WG4's handling of DR-09-0248 - General: Removing the need for qualifiers on attributes in Strict

[Rex Jaeschke]

I too am very uncomfortable with this thread, for a number of reasons.

1. In 25 years of working on 9 standards, my experience has been that most
non-trivial changes/additions made at the last minute turn out to range in
quality from problematic to disastrous.

2. A week ago in Copenhagen, we pushed back hard on this specific proposal.
>From the minutes: 

"There was broad support for adopting the proposed solution. After some
discussion, it was agreed that the solution involved changes to narrative,
examples and schemas covering at least 800 pages spread through Parts 1 and
4. And qualified versions of some examples from Part 1 will need to be added
to Part 4. The Project Editor estimated that the effort needed to implement
this solution was on the order of that for all the other DR resolutions
combined. Given the time available before the planned start of the ballots,
members saw no way that such a big editing task and WG4 review can be
accomplished. As such, resolution of this DR will be considered after the
closure of the COR1 and AMD1 sets."

I remain unconvinced that the task has gotten any simpler since then.

3. Today was the final day for people to get me final text, and for all
other issues, members are doing that.

4. From an aesthetics point of view, I sympathize with the intent of the
proposal; however, from an editorial viewpoint, I think it will make for a
very long-winded write-up that will be subject to public ridicule, which we
certainly don't need the first time out. Besides, editorially, by far the
best time to make such a sweeping text change is in a revision where we need
not report individual changes.

> But is there something which prevent use of two different styles of 
> how changes are expressed? One universal style is not necessary the 
> best style for all types of changes.

5. Absolutely, consistency! All change instructions should use a uniform
style. While it might seem easy at a glance to write a global instruction to
say something like "when you read so and so pretend it really says such and
such", that is not how Corrigenda and Amendments are written/interpreted.
For example, after some time, we'll have a base standard, some number of
Corrigenda and Amendments. Joe Public will find the topic of his interest in
the base standard, and then he'll (hopefully) look at all the CORs and AMDs,
in order (and AMDs can have defects fixed too), for that same subclause to
see if they have fixed/changed anything from the base. That is, each set of
editing instructions is completely self-contained and organized around the
clause number. If you start tossing in a number of general editing
instructions, it will make it much harder to interpret, and, in overlapping
cases, to identify which instruction takes precedence over the others.

6. Finally, we have some non-trivial implementations out there living just
fine with this "wart". Does it really need "fixing"? It's mighty tempting
during standards making to "just do it right" and clean up certain
unpleasant artifacts. However, to a very large extent, we are consolidating
prior art here, we're not crafting a new spec from scratch. And, right now,
I can't think of any prior art on which standards I've worked on were based
that couldn't have been improved if we had had the luxury of "doing it all
over". But, of course, we never did, and that's a common compromise on
standards work. Sometimes the most important question to answer is "Is it
good enough as is?". And also, "Can we spend our limited resources on other
things?"

Regards,

Rex


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jirka Kosek [mailto:jirka at kosek.cz]
> Sent: Thursday, July 02, 2009 4:27 PM
> To: MURATA Makoto (FAMILY Given)
> Cc: 'e-SC34-WG4 at ecma-international.org'
> Subject: Re: WG4's handling of DR-09-0248 - General: Removing the need
> for qualifiers on attributes in Strict
> 
> MURATA Makoto (FAMILY Given) wrote:
> 
> > I continue to feel uneasy unless I understand minor details.  We're
> > running out of time.  Please provide required instructions,
> > demonstrate that incorrect non-normative examples are not that
> > harmful.  Review all occurrences of at least a few attributes and
> show
> > which one has to be corrected by which instruction and which one does
> > not have to be corrected.
> 
> Hi Murata-san, folks,
> 
> please find attached draft of editing instructions which implement DR-
> 09-0248. I think that editing instructions are short and clear and
> should not create any confusion. Any comments welcomed.
> 
> >> Moreover, it seems that you see main problem in examples. But those
> >> examples are just informative part of the standard (see Part
> >> 1/Section 7/Page 16), so this IMHO decreases need to literally add
> them into AMD1.
> >
> > I do not know if occurrences of WML-qualified attributes are
> > restricted to examples.  I know that they occur in examples but they
> > may appear elsewhere.
> 
> Yes, all qualified attributes (not only WML but also from other 3
> namespaces) are only in examples in Part 1.
> 
> Proposed editing instructions duplicate all examples which use
> qualified attributed and create one listing for Transitional (with
> qualified
> attributes) and one for Strict (with unqualified attributes)
> conformance classes.
> 
> >> As there will be other changes in schema, wouldn't it be easier just
> >> to dump complete new schema into AMD1? This will be just one editing
> >> instruction: replace old schema with new one.
> >
> > This is not the way the Defect Log has been prepared.  I believe that
> > the upcoming DCORs and FPDAMs will contain many small changes.  One
> > could argue against that style, but it is too late to do so.
> 
> But is there something which prevent use of two different styles of how
> changes are expressed? One universal style is not necessary the best
> style for all types of changes.
> 
> Have a nice day,
> 
> 			Jirka
> 
> --
> ------------------------------------------------------------------
>   Jirka Kosek      e-mail: jirka at kosek.cz      http://xmlguru.cz
> ------------------------------------------------------------------
>        Professional XML consulting and training services
>   DocBook customization, custom XSLT/XSL-FO document processing
> ------------------------------------------------------------------
>  OASIS DocBook TC member, W3C Invited Expert, ISO JTC1/SC34 member
> ------------------------------------------------------------------