[r-t] Extensions

[R.P.I. Lewis]

> Andrew Craddock <andrew at towerbase.net> wrote at 10:58:26 on Tue, 26 Oct
> 2004
> >Assuming that Richard is reasonably confident about his program (and I
> >guess he must be if he is prepared to put the source into the public
> >domain) then perhaps the MC's time might be productively spent in
> >preparing a suite of test cases which could validate Richard's (or
> >anyone elses) software.
>
> We did discuss this, but came to the conclusion that it would be
> difficult for the MC to endorse a program as giving a definitive answer
> to any extension-related query. We can of course give answer any queries
> as to whether any particular generated extension is in fact valid.

You don't have to say that the program is the final arbiter of validity,
and I don't think anyone is asking for that.  I think what people are
asking for is a program that can help check valid extensions: obviously
whatever the program output, the final word rests in the written decisions
of the MC.

If you think about the HTML standards maintained by the W3C, the validity
of a webpage is determined by the standard itself (e.g.,
<http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/>), yet they also provide an online validator
(http://validator.w3.org/) to help.