Re: CDR: who is the audience?

Maceij,

Your email was reviewed and discussed by the WG at a recent Face-to-face 
meeting.  Comments and responses are marked below with [CDF].

If this does not satisfy your comment/concern please respond within 2 
weeks.

Regards,
Kevin
On behalf of the CDF WG

Comment http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-cdf/2006Jan/0019.html
F2F discussion http://www.w3.org/2006/01/30-cdf-irc
Action http://www.w3.org/2004/CDF/Group/track/actions/368





Maciej Stachowiak <mjs@apple.com> 
Sent by: public-cdf-request@w3.org
01/02/2006 05:14 AM

To
public-cdf@w3.org
cc

Subject
CDR: who is the audience?








Who is the intended audience for this specification?

Is it meant to be an actual specification that user agents should 
implement and that content authors should write to?

[CDF] Yes.

 Or is it meant to 
be just a meta-spec that defines requirements that other specs should 
follow?

[CDF] The Profiles build on the Framework and profile Core document.
http://www.w3.org/TR/2005/WD-CDR-20051219/#cd-framework  (last paragraph)
http://www.w3.org/TR/2005/WD-CDR-20051219/#related-documents
http://www.w3.org/TR/WICD/#scope (first paragraph)
http://www.w3.org/TR/WICD/#related (document descriptions and 
relationships for WICD)

[CDF]  It seems as if we have spread the total answer to your question 
across the Framework and WICD Core documents.
[CDF]  Authoring Guidelines are in an Appendix to the documents, 
http://www.w3.org/TR/2005/WD-CDR-20051219/#authoring-guidelines
http://www.w3.org/TR/2005/WD-WICD-20051219/#authoring-guidelines
http://www.w3.org/TR/2005/WD-WICDMobile-20051219/#authoring-guidelines
http://www.w3.org/TR/2005/WD-WICDFull-20051219/#authoring-guidelines
[CDF]  No changes are being made in response to this comment.

I think it would be a sensible goal to define a baseline for cross- 
document inclusion and behavior that works regardless of "profile" or 
specific combination of languages being used. But currently, the spec 
as written appears to entirely lack testable, meaningful conformance 
criteria for either documents or user agents. I can't imagine how 
anyone could write a CDR validator for content or a CDR test suite 
for user agents. I do not see how one could check for the existence 
of interoperable implementations.

[CDF]  The first set of documents are for compound documents by reference 
only, so there is no compound document by inclusion content yet other than 
some definitions and non-normative examples in the Framework document. 
Work has begun on the CDI documents.
[CDF]  No changes are being made in response to this comment.

[CDF]  There are testable assertions in the CDRF and WICD Core and 
Profiles, and the CDF WG is building a test suite to test these 
assertions. 
[CDF]  The Framework document does not have many testable assertions, but 
that is becasue it is a framework document.  One such testable assertions 
is:

          [assert-dom1: Compound Document profiles which leverage the 
Compound Document 
            Framework and which support scripting must have scripting 
            interfaces that are compatible with the DOM Level 3 Core 
Specification.]

[CDF]  The WIDC Core and Profile documents have many more testable 
assertions:

          [assert-root-doc1: Any profile, conforming to WICD Core 1.0, 
must support XHTML as root document.]

          [assert-referencing-object: Any profile, comforming to WICD Core 
1.0,
          must support the <object> element as means to reference child 
documents.]

          [assert-svg-child-object-multiple: Multiple SVG child documents 
may be referenced from the same XHTML document.]

          [assert-svg-child-object-animating: Multiple SVG child documents 
may animate in parallel.]


          [assert-scalable-usecases: Any Scalable Child Element must 
support these three use cases.]
 

          [assert-scalable-icon1: Scalable Foreground Child Elements are 
referenced using the XHTML 
            <object> element. They appear on the main XHTML layer, just 
like bitmap images.]
 
          [assert-scalable-icon2: User agents must support Scalable 
Foreground Child Elements, 
            which may be animating, interactive and may have embedded 
links.]

[CDF]  No changes are being made in response to this comment. 

The spec should either be reworked to have useful conformance 
criteria, or it should clearly state that its target audience is 
other specs, and remove the conformance criteria for user agents and 
documents.

[CDF]  The abstract texts for the Framework, WIDC Core, and Profiles state 
the intent of the documents with additional explanatory text in the
related documents and scope sections.  The intended audience is both user 
agent developers and content authors.  A separate Appendix on 
Authoring Guidelines is in each document.  No changes are being made in 
response to this comment.

[CDF]  The Conformance Appendixes in the document will remain.  No changes 
are being made in response to this comment.

Regards,
Maciej