Re: Profiles, was Re: header syntax.

On 25 November 2012 05:37, Dave Pawson <dave.pawson@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 24 November 2012 21:06, Pablo Olmos de Aguilera C.
> <pablo@glatelier.org> wrote:
>
>> Then after almost a week I don't understand what is a "profile".
>
> Suggested earlier, the idea is to start with baby steps. Produce a
> spec which though unlikely
> ever to be implemented, forms a baseline for development. This is the
> core profile.
>
> Next to build on that (and our experience of having fully tested the
> core profile) to generate
> a more complex syntax and semantic, covering (hopefully) 80% of
> implementations. This is likely
> to be the most widely adopted and should satisfy most implementers and users.
>
> The final step (might be, ill defined) is the manner in which
> extensions are added to
> let implementers have their freedom to match their users needs.
>
>
> HTH DaveP
>
> ps Pablo, please don't claim you are speaking for other than yourself.

I don't understand where I did something close to that. I am of
course, speaking for myself.

> See also the reply from Marbux.

On 24 November 2012 22:09, marbux <marbux@gmail.com> wrote:
> I'll take a swing at answering that, since it's a definition I
> researched about 3 years ago.
>
> Given a specification A, a profile is a subset (B) of  the
> supersetting A specification. In effect, a sub-specification to which
> implementers can claim conformance. A superset specification can have
> multiple subsetting profiles, optimally layered so that each profile
> incorporates by reference all profiles with a smaller feature set in a
> linear fashion until the full specification is reached. Hence the need
> to begin by identifying and specifying a "core" profile and working
> our way outward to a full specification. And by logical extension,
> once the full specification is supersetted, it becomes a profile of
> the new superset specification.
>
> Profiles are essential to interoperability. Assume for a moment that
> we were dealing with the OpenDocument Formats ("ODF") rather than
> Markdown. Google Docs and Zoho Writer do not support the full feature
> set supported by OpenOffice.org. They are lightweight editors. But
> there is no lightweight editor profile of ODF. Hence Docs and Writer
> can send documents to be processed by OOo without fear of markup loss
> but documents created with OOo cannot be processed by Docs and Writer
> without concern for data loss.
>
> But consider the difference if ODF had a lightweight editor profile
> and a conformance requirement that a conformant implementation of a
> superset profile specification must process subset profile content as
> if it were the superset profile content. Then if Docs and Writer
> conformed to the lightweight editor profile, documents could be
> round-tripped between them and OOo without fear of markup loss.
>
> And were OOo equipped with the means to select which profile the
> document is to be written  to and by selecting a mode that makes
> features unavailable not supported by the lightweight editor profile,
> OOo users could originate documents to be shared with Docs and Writer
> without concern for markup loss. For example, in OOo open a new HTML
> document and notice that the GUI changes to make unavailable features
> not supported by HTML. The same could be done for new lightweight
> editor profile documents.
>
> So in my view, the goal of defining a core profile is to identify the
> minimum feature set to which all Markdown implementations must conform
> to claim conformance to that profile. That does not, however, rule out
> supporting more features that are defined in an intermediate profile
> or are application-defined. It simply means that a conformant
> implementation must be capable of processing Markdown documents as
> defined by the core profile, unless we add some sort of metadata to
> indicate that a document conforms to the core profile, which seems to
> be a non-starter given the Markdown goal of legibility as a plain text
> document.

Thanks Paul, that was a very exhaustive explanation and very clear. I
believe this should be pointed from the wiki (I'll do it), even it
seems obvious, we have to assume not everyone coming has this depth of
understanding (like me :B).

Regards,
--
Pablo Olmos de Aguilera Corradini - @PaBLoX
http://www.glatelier.org/
http://about.me/pablox/
http://www.linkedin.com/in/pablooda/
Linux User: #456971 - http://counter.li.org/

Received on Sunday, 25 November 2012 15:00:25 UTC