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This page exists to document the status of the outdated forks of various WHATWG specifications, and any progress toward clarifying their out-of-dateness.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

• 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  • Forked to https://www.w3.org/TR/html51/ as an outdated fork of a subset frozen in 2015.
  • Forked to https://www.w3.org/TR/html52/ as an outdated fork of a subset frozen in 2017.
  • Forked to https://www.w3.org/TR/html53/ as an outdated fork of a subset frozen in 2018.
  • 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  • Subsets of HTML split out into other outdated forks, none with appropriate warnings: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

• DOM: https://dom.spec.whatwg.org/
  • Forked to http://www.w3.org/TR/dom/
  • Forked to https://w3c.github.io/dom/
  • Status: redirected
• Encoding: https://encoding.spec.whatwg.org/
  • Forked to http://www.w3.org/TR/encoding/
  • Status: redirected
• Fetch: https://fetch.spec.whatwg.org/
  • Obsolete subsections published as http://www.w3.org/TR/cors/
  • Status: redirected
• 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
• Notifications: https://notifications.spec.whatwg.org/
  • Forked to http://www.w3.org/TR/notifications/
  • Status: redirected
• XMLHttpRequest: https://xhr.spec.whatwg.org/
  • Forked to http://www.w3.org/TR/XMLHttpRequest/
  • Forked to http://www.w3.org/TR/XMLHttpRequest2/
  • A subset was forked to https://www.w3.org/TR/progress-events/
  • 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. Progress events 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.