least https://w3c.github.io/eventsource/)
    • https://www.w3.org/TR/2dcontext/ (ED also: https://w3c.github.io/2dcontext/)
    • https://www.w3.org/TR/2dcontext2/
    • https://www.w3.org/TR/microdata/ (ED also: https://w3c.github.io/microdata/)

Confusion mitigated

• Fullscreen: https://fullscreen.spec.whatwg.org/
  • Forked to http://www.w3.org/TR/fullscreen/
  • Status: discontinued as a NOTE. ED URL (http://dvcs.w3.org/hg/fullscreen/raw-file/tip/Overview.html) redirects
• Streams: https://streams.spec.whatwg.org/
  • Forked to http://www.w3.org/TR/streams-api/
  • Status: discontinued as NOTE. ED URL is WHATWG URL, former ED URL (http://w3c.github.io/streams-api/) redirects
• XMLHttpRequest: https://xhr.spec.whatwg.org/
  • Forked to http://www.w3.org/TR/XMLHttpRequest/
  • Forked to http://www.w3.org/TR/XMLHttpRequest2/
  • Status: both /TR/ forks discontinued as NOTEs. ED URLs are to WHATWG XHR, former ED URL https://dvcs.w3.org/hg/xhr/raw-file/default/xhr-1/Overview.html redirects.
• URL: https://url.spec.whatwg.org/
  • Forked to http://www.w3.org/TR/url/ plus various aliases and older versions (e.g. https://www.w3.org/TR/url-1/)
  • Status: discontinued as NOTE, ED URL is WHATWG URL, former ED URL http://dvcs.w3.org/hg/url/raw-file/tip/Overview.html redirects.
  • https://w3ctag.github.io/url/ has also been fully discontinued.