- From: Gary Feldman <gfeldman@marsdome.com>
- Date: Fri, 04 Feb 2005 03:02:48 +0000
- To: www-qa@w3.org
Karl Dubost wrote: > As a technique, we could try to add something about consistency > checking between the two. > "Do a consistency checking between the prose and the formal > language of the specification to remove any ambiguities and > contradictions." > If we go a bit further, I think that often it's very frustrating for > the specification reader to have things defined in the formal language > and not expressed in the prose of the specification. Then the prose > should at least express everything which is given in the formal > language for human consumptions, where formal language is more for > machine consumptions (aka validation for example). I disagree. The formal language is far more useful for the humans who have to create the tests or the code. It's concise, precise, and unambiguous. It's often easier to do a reliable implementation from the formal spec - recursive decent parsers (or any hand-written lexer or parser), for example. I've always thought that the prose should focus on motivation and decision processes, while avoiding anything that might resemble a normative description unless there is really no choice. Gary
Received on Friday, 4 February 2005 11:14:17 UTC