Summary: Rework into a much more concise standard. Justification: The text of DIS 29500 is too voluminous to be reliably reviewed by National Body experts, or for implementations to be assessed for compatibility. It appears to be unnecessarily long, combining normative text with copious examples and containing a lot of redundancy.

The text should be shortened considerably, through the removal of non-normative text (into annexes), the avoidance of redundancy and other means.

[ALL]

ed

Proposed Disposition of DIS 29500 Comment NO-0003 (Modified: 2008-01-08) We agree with the goal of maximizing the readability of DIS 29500, and in response to various NB comments we have proposed dispositions that would aid readability. For example, in the response to NO-0002 we have proposed division of DIS 29500 into three parts, allowing implementers to study and use each part on its own. We have also proposed moving many topics (such as VML and application compatibility settings) to an Annex for deprecated features. These changes effectively reduce the size of the specification for many implementers. The size of DIS 29500 is a consequence of the goal of compatibility with a large corpus of existing documents, which requires that the specification address a large number of topics. Many topics are documented in great detail as an aid to implementers, which further increases the size of the DIS. Ecma actively solicited feedback from the community in the development of ECMA-376, and much of the detail was provided in response to specific requests for additional information and clarification. We therefore believe that preserving this level of detail is in the best interest of the community. The number of examples in DIS 29500 is based on our assessment of how to best help implementers learn and use the standard. Numerous examples are included, and we have heard many comments asking for additional examples of specific topics. We believe that all information in DIS 29500 is provided as an aid to implementers. Without specific suggestions as to which information could be moved where, or removed completely, and the rationale with regard to the benefits and tradeoffs of doing so, we are unable to make specific changes based on this comment.