2. Conformance

[Patrick Durusau <patrick@durusau.net>]

Greetings,

I have been spending a lot of time on the conformance chapter up to 
chapter 5.

It seems to me (subject to correction by the formula subcommittee) that 
"conformance" in any meaningful way to OpenFormula is a matter of 
several distinct clauses.

That is to say (using 2.1.1 Small Group as an example) that conformance 
involves:

1) basic limits (not all of which are reported in Chapter 3)
2) defined syntax
3) defined operators
4) defined functions

But, additional conformance requirements are imposed by:

A. Chapter 3 formula processing model (esp. calculation settings)
B. Chapter 4 types (some of which are types that are defined by other 
standards) and the ranges of those values spaces
C. Chapter 5 expression syntax

The OASIS guidelines on writing conformance clauses has suggestions for 
dealing with multiple conformance clauses and relating them to each 
other. See: 
http://docs.oasis-open.org/templates/TCHandbook/ConformanceGuidelines.html

The suggestion I would like to discuss is the reformulation (sorry) of 
chapters 2-5 to:

1) Define all of the components to be used in conformance clause 
(current chapters 3-5, I think chapter 6 needs to be surveyed for 
additional conformance statements) without statements about conformance.

2) Formulate multi-clause conformance statements for chapter 2 that 
reference the definitions to establish the various levels of conformance.

One advantage to that approach is that all the conformance requirements 
are stated in one location, even though the definitions on which those 
requirements depend reside elsewhere in the standard.

Second, for value spaces such as "characters" that will hopefully create 
one method of referencing each value space and not Unicode, 
"international characters," and/or ASCII. I suspect most of us would 
guess correctly on all of those but we shouldn't have to.

Third, I don't think the suggested approach requires re-organization of 
the chapters as much as it will require careful attention to how each 
component is defined and to the removal of conformance language from 
those definitions. That language should occur in the multi-clause 
conformance clause(s).

Comments/suggestions?

Hope everyone is having a great day!

Patrick

-- 
Patrick Durusau
patrick@durusau.net
Chair, V1 - US TAG to JTC 1/SC 34
Convener, JTC 1/SC 34/WG 3 (Topic Maps)
Editor, OpenDocument Format TC (OASIS), Project Editor ISO/IEC 26300
Co-Editor, ISO/IEC 13250-1, 13250-5 (Topic Maps)