possible minor typos in WD-P3P-19991102

Simple suggestions follow, based on one reading of the P3P1.0 [1] "work in
progress." Please feel free to ignore them. Rather than wait for later
drafts (or wait for a recommendation and then submit errata), I thought the
start of working draft last call would be a good time to submit this.


General Comments

Apart from Appendix 2, the draft has 275 occurrences of " ", sometimes
separating words and sometimes adjacent to (and so, doubling) whitespace. I
believe they should all be removed in the final, so that browsers' "Find"
command can find strings containing a space.

In each case it's used, the I element could be EM.

The phrases "note that" and "please note" are hard to use correctly, and
appear numerous times. Jutta Degener wrote help with "note" in her page on
"Dangerous Words" [2].

As of 25 Nov 1999, COOLCATALOG.COM and PRIVACY.ORG are registered, and
PRIVACYSEAL.ORG is not registered. (In the draft, HyperSpeed isn't referred
to as a domain so that reference may not matter.) I just wonder if there
are provisions to reserve these example domains, or if it would be worth
trading off the more engaging names for the safer EXAMPLE.COM.

I think it would be helpful if the capitalization in the last column of all
TABLEs in section "4. Basic Data Types" matched the capitalization in
Appendix 2. Both appear to be normative. For example, I would change
"certificate" to "Certificate," "gender" to "Gender," "Postal code" to
"Postal Code," "Phone number" to "Phone Number," "formatted Postal Address"
to "Formatted Postal Address," and so on.

There are 21 occurrences of "SocioEconomic" with a capital "E." It's a
dictionary word, and I think can be spelled "Socioeconomic". "E-commerce"
appears once; my preference is "ecommerce" but I don't really know the best
answer there.

MSIE 4.5 Mac is drawing increasingly narrow BODY width as the draft
progresses, until, by the end, text occupies only the left half of the
viewport. Closing paragraphs with </P> before BLOCKQUOTES on lines 619,
632, 659, 752, 760, 774, 785, 893, 916 and so on, will fix this.


Line Items

Starting here, line numbers are followed by a quote and an attempt at a
correction. Comments are mainly in brackets [].

lines 18, 21, 24
FONT-FAMILY: fixed
[There is no value 'fixed'.]
font-family: monospace

lines 100, 116, 120
Working Group
[Mentioned both ways: Is "working group" capitalized?]

lines 169 through 807
[not sure]
When referring to LINK, "tag" could read "element".

line 332
P3P declaration are positive
could read
"P3P declarations are positive" or "P3P declaration is positive"

line 347
web broswers
web browsers

line 348
Javascript
JavaScript

line 489
A known grouping of data element,
A known grouping of data elements,

line 491
P3P1.0 specifies a number of base data schemas.
[At the risk of repeating the definition from line 311,
"base data schemas" could be defined here, because it's a
new term in the Terminology section. Maybe a link would work.]

line 571
relationship between a user and her agent
relationship between a user and her or his agent
[or reword to eliminate gender reference altogether]

line 595, 603, 607, 648, 653, 655, 670, 675, 773, 807,
"link tag" or "LINK tag" could read:
<TT>LINK</TT> tag [or element]

lines 603-608 and 670-676
[The note on errors for mismatched or multiple P3P
policies is repeated. Maybe could be spelled out only once.]

line 718-719
servers SHOULD not
servers SHOULD NOT

line 745
2.4 Examples
2.4 Example

line 814
User selects the "shoes" pages
User selects the "shoes" page

lines 1072-1073
changing the agreement (opt-out)
[Not sure. Is "opt-out" always a synonym for changing an agreement?]

lines 1094 to 1096
"...Also, if access is provided through the Web we recommend
    the use of strong authentication and security mechanisms
    for such access, however security issues are outside the
    scope of this document."
[Is inside a description of the DISCLOSURE element the best place to
give the P3P proposal's security statement? Not sure. The only other
mention of security is on line 301.]

line 1357-1358
in order to redistribute it to <TT>published</TT>; the site must
or
in order to redistribute it to <TT>published</TT>: the site must
or
in order to redistribute it to <TT>published</TT>. The site must

line 1611
information; they also
or
information: they also
or
information. They also

line 1622
service providers interest
service provider's interest

line 1629
service provider. (e.g.
service provider (e.g.

line 1700, 2056, 2059, 2247-2255
[Is "dataschema" one word or two? Not sure but I think it's two.]

line 1731
If set to "yes", this means that that the data element is
If set to "yes", the data element is

line 1791
[not sure]
data set <TT>user.home.phone</TT>,
data set <TT>user.home.phone.</TT>,

lines 1925 and 1991
Base Data Schema
could read
base data schema
[other places it is not capitalized]

lines 1966-1967, and 1973-1974
template="yes"
  /&gt;</TT>
template="yes"/&gt;</TT>
[to follow " with /]

line 2223
Data Elements
Data elements

line 2236
Note, that
Note that

line 2331
<SPAN class=variable>background</SPAN> color.
[seems to be a stray line of text]

lines 2498-2499
should explicitly by declared
should explicitly be declared

line 3610
http://info.internet.4.3.5.3isi.edu/in-notes/rfc/files/rfc2234.txt
http://info.internet.isi.edu/in-notes/rfc/files/rfc2234.txt
[4.3.5.3 seems to be stray text]

line 3614
name = (element)
name = (elements)
[or <elements> on line 3616 could be singular]

line 3663
[not sure]
matches a literal string matching that given inside the double quotes.
matches a literal string given inside double quotes.

line 3689
previous groups (affiliations shown
previous groups; (affiliations shown


References

[1] http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/WD-P3P-19991102
[2] http://kbs.cs.tu-berlin.de/~jutta/ht/writing/words.html

Best wishes, and good luck with your project.

--
Susan Lesch
susan@textet.com
http://www.textet.com/

Received on Thursday, 25 November 1999 18:39:04 UTC