SpecGL LC16 and 39: CP5.4 (o.ld 8.4) Discretionary items

Your help is requested on the CP about consistency of Discretionary Items

I was tasked with taking DM's input 
(http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-qa/2003Apr/0030.html) and 
rewriting the CP.  I, however, am not sure I understand DM's input or the 
discussion we had on it.... So, I propose the following 3 choices.

Please comment on which you think is the right direction and then, any 
edits are welcome.

Choice 1.
CP 5.4 Promote consistent handling of discretionary items

ConfReq:  The specification MUST indicate the rationale for discretionary 
items that do not follow the general policy for handling discretionary 
items as derived from CP 5.1, 5.2, and 5.3.

Rationale: The general policy helps to ensure that implementations can 
consistently handle discretionary choice  users have an expectation of what 
to expect and should be able to count on getting the same results under the 
same conditions with a given implementation.  The general policy may not be 
applicable to all discretionary items.  In these cases, a rationale helps 
to highlight the divergence.


Choice 2
CP5.4  The specification MUST provide rules for consistent terminology 
about discretionary items and MUST provide a rationale for discretionary 
items that do not follow the rules

Rationale:  This helps to ensure that implementations can consistently 
handle discretionary choice  users have an expectation of what to expect 
and should be able to count on getting the same results under the same 
conditions with a given implementation.  It also helps to propagate the 
rules about discretionary items onto the implementations, especially when 
an implementation could offer choices to the user.

Choice 3
Remove this CP

Comments welcome and needed.
Lynne

Received on Thursday, 4 September 2003 15:07:04 UTC