Re: [css-flexbox-1] Untestable assertions

On Mon, Apr 15, 2013 at 10:31 AM, Arron Eicholz
<Arron.Eicholz@microsoft.com> wrote:
> On Monday, April 15, 2013 9:52 AM Tab Atkins Jr. wrote:
>> On Mon, Apr 15, 2013 at 8:49 AM, Arron Eicholz
>> <Arron.Eicholz@microsoft.com> wrote:
>> > On Saturday, April 13, 2013 12:10 PM Tab Atkins Jr. wrote:
>> >> The words are intended to be part of RFC2119.  The fact that they
>> >> can't be automatically tested is irrelevant, because we won't be
>> >> testing them anyway (they're authoring conformance, not UA
>> conformance).
>> >
>> > I really don't care about the RFC2119 in this situation. I am pointing out the
>> fact that we can't test author's conformance. And we cannot require authors
>> to do anything. Authors have the freedom of choice to do things.
>>
>> And *I'm* pointing out that we don't test authoring conformance criteria.
>> That's for validators and evangelists to do.
>
> Ahh but we have to verify normative statements in the spec that have testable assertions. And in these cases they are testable assertions.

Who is "we"?  If you're trying to imply that the CSSWG has to test
authoring conformance criteria in order to exit CR, you're wrong.  No
WG has ever been blocked from advancing for failing to test authoring
criteria.

>> >> As Henrik says, this style of authoring conformance is used
>> >> elsewhere, such as HTML.
>> >
>> > While I agree that there may be other places that follow this same pattern.
>> It does not justify the fact that it is incorrect to state the sentence this way.
>> Also I have seen very few normative, if any, statements that use this
>> particular grammar and fall into this situation. We could also make these
>> notes and that would also solve the problem.
>>
>> No, this is literally used everywhere.  Every single time a validator raises an
>> error, it's because of an authoring conformance criteria.
>> These are sometimes implicit rather than explicit, but that's largely because
>> we simple don't care as much about being precise with authoring
>> conformance.
>
> Please point me to more situations like this. I will raise issues because they require tests to test authors' compliance with something. All the other cases I have seen similar to this right now are in notes, which aren't normative.

See: any part of CSS that would result in a validator error, any part
of HTML that would result in a validator error, etc.

>> > Wouldn't it just be easier to fix the issue since and issue was raised, than to
>> continue to argue this point over email?
>>
>> ...really?
>
> Yes really. It's easy to fix these simple grammar mistakes I have pointed out. I have edited specs and I know it takes only 5-10 minutes to make simple edits like this.

I wasn't questioning the ease - of course it's easy.  I was
questioning the tone, which implies that I should be taking the
easiest way out rather than the correct way.  But this is an
irrelevant tangent, and I'm not going to pursue it.

~TJ

Received on Monday, 15 April 2013 18:19:05 UTC