- From: Marcos Caceres <w3c@marcosc.com>
- Date: Sun, 18 Dec 2011 19:31:05 +0000
- To: Leonard Rosenthol <lrosenth@adobe.com>
- Cc: Marcos Caceres <marcosscaceres@gmail.com>, Rigo Wenning <rigo@w3.org>, "Frederick.Hirsch@nokia.com" <Frederick.Hirsch@nokia.com>, "Art.Barstow@nokia.com" <Art.Barstow@nokia.com>, Thomas Roessler <tlr@w3.org>, Doug Schepers <schepers@w3.org>, "plh@w3.org" <plh@w3.org>, "public-webapps@w3.org" <public-webapps@w3.org>, "public-xmlsec@w3.org" <public-xmlsec@w3.org>
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.). 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. 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
Received on Sunday, 18 December 2011 19:31:40 UTC