Why is the doc published as a WG Note?

[dontcallmedom]

https://www.w3.org/TR/manifest-app-info/ is published as a WG Note, but it seems to contain normative descriptions of fields - is there any reason this is not going on the Rec track?

(the proximate reason for me asking is that this document wasn't detected for addition in our browser-specs list because of its status as a WG Note - but arguably, others could be thrown off by that status)

[marcoscaceres]

It shouldn't contain normative things. We should fix that.

[dontcallmedom]

pushing back a bit - it feels this is defining features that we want content to conform to (e.g. we don't want app manifest to start using the categories property to describe something else), and that we want stores (and possibly some UAs) to interop on - I remain unclear why this is being taken on the Note path.

[marcoscaceres]

Note path was because these are single implementation features. Additionally, they don't affect the functionality of web applications (or browsers interfacing with web apps), so conformance wasn't really necessary.

[kenchris]

Well Chrome is using description and screenshots as part of the install dialog on Android when both are available

[marcoscaceres]

That's great, but in Web Apps WG, as per our charter, we are pretty strict about only standardizing multi-engine features. As Chair, I made the call for features to be a Note until such time as we get a second engine interested.

[aarongustafson]

I think the other challenge here is that most of the implementors targeted by this document are catalogs. When we started, no browsers were interested. If we can get one more non-Chromium browser to express interest and plan an implementation, it would be great to move this to a standards track and have it be a WD rather than a Note.

[marcoscaceres]

If we can get one more non-Chromium browser to express interest and plan an implementation, it would be great to move this to a standards track and have it be a WD rather than a Note.

Agree. That would be good.