XML Core WG Last Call comments on QA Framework: Specification Guidelines

The XML Core WG reviewed:
QA Framework: Specification Guidelines 
 http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/WD-qaframe-spec-20041122/
and has a concern about "classes of products."

Specifically, the WG has a problem with:

2.2 Requirement A: Identify who or what will implement 
the specification.

and

4.4 Requirement B: Define how deprecated feature is 
handled by each class of product. 

Our problem with the latter is just the "by each
class of product" part which reduces to our issue
with the former.

We find 2.2 Requirement A to be unclear and potentially
dangerous.  It is not clear how to define a class of
product, and it is not clear what the full set of classes
of products might be.  We don't believe there are (or
could be) clear definitions of distinct classes, and
we are concerned that any attempt to list classes
affected by a spec might end up excluding some products
for which the spec should apply.

Rather, any product should be evaluated against the
spec to determine if the spec applies to it.

For example, it isn't clear if xml:id is applicable to
an XHTML browser UA.  It depends on whether the UA
relies on a parser of other xml processor that has
implemented xml:id (in which case xml:id doesn't
apply directly to the UA) or whether the UA does its
own id recognition.

In summary, we object to 2.2 Requirement A being mandatory
in these Specification Guidelines.  We object to
4.4 Requirement B being mandatory as long as it includes
the words "by each class of product", but we remove our
objection if those words are removed.

Paul Grosso
for the XML Core WG

Received on Friday, 21 January 2005 22:13:31 UTC