Two more comments on "SpecLite"

Two further comments:

>> [1] http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/WD-qaframe-spec-20040602/

1) I found the dimensions of variability stuff pitched about right
(sorry I haven't the text in front of me - I am sitting on some grass
outside Genoa airport)
I suspect that you will need another sceptical reviewer at some stage
for it though - it is technically the hardest part of the document - and
  I had already been convinced of its value.

I thought I would offer the following story that you might like to
include in that section:
[[
One WG decided to use the built-in datatypes from XML Schema in their
specification. However, on inspection it become clear that a few of
these were inappropriate, and that some implementors thought the cost of
implementing all of the rest prohibitive. Thus the WG identified: five
or six datatypes as not recommended, and two as required, leaving the
other twelve as optional. They failed to identify subsets of the
optional datatypes, leaving implementors free to choose any of the 4096
possible subsets. The WG never articulated the extent of this freedom,
nor wondered whether interoperability would be enhanced by restricting
it in a sensible manner. Until they reached PR they also failed to
consider the interaction between this and the profiles that their
specification included. One of these profiles extended another
specification that required the implementation of one of the optional
datatypes. One AC reviewer drew critical attention to the potential
conflicts in the datatypes mismatch at the extension point, resulting in
heated discussion in the WG and a last minute patch to the specification
in the last few weeks before it went to Recommendation.
]]

(The numbers are currently approximate, if you would like to use these
text, pls let me know, and I will correct them to the actual values from
OWL)

2) The above story has followed what appears to be your convention of
negative war stories being anonymous, whereas positive ones are
attributed. Being one to let it all hang out, I tend to favour making
both positive and negative war stories attributed, e.g. someone
interested in the story about QAWG in section E, could look back at your
aborted CR and the comments and get a more in depth feel for what went
wrong and why.

I think politeness could be maintained by asking the 'offending' WGs
whether they mind having their negative experiences attributed to them
in the QA documents. Perhaps some informal feelers on this issue would
be an appropriate first step.

Jeremy

Received on Monday, 14 June 2004 04:15:31 UTC