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Subject: Re: draft proposal 0.3 - Establishing the conformance landscape
- From: david_marston@us.ibm.com
- To: oiic-formation-discuss@lists.oasis-open.org
- Date: Mon, 28 Jul 2008 19:00:36 -0400
[I have been lurking since this list
was started. I think the discussion is reaching a point where my experience
with the OASIS Conformance TC and XSLT Conformance Testing TC may yield
some useful comments.]
A well-written spec would have a conformance
clause that defines which classes of product are intended to be subject
to conformance testing. I didn't see such a clause in ODF 1.1, so I tried
to discern the class-of-product intent from various parts of the document.
See [1] for the OASIS view of conformance, but note that the dimensions
of variability have been superseded by [2]. Based primarily on sections
1.5 and 1.7, I see references to the conformance of four classes of product:
(A) Conforming reader or display application
(B) Conforming producer of ODF, that
is not an ODF editor
(C) Conforming reader-writer, such as
an ODF editor
(D) Conforming ODF documents
I think most of the discussion so far
has been assuming conformance testing of (A) and a test regime would supply
documents as input and examine how they are displayed by the app. Testing
of (D) would be more like validating the documents against a schema, which
would also be an indirect test of (B). Perhaps (C) can be deferred, but
it should be in scope for this TC.
Also note that classes A-D above will
have different stakeholders, as addressed in part 1f of the charter. I
think we should strengthen the protection for class (D) stakeholders by
explicit acknowledgement that some indirect beneficiaries hope to issue
ODF documents that will be permannetly guaranteed to be readable by a conforming
(A) reader. Also, the vision-impaired should be acknowledged as appropriate
for all the classes of product, so that conforming documents may someday
be accessible to all.
Yes, the ODF TC owns the definition
of conformance for ODF. Let's hope that they do better in the future. I
think it is reasonable for the Interop & Conformance TC to acknowledge
the other TC's role as part of the charter.
In addition to class of product, Variability
in Specifications [2] identifies other dimensions that may apply to ODF.
The clearest one is probably discretionary items, since the spec gives
a lot of leeway for specific items to be implemented or not. (But if they
are implemented, they must conform.) Extensibility is also present. I couldn't
discern any use of levels, modules, or deprecation, but others may find
something.
Profiles are a very interesting dimension
of variability for ODF. Appendix D of 1.1 hints at some possible profiles,
one for each column in the table. The draft charter for this TC identifies
other potential profiles under 1c, bullets 4 and 5. This is not necessarily
a conflict with the ODF TC's ownership of the specification of conformance;
a spec can permit others to develop profiles. I urge all who would like
to reword the charter to read up on profiles.
.................David Marston
IBM Research
[1] http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/download.php/305/conformance_requirements-v1.pdf
[2] http://www.w3.org/TR/2005/NOTE-spec-variability-20050831/
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