PRD03 use of the word "will"

[Alex Brown <alexb@griffinbrown.co.uk>]

What does "will" mean? Does it specify things which must be done?  The word will is used throughout the text (it occurs 92 times in Part 1 - some of which are in OASIS' boilerplate text).

Sometimes it appears to be a synonym for "shall" e.g. in 19.550:

"If only the svg:rx attribute is present then its value will be used for svg:ry"

or 19.624:

"If they are equal, the comparison will stop immediately returning an equality as result."

At other times "will" seems to indicate some (optional?) application behaviour e.g. in 19.693

"The table:print attribute specifies if a table will be printed"

Or 19.777.4

"a new row will be selected only if the condition evaluates to a value interpreted as true".

Mandatory things should be expressed using "shall"; optional things should be expressed using "may"; application behaviours should be couched in terms of consumer behaviour (and/or made into notes).

- Alex.



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