RE: John's proposed wording for Principle 4

Hi Neil,

At 19:34 15/07/2005, Neil Whiteley wrote:
><proposed>
>Principle 1. Content must be able to work with current and future
>technologies
></proposed>
>
>Concerning the 4 Principals overall, how is the keyword *must* being
>interpreted? Is it understood to mean the same as *MUST* in accordance with
>RFC 2119 [RFC2119] <http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml-media-types/>  or is it
>definitely a *must* as sometimes interpreted as an RFC2119 *MAY*?

This is the text of the principle, not of a success criterion, so I think
this is less critical here.


>If it is really a *MUST* then it should be capitalised and there needs to be
>a reference somewhere within the documents back to RFC2119.
>
>If it is really a *must* then it becomes ambiguous. In this case however, I
>propose that all 4 Principals (taking into account Johns proposal) could be
>written thus:
>
>1. Content is perceivable
>2. User interface components in the content are operable
>3. Content and controls are understandable
>4. Content is able to work with current and future technologies

The principles are high-level and rather abstract guiding rules; they are not
sufficiently atomic to make wording with RFC 2119 keywords worthwhile.
Moreover, conformance is defined with regard to success criteria, not
principles. That said, I can live with a change from "must" to "is/are",
but I prefer the current wording.

Regards,

Christophe Strobbe


>Regards,
>
>Neil Whiteley

-- 
Christophe Strobbe
K.U.Leuven - Departement of Electrical Engineering - Research Group on 
Document Architectures
Kasteelpark Arenberg 10 - 3001 Leuven-Heverlee - BELGIUM
tel: +32 16 32 85 51
http://www.docarch.be/ 

Received on Friday, 15 July 2005 18:20:46 UTC