Re: Feedback from FOMS

On Wed, 27 Jan 2010 23:38:39 +0100, Silvia Pfeiffer  
<silviapfeiffer1@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Wed, Jan 27, 2010 at 11:54 PM, Philip Jägenstedt <philipj@opera.com>
>> My main point is that right now there are no conformance requirements,  
>> so
>> it's impossible to test if a browser "supports media fragments" at the  
>> HTTP
>> level, which 5.2.1 is about. If no-one objects, I'd like to mark 5.2.1  
>> and
>> 5.2.2 non-normative unless there are testable requirements. (Note though
>> that I don't believe it's very meaningful to define the requirements in
>> terms of HTTP, but rather think it should be in terms of playback  
>> behavior.)
>
> I find the topic of non-normative vs normative a bit hard to grasp.
> How does the URI spec become normative or non-normative?

Presumably each spec can decide what is normative and what isn't, but I  
think all content in MF URI is normative unless it is explicitly marked  
otherwise (example, informative, etc). This is my assumption anyway, and  
why I marked some quite vague sections with "Note: This section is  
non-normative".

What I would like is more clear requirements and less "specification by  
example" (examples are useful, but should be marked as such). Right now,  
5.2.1 and 3.2 to which it refers is most in need of this, since they  
*only* contain examples and no requirements as far as I can see. If we  
want to require HTTP byte range requests to be used (rather than being  
protocol agnostic, which I would prefer) then a reference to the spec for  
HTTP byte ranges would be in order, for example.

Finally, since we intend for other specs to refer to this spec, we also  
need to have clear hook definitions they can reuse and should also write  
an example of how other specs can refer to ours, unless it's obvious (it  
isn't to me at this point).

-- 
Philip Jägenstedt
Core Developer
Opera Software

Received on Thursday, 28 January 2010 12:48:46 UTC