Tin Man Design Question 8 - to achieve consensus Jan. 9th?

[David_Marston@lotus.com]

Here is one of the issues identified in my message titled
"Test Case Markup & Cataloging, Tin Man edition" that I sent
to this list on 12/1/2000:
8. What status do we attach to GrayArea items?

DISCUSSION:
All proposals from Straw Man up through Tin Man assume that
the gray areas are fully parallel to the discretionary items.
They would have names and possibly enumerated choices. See
The Catalog of Vague for the latest in this area. We could
name the gray areas without enumerating the choices, but
that would make it hard to include/exclude test cases based
on the gray-area data. We could postpone all of this work,
which would lead to a "Version 2" test case catalog in the
future.

The <GrayArea> element is separate from errata information in
<SpecCitation> because the two can sometimes work together,
but sometimes they're independent. In some sense, this issue
gauges our sentiment about having alternative test cases to
cover alternative design choices that the processor developer
can make. We should hear what the test labs think about use
of tests at various errata levels, even when the developer
didn't tell us which errata level they support, as a way to
measure how well the developer "guessed right" about the gray
areas that later got cleared up.

At our meeting, we can just exchange views. The discussion
could go in a direction which would lead to a motion and
vote.
.................David Marston