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Subject: Re: [dita] Normative language specification


I would argue that the agent doing the validation is not the application but
the DTD and that therefore the application is blameless and thus conforming.
It's the not application's fault that there's a bug in the spec. Nor is it
an application's obligation to correct errors in the spec.

This is similar to the case of tools, such as Saxon, that corrected obvious
bugs in a spec but, in doing so, had to disclaim that such corrections were,
technically, non-conforming and might lead to non-interoperable results.

So if your product shipped corrected DTDs that fixed the bug, the
application would be, at that point, technically non-conforming, but a
simple statement to that effect is, I think, sufficient to call off the
conformance police, or a least assure your users that your intentions are
good.

But on its face, it's difficult or impossible for a user to distinguish "bug
fixing" from "proprietary subversion" unless the tool itself says which it
is.

But, as we are all saying, this should be an edge case, with all such errors
found before final publication.

Cheers,

E.

On 1/13/10 4:55 PM, "Grosso, Paul" <pgrosso@ptc.com> wrote:

> 
> 
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Eliot Kimber [mailto:ekimber@reallysi.com]
>> Sent: Wednesday, 2010 January 13 16:45
>> To: Bruce Nevin (bnevin); Ogden, Jeff; dita
>> Subject: Re: [dita] Normative language specification
> 
> 
>> 
>> Again, if there is a out and out conflict between what the prose says
>> and
>> what the DTDs say, then there is a bug in one or the other, but until
>> the
>> bug is fixed, the prosed is presumed to be correct. For example, if
> the
>> prose says "you can have zero or more foos" and the DTD requires at
>> least
>> one foo, until the prose is corrected (assuming it's wrong in this
>> example),
>> a document with zero foos is, by definition, a conforming document for
>> this
>> particular rule.
> 
> Right, but is an application that uses the DTD and gives a validity
> error for the document with zero foos a conforming DITA application?
> 
> Per your words, it is not.
> 
> So what should the implementor who is producing an out-of-the-box
> DITA application supposed to include in its distribution?  The
> broken DTD that will complain about the valid document or a
> privately corrected version of the DTD that isn't what OASIS
> is distributing?
> 
> I'm not that worried about the issue, but that, I think, is Bruce's
> point.
> 
> paul
> 
> 
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-- 
Eliot Kimber
Senior Solutions Architect
"Bringing Strategy, Content, and Technology Together"
Main: 610.631.6770
www.reallysi.com
www.rsuitecms.com



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