[Bug 7034] authoring conformance requirements in the spec should either be removed or replaced

http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=7034





--- Comment #27 from Michael(tm) Smith <mike@w3.org>  2010-03-16 01:55:06 ---
(In reply to comment #26)
> It has frequently been observed that many of the topics expressed as "authoring
> conformance" are primarily a matter of "document conformance": a conforming
> authoring tool or content generation tool MUST (first and foremost) generate
> conforming documents. There may be other requirements for "authoring tool"
> conformance as well, such as following accessibility guidelines.
> 
> I think discussion of where "authoring conformance" belongs may be easier to
> sort out if the distinction is made more explicit.

Agreed. Another example of an authoring-conformance requirement that's not a
document-conformance requirement is
http://dev.w3.org/html5/spec/syntax.html#the-doctype - the "The DOCTYPE legacy
string should not be used unless the document is generated from a system that
cannot output the shorter string." statement.

Granted, that's only a SHOULD-level requirement. But it nevertheless states
conformance criteria that is not checkable given a document alone; checking it
instead also requires that you have some knowledge of how the document was
generated.

Anyway, I think as far as making things more explicit, the distinction is that
document-conformance requirements can be checked by looking at a document in
isolation from however it was generated or in isolation from whoever wrote it.


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Received on Tuesday, 16 March 2010 01:55:09 UTC