Re: header syntax.

On Sat, Nov 24, 2012 at 5:09 PM, marbux <marbux@gmail.com> wrote:

>> Then after almost a week I don't understand what is a "profile".
>
> I'll take a swing at answering that, since it's a definition I
> researched about 3 years ago.
>
> Given a specification A, a profile is a subset (B) of  the
> supersetting A specification. In effect, a sub-specification to which
> implementers can claim conformance. A superset specification can have
> multiple subsetting profiles, optimally layered so that each profile
> incorporates by reference all profiles with a smaller feature set in a
> linear fashion until the full specification is reached. Hence the need
> to begin by identifying and specifying a "core" profile and working
> our way outward to a full specification. And by logical extension,
> once the full specification is supersetted, it becomes a profile of
> the new superset specification.
>
> Profiles are essential to interoperability. Assume for a moment that
> we were dealing with the OpenDocument Formats ("ODF") rather than
> Markdown. Google Docs and Zoho Writer do not support the full feature
> set supported by OpenOffice.org. They are lightweight editors. But
> there is no lightweight editor profile of ODF. Hence Docs and Writer
> can send documents to be processed by OOo without fear of markup loss
> but documents created with OOo cannot be processed by Docs and Writer
> without concern for data loss.
>
> But consider the difference if ODF had a lightweight editor profile
> and a conformance requirement that a conformant implementation of a
> superset profile specification must process subset profile content as
> if it were the superset profile content. Then if Docs and Writer
> conformed to the lightweight editor profile, documents could be
> round-tripped between them and OOo without fear of markup loss.
>
> And were OOo equipped with the means to select which profile the
> document is to be written  to and by selecting a mode that makes
> features unavailable not supported by the lightweight editor profile,
> OOo users could originate documents to be shared with Docs and Writer
> without concern for markup loss. For example, in OOo open a new HTML
> document and notice that the GUI changes to make unavailable features
> not supported by HTML. The same could be done for new lightweight
> editor profile documents.
>
> So in my view, the goal of defining a core profile is to identify the
> minimum feature set to which all Markdown implementations must conform
> to claim conformance to that profile. That does not, however, rule out
> supporting more features that are defined in an intermediate profile
> or are application-defined. It simply means that a conformant
> implementation must be capable of processing Markdown documents as
> defined by the core profile, unless we add some sort of metadata to
> indicate that a document conforms to the core profile, which seems to
> be a non-starter given the Markdown goal of legibility as a plain text
> document.

I should have mentioned a couple of things.

1. Despite a thorough search, I found no authoritative definition of a
"profile" in the IT specification sense. The explanation I gave is
based on snippets that seemed reliable, conversations with experts,
and what I could infer from specifications that have been profiled,
notably, the W3C Compound Document Working Group's WICD profiles and
the conformance section of its Compound Document by Reference
Framework specification. <http://www.w3.org/2004/CDF/>.

2. Experts disagree on whether a full specification is also a profile.
The majority I discussed this with insist that a full specification is
not a profile, that a profile is necessarily a sub-set. This area of
disagreement seems to be entirely nit-picking; i.e., it does not
affect the requirements of a specification or profile in any way. In
my explanation, I rode with the majority but I could have as easily
taken the opposite view without any effect on the profiles or a full
specification.

Received on Sunday, 25 November 2012 14:12:25 UTC