[Bug 3220] Terminology: "must"

http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=3220





------- Comment #7 from mike@saxonica.com  2008-02-20 10:04 -------
I have a personal preference for only talking about conformance in a
conformance section, and using other language ("must", "error", "constraint")
elsewhere. Rather than saying "A schema document is not conformant with this
specification if maxOccurs is less than minOccurs", I prefer formulations like:

* minOccurs must be less than maxOccurs

* It is an error if minOccurs is not less than maxOccurs

* It is a constraint that minOccurs must be less than maxOccurs

and then have a conformance section that says errors must be reported or
constraints must be enforced.

I don't have a strong feeling about the relative merits of
must/error/constraint, but I think the three formulations should be equivalent
- and I think the notion of "errors" is one that is familiar to many readers.

(Clearly the point about not requiring all errors to be reported is legitimate
- all we should actually require for conformance is a boolean outcome that
indicates whether a schema document is or or not error-free.)

A reminder about the original point of this bug report: the spec currently says
that a processor can do anything it likes if minOccurs > maxOccurs, and I don't
think that's acceptable.

Received on Wednesday, 20 February 2008 10:04:27 UTC