RE: Discussing Clarity, Ambiguity and Conformance Requirements

["Dennis E. Hamilton" <dennis.hamilton@acm.org>]

I think that is a question for Jamie, and it may be a matter of time
sequence.

I have some speculations:

1. It is very important for subsequent maintenance at OASIS to have an OASIS
UOML Specification that has identical content in the body of the
specification to whatever is finally approved as an ISO/IEC International
Standard (IS) via JTC1.  

2. That way errata produced for the OASIS Standard will also apply to the
IS.

3. Also, defect reports against the IS will apply to the OASIS Standard too.

4. That is important for a smooth maintenance cycle between JTC1 and OASIS.

Concerning the conformance section, you might need to do two things:

5. Prepare a version of UOML that uses ISO/IEC JTC1 conformance language
(shall, shall not, may, need not, can, can not) everywhere, if that option
wasn't taken.

6. Add a conformance section to whatever level you require.

But, 

7. Find out from Jamie whether it is better to process an edition 2 of the
current UOML at least through committee specification (or just committee
draft) before going to JTC1 or not.   I don't know if JTC1 would accept it
unless it is taken all the way to OASIS Standard though.  Jamie will have a
good sense of whether that is worthwhile.

8.  If you could just take the 2nd edition to committee draft and wait for
comments back from JTC1, you could line up a new committee draft with
adjustments for comments from JTC1, take that to committee specification,
send it to JTC1 as the basis for their IS document, and process it as an
OASIS standard to have a matching document at OASIS.  

I am not at all confident about (7-8), and Jamie will have far better
suggestions.  I only know how difficult keeping maintenance lined up for ODF
because we didn't do this and IS 26300:2006 is enough different from the
OASIS ODF 1.0 Standard that maintenance is tricky.

 - Dennis

-----Original Message-----
From: stephengreenubl@gmail.com [mailto:stephengreenubl@gmail.com] On Behalf
Of Stephen Green
Sent: Monday, January 19, 2009 17:24
To: dennis.hamilton@acm.org
Cc: UOML-X Comment; allison shi; Alex Wang
Subject: Re: Discussing Clarity, Ambiguity and Conformance Requirements

Thanks Dennis

This is the kind of QA detail I too think we need to consider.

Would submission to JTC1 provide the opportunity to improve
such aspects of the specification? Or would we need a further
document which we progress through the OASIS process, such
as some kind of conformance profile?

Best regards

Steve

2009/1/20 Dennis E. Hamilton <dennis.hamilton@acm.org>:
> In observing the call today, I the conversation about making sure there is
no ambiguity in the specifications (apart from what must be determined by
implementations), I thought of the Conformance Guidelines.  This is a good
test, although it doesn't prevent ambiguity.
>
> I find this document challenging to follow, but very promising in the
result it could provide:
>
> The 4 September 2007 Guidelines to Writing Conformance Clauses
> http://docs.oasis-open.org/templates/TCHandbook/ConformanceGuidelines.html
>
> There are a number of specific instructions about identifying conformance
targets and there is an interesting checklist in section 6:
>
http://docs.oasis-open.org/templates/TCHandbook/ConformanceGuidelines.html#_
Toc170119665
>
> The checklist might be useful to think about.
>
>  - Dennis
>
> Dennis E. Hamilton
> ------------------
> NuovoDoc: Design for Document System Interoperability
> mailto:Dennis.Hamilton@acm.org | gsm:+1-206.779.9430
> http://NuovoDoc.com http://ODMA.info/dev/ http://nfoWorks.org
>
>



-- 
Stephen D. Green

Document Engineering Services Ltd



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