Re: Comments on guideline 13

Two further points may be noted:

1. Bearing in mind http://www.w3.org/TR/NOTE-xml-schema-req I would
suggest that the requirement for DTD compliance, whether introduced as a
checkpoint or only in the techniques document, be reformulated in terms of
formal grammars or structural schemata: authors must ensure that document
markup conforms to the formal grammar, structural schema or document type
definition provided in the W3C specification.

2. As a further critical remark pertaining to the "whenever possible"
exemption, it is in principle always "possible" (in the strict sense of
possibility which is common in ordinary discourse and relied upon in the
definition of priority 1 checkpoints) to meet a requirement, and to say
that a technique must be applied whenever possible is therefore
nonsensical in this context, provided that one has a proper appreciation
of what "possibility" means. One does not need to enter into a discussion
of "possible world" semantics to establish this point. Accordingly, as
suggested in my earlier message, it is necessary to substitute a more
explicit and helpful alternative to "whenever possible" and to avoid
giving the impression that the author is at liberty to take an
indeterminate range of considerations into account when exercising
discretion as to whether or not to apply a checkpoint.

Received on Monday, 1 March 1999 21:39:01 UTC