- From: Jean-Claude Dufourd <jean-claude.dufourd@telecom-paristech.fr>
- Date: Mon, 19 Dec 2011 09:55:35 +0100
- To: public-webapps@w3.org
On 18/12/11 20:31 , Marcos Caceres wrote: > > On Sunday, December 18, 2011 at 5:45 PM, Leonard Rosenthol wrote: > >> Undated references (what you are suggesting) has the MAJOR PROBLEM that it makes it DIFFICULT/IMPOSSIBLE to do validation of any product that claims conformance to a standard – since it's impossible to determine which version of each undated reference they used. > That's a FEATURE, not a "problem". Makes it inexcusable not to keep up with specs (same design built into HTML5, SVG, etc.). JCD: How can you seriously state something like this ? It is so naive to think such hand waving on the spec will have any effect on how businesses adopt it and use it. > > > See also how this de-cupling worked for XML: > http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/spec-prod/2011OctDec/0192.html > http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/spec-prod/2011OctDec/0201.html > >> Additionally, it makes interoperability difficult/impossible since you can have multiple valid conforming implementations BUT they don't actually interoperate due to changes between revisions (and algo changes would be a good example of such an interoperability issue). > I don't see how that is possible: if your spec does not conform to /latest/, then you are non-conforming. JCD: No! It means the spec is broken. Just because you decide on a new "definition" of conformance does not mean it is shared by everyone. Regards JC (speaking as coordinator of conformance in all MPEG standards between 1998 and 2006) > If you were conforming yesterday, but a new version of the a spec comes out tomorrow, then you update your software to conform to the latest version. As an example, almost all Browsers are on a 6 week release cycle now: so it's quite inexcusable to expect to just conform to some dates draft and then expected to never have to update the software (i.e., conformance is an ongoing "living process": specs are buggy, tests are buggy, and software is buggy… any of those can affect an conformance over time: the are all living things). > > Pretending that slapping a date on spec means anything is unhelpful (and actually harmful, because all specs contain bugs and hence must be continuously maintained). > > -- > Marcos Caceres > > > > -- JC Dufourd Directeur d'Etudes/Professor Groupe Multimedia/Multimedia Group Traitement du Signal et Images/Signal and Image Processing Telecom ParisTech, 37-39 rue Dareau, 75014 Paris, France Tel: +33145817733 - Mob: +33677843843 - Fax: +33145817144
Received on Monday, 19 December 2011 08:56:06 UTC