- From: Mark Skall <mark.skall@nist.gov>
- Date: Wed, 28 Apr 2004 10:07:48 -0400
- To: Lofton Henderson <lofton@rockynet.com>
- Cc: www-qa-wg@w3.org
One more point about extensions. As far as I can remember, the term originated with the language (COBOL, Fortran, etc.) standards and was used in the context of implementer and programmer conformance where an implementer conformed if implementations contained extensions (the standard being a floor for implementers) but the programmer did not conform if he/she used the extensions provided by the implementation (the standard is a ceiling for programmers). If the word gradually broadened over the years to sometimes include other things, I think that's a poor use of the term. By writing our documents and defining terms we have the opportunity to force precision in writing and speaking. Mark **************************************************************** Mark Skall Chief, Software Diagnostics and Conformance Testing Division Information Technology Laboratory National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) 100 Bureau Drive, Stop 8970 Gaithersburg, MD 20899-8970 Voice: 301-975-3262 Fax: 301-590-9174 Email: skall@nist.gov ****************************************************************
Received on Wednesday, 28 April 2004 10:09:58 UTC