[whatwg] Discussion on machine-checkability on public-html

[Henri Sivonen]

http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2007Jun/0251.html
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2007Jun/0252.html
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2007Jun/0254.html
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2007Jun/0256.html
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2007Jun/0278.html

As a summary of what might need changing in the spec, I highlight  
these paragraphs (from message 0256 above):
> A machine-checkable criterion should probably be defined to be a
> criterion the conformance to which is a decidable problem (in the
> computer science sense) given a document (Content-Type and finite
> byte stream) and the knowledge embodied in the spec and the normative
> references.
>
> That is, the program computing whether a given document conforms to a
> criterion should not be required to consult outside resources and
> should not embody arbitrary knowledge that isn't part of the spec
> (with normative references).

However, I also wrote:
> As a side note: For extra usefulness, a checker can have knowledge
> about particular URI scheme-specific requirements. Different choices
> here cause a theoretical problem. If we want to remove the
> theoretical problem, the spec could enumerate a closed list of URI
> schemes that conformance checkers must know about. (Forbidding the
> application of knowledge about common schemes like http, https and
> mailto would be silly.)

-- 
Henri Sivonen
hsivonen at iki.fi
http://hsivonen.iki.fi/