Re: informal survey - on spec philosophy

On Mon, Mar 26, 2012 at 4:23 PM, Kang-Hao (Kenny) Lu <
kennyluck@csail.mit.edu> wrote:

> (12/03/27 5:43), Glenn Adams wrote:
> > my position is that, unless somewhere it is documented what the
> convention
> > "associated with" means, that it is (1) ambiguous, and (2) can be
> > interpreted in any of the above four ways;
>
> This is still lacking context, but in general I agree with you.
>

The specific context this came up in is [1].

[1] https://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=16299


> > this also goes to the issue of whether "if it is not documented in the
> spec
> > it is not allowed" applies; my position is that if the spec is ambiguous
> > (allows for multiple reasonable readings), then it is allowed (even
> though
> > that may not have been the author's intent);
>
> Agreed.
>
> (12/03/27 4:40), Glenn Adams wrote:
> > It has been stated to me that, at least for "open web platform
> > standards", the following statement is true and is shared by the
> > majority:
> >
> > "if it isn't written in the spec, it isn't allowed by the spec"
>
> What context was this statement in? For the spec for API A, you can't
> really write a test that asserts the non-existence of API B of course.
>

 A WebApps spec editor made this assertion to me "if it isn't written in
the spec, it isn't allowed by the spec". I did (do) not agree. I wondered
what others think.

The specific context is how to interpret "associated with" and whether it
means one-to-one or not. Since the spec doesn't define "associated with", I
argue that it need not be interpreted as one-to-one. However, the editor
argued that if the spec doesn't say that it can be interpreted as
non-injective (not one-to-one), then this interpretation is not allowed.