Requirements... Re: Progress events progress...

On Fri, 22 Feb 2008 21:31:42 +0100, Ian Hickson <ian@hixie.ch> wrote:

> On Fri, 22 Feb 2008, Charles McCathieNevile wrote:
>>
>> http://dev.w3.org/cvsweb/~checkout~/2006/webapi/progress/Progress.html?rev=1.20
>> is a new Editor's draft, which should be ready to publish as a Working
>> Draft, and hopefully not generate any comments so we can take it to last
>> call about a month after that :)
>
> I'm all in favour of publishing.

Noted.

> I don't understand the conformance in this spec. When a spec has two
> classess -- UAs and authors -- it's usually easy to tell which  
> requirement applies to which. But when you add specs to the mix, I
> don't know how to tell which requirement applies to what.
>
> In particular, this, combined with the apparent lack of requirements on
> some things but presence of requirements on others, leads me to have  
> great difficulty interpreting the actual requirements in the spec.

OK, I will try to make them simpler and clearer.

> For example:
...

> Incidentally, I _really_ don't understand the definition of the User  
> Agent conformance class:
>
> | A conforming user agent implements all the requirements described for
> | user agents throughout this specification. A conforming user agent
> | should implement all the recommendations for user agents as well.
>
> First, why is there a conformance requirement in the definition of the
> conformance class to which it applies?

The definition of the conformance class is the primary place where the  
conformance requirements for that class are described, although in  
practice it is just a reference to various other places in the spec - at  
this time the reader is expected to read through the spec and identify  
those, but as you were apparently unable to do so I take it that I need to  
make it simpler.

I am not sure how else you would define a conformance class...

> Second, aren't those two sentences
> contradictory?

No. You MUST do the things that are a MUST, and you SHOULD do the things  
that are a SHOULD. That struck me as a very straighforward proposition.  
Maybe I will try to say it more in those words.

...
> Frankly, as the editor of a spec that tries to use this spec, I'm not  
> sure what would be best. I'm thinking that one option would be to
> change the focus of the Progress Events spec to be more of a guide,
> with the normative parts being only the definition of the IDL, with its
> methods defined in line with the DOM Events spec and the DOM Bindings
> spec, and with everything else just left up to the specs using it. The
> spec would then give a guide as to what event names are expected , in
> what order, but without making this normative.

I think it is useful to define the events normatively to allow for  
interoperable use of them amongst multile specifications - for example  
user agents handling SVG and HTML.

> (I've already had to deviate from what this spec requires, mostly due
> to having more events to fire.)

In what way did you have to deviate? The spec allows you to add any more  
events you want, it just defines particular events and the relation  
between them. Does your work on this change the names or order of the  
things defined in the current draft, which were left that way because they  
matched earlier drafts that were implemented in user agents or just add  
new events that you define yourself? (Do you have a handy pointer? I  
assume you mean the HTML spec but for some reason that is not currently  
loading for me)

> To make this slightly more useful, maybe some "macros" could be defined,
> similar to the "fire a simple event" macro I have in HTML5, but like  
> "fire a progress event" which takes "arguments" like the event name, the
> progress, the total, and the target element, with the "macro" setting up
> the bubbling and canceling behaviour, etc, and "returning" whether or not
> the event's default action should fire.

I am not sure about this.

> I don't know if it makes sense to have authoring conformance requirements
> for this spec at all.

I believe it does. Which is why they are in the spec. Do you want a formal  
issue raised?

> Anyway. HTH,

Thanks...

cheers

Chaals

-- 
Charles McCathieNevile  Opera Software, Standards Group
     je parle français -- hablo español -- jeg lærer norsk
http://my.opera.com/chaals   Try Opera 9.5: http://snapshot.opera.com

Received on Sunday, 24 February 2008 16:04:42 UTC