- From: Mikko Rantalainen <mira@cc.jyu.fi>
- Date: Mon, 31 May 2004 01:48:31 +0300
- To: www-style@w3.org
Boris Zbarsky / 2004-05-28 18:53: > Mikko Rantalainen wrote: > >> IMO, the most strict spec one can give is a full (reference) >> implementation; that is, everything that produces exactly the >> same result is compliant, anything else isn't. > > Which means you have to reverse-engineer the reference > implementation, basically? I understand 'reverse-engineering' as reconstructing "blue prints" from finished product. Reference implementation (source code) is an *exact* blue print description of only allowed behavior [1]. Sure, it isn't in English, but it's far from reverse-engineering. > Oh, and would "bug fixes" to the reference implementation be > allowed? ;) As I said, that's the "most strict spec". One can have bugs in any spec, it's only that the bugs in reference implementation can be more easily found than from a human language written description. The point I was trying to make was that if Andrew couldn't come up with a spec that described the requested feature well enough, he could just publish his reference implementation instead. Reference implementation surely has some parts thought out (because it doesn't segfault;-) and we can then discuss if it is worth to include in W3C draft. [1] (I wouldn't call most of the W3C specs strict or exact as there're always some parts of the recommendations under discussion. Aren't those part that require further discussion "bugs"? Or are those just because of incorrect or unclear documentation?) -- Mikko
Received on Sunday, 30 May 2004 18:48:30 UTC