Re: over-MUSTiness in the spec

[Lubos Lunak <l lunak suse cz>]

On Monday 17 April 2006 18:05, Dan Winship wrote:
> In a bunch of places, the spec says things like:
> > If a Pager wants to switch to another virtual desktop, it MUST send
> > a _NET_CURRENT_DESKTOP client message to the root window:
>
> The use of "MUST" here places severe and unnecessary restrictions on the
> sorts of extra-EWMH behavior a Pager can implement. It says that a Pager
> is automatically in violation of the EWMH if it uses any method other
> than _NET_CURRENT_DESKTOP to switch virtual desktops, even if it knows
> with absolute certainty that the currently-running Window Manager
> supports this alternate method.

 That MUST means that the client should change the property by asking the WM 
and not by fiddling with it itself. If you have your own EWMH extensions, 
then just consider your extended spec also extends this wording.

> The attached patch changes a number of such "MUST"s and "SHOULD"s to
> "can". (It also fixes one "SHOULD not" to "SHOULD NOT".)

 No, that makes it worse at least least - most of those sentences now read 
like if those required ways of changing things were just some kind of 
convenience methods that one is not required to use.

-- 
Lubos Lunak
KDE developer
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