Re: A few comments on SpecGL

QAWG --

At 05:27 PM 7/30/02 -0400, David Marston/Cambridge/IBM wrote:
>[...]
>Ck 10.1: Change the word "clause" to something else? I'd favor a
>change. I think this came from the NIST people, so maybe one of them
>can comment further.

Any comments from NIST people?

http://www.w3.org/QA/Glossary defines conformance clause as:  "Part of a 
specification which defines the requirements that must be satisfied to 
claim conformance to part of the specification." is the definition of 
conformance clause.

I think our current SpecGL draft is better in avoiding the implication that 
conformance clause is a discrete document section: "A conformance clause is 
a part or collection of parts of a specification that defines the 
requirements, criteria, or conditions to be satisfied by an implementation 
or application in order to claim conformance"

We can either live the term and just disambiguate it -- CK10.1 already 
contains this new sentence, "As used in this checkpoint, "clause" does not 
necessarily imply a specific single document section or location (see next 
checkpoint)"

Or we can search for a better phrase to replace "conformance clause".

What do you think?


>Ck 11.1: Avoid overloading the word "levels"? A big +1 from me!
>.................David Marston

CK11.1:  "Identify and define all conformance levels or designations."

Candidates for a replacement word for "levels":

degrees
flavors
types
categories
thingies
foobars
...other?...

Alternative approach:

Section 8.2.1 of [1] says:  "A specification may differentiate conformance 
claims by designating different degrees of conformance in order to apply 
and group requirements according to profiles or [functional] levels or to 
indicate the permissibility of extensions.  When a conformance claim is 
linked to functionality, impact, and/or incremental degrees of 
implementation, the term conformance level is often used to indicate the 
varying degrees of conformance."

So maybe it would suffice to make sure that "level" always has a qualifier 
in front of it, "functional" or "conformance", and make sure that each is 
clearly defined.  (And convert the "@@" comment right after [2] into proper 
prose.)

What do you think?

-Lofton.

[1] 
http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/ioc/documents/conformance_requirements-v1.pdf
[2] http://www.w3.org/QA/WG/2002/07/qaframe-spec-0729#Ck-define-all-levels