Principle: Explain which conformance requirements are mandatory, which are suggested and which are optional What does this mean? Depending on the way you specify the conformance requirements, it may or may not be clear if an implementation needs to implement all of them or only part of them. Try and make sure one can easily distinguish the level of requirements they have. Why care? If implementors don't have the same understanding of what's required, interoperability is likely to suffer in the end. Techniques * use RFC Keyword (see Pcp 1) * group the requirements of same level in subdivision of the technology (see section @@@) For instance, HTTP 1.1 defines two level of conformance, one where all the MUST are respected, and one where all the MUST and the SHOULD are implemented. -- Dominique Hazaël-Massieux - http://www.w3.org/People/Dom/ W3C/ERCIM mailto:dom@w3.orgReceived on Tuesday, 3 August 2004 04:57:26 GMT
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