Re: [xliff] Migration Policy Document

[Mark Levins/Ireland/IBM <mark_levins@ie.ibm.com>]

Hi Tony,

I've just one problem wrt the 'Cross-release compatibility guidelines' section. In this section you state that "Tools must not delete data that it does not understand" and "Tools must preserve unknown elements in the file". If a tool is validating, using either Schema or DTD, these comments cannot be applied if the version of the XLIFF in the file is later than the tool supports or if the tool uses an earlier Schema or DTD.
Perhaps the addition of something like "Tools should not try to validate later versioned XLIFF documents" might suffice.

Regards,
Mark

Tony Jewtushenko <Tony.Jewtushenko@oracle.com> 07/25/02 06:33 PM

To:        "xliff@lists.oasis-open.org" <xliff@lists.oasis-open.org>         cc:                 Subject:        [xliff] Migration Policy Document

I've revised the document based on discussions over the past two
meetings.

Please reply with your comments by next Tuesday - if no major
contentious issues remain by then,  I will draft and distribute an email
ballot to approve the policy.

Regards,
Tony




--
Tony Jewtushenko    mailto:tony.jewtushenko@oracle.com
Sr. Tools Program Manager   direct tel: +353.1.8039080
Product Management - Tools Technology Team
Oracle Corporation, Ireland




XLIFF 1.1 W.I.P. – 1.0 to 1.1 Migration Policy

 

Version Information:

Version	Date	Author	Description
1.0	11 June 02	Tony Jewtushenko	Initial Document
1.01	24 July 02	Tony Jewtushenko	Revisions based on 23 July 2002 TC Meeting.

Document Conventions: 

The document is coded in the following way (adhering to Peter Reynolds's document convention): 


Greenif there is agreement 
Navy if more discussion is needed 
and redif it is contentious. 

Where I have made a change I have emphasised the changed word.

 

 

Migration Policy Proposals: 

Rules for Major vs. Minor releases:

Support for Existing Users:

Rules for Name Changes:

Impact of Migration on Users Organisations:

Cross-release Compatibility Guidelines:

User Migration Assistance

Marketing, Public Relations and Education:

 

Rules for Major vs. Minor releases:

• The Technical Committee will evaluate each individual release and classify it as  "Major" or "Minor" release.
• As a guideline,  "Minor" releases:

1. Shall be comprised of small changes that would not require re-certification of supporting tools or technologies
2. Shall deprecate but not remove any features present in the previous release.
3. Shall increment the version number to the right of the decimal point.

• As a guideline,  "Major" releases

1. May be comprised of significant architectural changes that may require re-certification of supporting tools and technology.
2. May delete features that were deprecated in previous releases.
3. Shall result in an increment to the version number to the left of the decimal point.

• In general, a Minor release will have stricter rules on changes than Major releases:  Minor releases usually be comprised of small and superficial changes and bug fixes to an existing specification rather than deep architectural changes, which would typically be implemented only for Major releases.
  
  Support for Existing Users:
  
  • Deprecated support for changed elements, values or attribute names, at least until next Major version number revision.
  • Enumerated lists are a potential issue if they are closed.   Therefore, no 1.1 lists will be closed if they existed as open lists in 1.0.
    
    Rules for Name Changes:
    
    • Name changes to required elements and attributes will be considered only if semantics change.
      
       
      
      Impact of Migration on Users Organisations:
      
      • Where appropriate, the TC will audit food-chain migration and compliance issues when deciding on architectural changes to 1.0.   The "food chain" describes the dependencies within related organization. For instance translators for a localisation vendor company, localisation engineers for the publishing company and software developers are all different point on the food chain, and may be affected differently by different types of changes.
      • Results of such an audit may influence the TC's release and migration strategy.
        
         
        
        Cross-release Compatibility Guidelines:
        
        • Tools designed to support Minor XLIFF releases should provide backward compatibility for files that adhere to the same major release specification.  For instance, tools that support version 1.1 files should be able to cope with 1.0
        • Tools designed to support XLIFF should not upgrade the version of a file without either warning the user or requiring explicit UI or command line setting.
        • Tools must not delete data that it does not understand.
        • Tools must preserve unknown elements in the file.
          
           
          
          User Migration Assistance
          
          • A Migration Policy Statement will be published as section of each specification.
          • A Migration guidelines white paper will be authored and provided as a deliverable of each release.
          • A  "Migration Support Kit" – containing Whitepaper, Sample Files,  and  possibly sample XSLT's  - will be made available for download at the XLIFF TC website.
            
             
            
            Marketing, Public Relations and Education:
            
            • Formal Marketing, Public Relations, and Education strategies and plans shall be devised as part of the rollout of new releases.
              
               
              
               
              
               
              
              
              #### Tony.Jewtushenko.vcf has been removed from this note on July 30 2002 by Mark Levins