[SVGMobile12] Conformance criteria

On Tue, 26 Apr 2005, Chris Lilley wrote:
> 
> If these are not specified, the default values of 100% are used.
> 
> or
> 
> If these are not specified, the default values of 100% must be used.

The former is a statement of fact, the second is a conformance criteria. 
Which should be used depends on whether that part of the spec is 
attempting to describe behaviour (e.g. because it is a tutorial section) 
or is attempting to state what user agents are supposed to do.

Or to put it another way: The latter is something you have to test before 
you exit CR, the former is meaningless unless you have some text elsewhere 
that promotes it to spec status (but I did not see any such text when 
perusing the new conformance section D.2).

Which is all to say that actually you don't really have a choice, it has 
to be the second of the above.

In general I would recommend going through the SVG 1.2 spec with a fine 
tooth comb making sure conformance criteria are actually conformance 
criteria. At the moment, much of the spec is actually untestable due to 
poor phraseology. For example, "A value of zero disables rendering of the 
element" is not technically testable, as it is not strictly a conformance 
criteria; at least not per section D.2 as I understand it.

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'

Received on Tuesday, 26 April 2005 21:35:26 UTC