Should modules be divisible?

The current editor draft of the spec GL says:

"Atomicity of modules within profiles represents a clean design, and a
reflects that the modularization has been well tailored to the goal of
building profiles from modules"
http://www.w3.org/QA/WG/2002/08/qaframe-spec-0804.html#Gd-group-requirements-modules

This is said in the general verbiage of the GL about modules. I wonder
if this should not be a checkpoint instead since it does bring a
judgment on the design of modules.

The broader question behind that would be: should profiles use subset of
modules? As the verbiage mentions it, some do (SVG is mentioned, CSS3
seems to follow the same road [1]), some don't (XHTML, SMIL 20).
Interestingly enough, those which don't, define profiling rules to
enforce this rule for externally defined profiles.

3 questions:
- should modules be atomic by design? [ I assume that a "yes" implies
adding a new checkpoint]
- do CSS3 and SVG envision the possibility of non W3C defined profiles?
[this might explain the lack of rules to define the said profiles]
- should we say that if the creation of profiles is open (ie non W3C
restricted), there should be rules for these profiles and that one of
this rule should be atomicity of modules?

This is of course for sake of interoperability.

Dom

1. see http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-background/#profiling for instance
-- 
Dominique Hazaël-Massieux - http://www.w3.org/People/Dom/
W3C/INRIA
mailto:dom@w3.org

Received on Monday, 12 August 2002 08:58:35 UTC