Re: oddities in our Conformance Model

Le mercredi 20 avril 2005 à 09:48 -0600, Lofton Henderson a écrit :
> We say that Requirements are normative, and everything else including
> Good Practices is informative.  I find that odd.  In my view, GPs are
> normative but optional, like a SHOULD.  The fact that GPs appear in
> our ICS, and the fact that the language and wording of GPs is exactly
> identical to that used in Rqts -- these reinforce the
> normative/optional view.

Very good point, indeed.

> The question is complicated by the fact that we don't have a
> definition of normative, neither in SpecGL nor in the "comprehensive
> QA Glossary".  We have to go back 18 months [2] to find a definition
> of normative (at least one which is the result of QAWG deliberation
> and consensus):
> 
> > normative text
> >     text in a specification which is prescriptive or contains
> > conformance requirements.
> 
> [2]
> http://www.w3.org/TR/2003/CR-qaframe-spec-20031110/definitions#definitions

(I suggest we don't forget to deal with that separate issue: should we
define normative, and if so with what definition?)

> IMO, the difficulty arises because we want a simple conformance model
> with a single conformance designation:  "Conforming" (satisfies all
> Rqts).  The problem could be solved by some additional designation
> such as "Conforming PLUS", but we avoided such complication (rightly,
> I believe).  It could also be solved by classifying the GPs as
> "normative, optional", saying that it's better than plain Conforming
> to satisfy as many GPs as possible, but not defining any designation
> other than "Conforming" ( == "does all Rqts").

I like the latter approach; of course we need to find the right wording
for it... Would you have a draft proposal?

> We should eat our own dogfood -- clear definitions and clear
> conformance model.  In my view, we don't do that now.  I'm not
> suggesting that we should fundamentally alter what it means to be
> SpecGL-Conforming, but that we ought to clean up how it's structured
> and presented.

Agreed.

Dom
-- 
Dominique Hazaël-Massieux - http://www.w3.org/People/Dom/
W3C/ERCIM
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