Re: [widgets] P&C: remove MAY and OPTIONAL assertions?

On Mon, Oct 5, 2009 at 2:54 PM, Arthur Barstow <art.barstow@nokia.com> wrote:
> When scanning the Test Suite Version of the P&C spec I noticed some MAY and
> OPTIONAL assertions for which there are no associated test assertions. This
> implies these "assertions" aren't really necessary and should be removed or
> made non-Normative (e.g. hints to an implementor).
>

I respectfully disagree to an extent. Normative clarification on
optionality is important, IMO (although not worth testing, as you
mentioned). For example, if someone asks The Widget Company why they
don't support .ico files as a default icon format, they can point to
the spec and say that it is OPTIONAL. Without explicitly stating what
is optional, it could lead to confusion amongst implementers and
developers (e.g., developers thinking that xhtml must be supported by
a widget engine because it is listed as one of the default start
files).

> Section 2:
>
> [[
> http://dev.w3.org/2006/waf/widgets/Overview_TSE.html#conformance
>
> A user agent MAY support other legacy/proprietary widget formats.
> ]]
>

I think we should keep this one.

> Section 4:
>
> [[
> http://dev.w3.org/2006/waf/widgets/Overview_TSE.html#user-agents
>
> It is OPTIONAL for a user agent to support the optional aspects of the Zip
> specification.
> ]]
>

I think we should keep this one.

> Section 7.11.1
>
> [[
> http://dev.w3.org/2006/waf/widgets/Overview_TSE.html#the-content-element
>
> Aside from the default encoding, it is OPTIONAL for a user agent to support
> other character encodings.
> ]]
>

I think we should keep this one.

> Section 9:
>
> [[
> http://dev.w3.org/2006/waf/widgets/Overview_TSE.html#steps-for-processing-a-widget-package
>
> A user agent MAY optimize steps for processing a widget package and
> associated processing rules, or MAY perform the steps in a different order,
> but the end result MUST be indistinguishable from the result that would be
> obtained by following the specification.

This is now a note.

> It is OPTIONAL for a user agent to validate language tags against the IANA
> Language Subtag Registry during the steps for processing a widget package.

Removed. This is a conformance checker related thing.

> ]]
>
>
> Section 9.1.11
>
> [[
> http://dev.w3.org/2006/waf/widgets/Overview_TSE.html#processing-rules
>
> It is OPTIONAL for a user agent to support any of the media types listed in
> the media type identification table.
> ]]

I think we should keep this one.

> Section 9.1.12
>
> [[
> http://dev.w3.org/2006/waf/widgets/Overview_TSE.html#processing-rules
>
> It is OPTIONAL for a user agent to support the media types given in the file
> identification table.
> ]]

I think we should keep this one.

-- 
Marcos Caceres
http://datadriven.com.au

Received on Tuesday, 6 October 2009 10:21:27 UTC