Re: Two Specs and Test Suite

On 27/02/2012 20:09, Jeni Tennison wrote:
> Hi,
>
> It sounds to me as though there are some people here who would very
> much favour a procedural-style specification which spells out exactly
> how to implement an XML-ER parser to create a DOM, and others who
> would very much favour a declarative-style specification which
> describes the outcome of error recovery in a more generic way.
>

I'm very nervous about this.

Firstly as I commented before I can't imagine at present what a
declarative spec would look like, although I'm quite willing to believe
that is just lack of imagination on my part, but that makes it hard to
say whether I think it would be good or bad thing to have.

But more worryingly, even if the more declarative style is viable,
having two means that either they are easily seen to be equivalent, in
which case it's not clear if you gain by having both. Or they are not
easily seen to be equivalent, in which case there is a real possibility
that they are different and perhaps incompatible, that surely would be a
problem?

david

Received on Monday, 27 February 2012 23:32:40 UTC