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The definition of 'consumer' in section 3.1 troubles some WG members, in particular the verb "understands". In discussion during the ftf, various alternatives were proposed; what is the right way to distinguish consumers as described here from other processes or agents which might encounter an SML-IF message? Are consumers processes which understand the model? (and if so, what does "understand" mean?) Are they processes which "act on" the model (as opposed to the surface artifacts of serialization)? Are they processes which validate the model? (There seemed to be consensus that validation is NOT the right touchstone.) Further discussion of this concept is needed to reach agreement on what we want as a WG, in addition to whatever editorial effort is needed to capture that intent accurately and cleanly.
In addition to the specific issue of the definition of 'consumer', the passage in question (and others) raise the related (and intertwined) question "What is it that consumers DO with SML-IF documents?" The current text says in various places that the consumer "understands" the document; this troubles enough of the WG that we should try to find some other verb that carries the right denotation and connotation and lacks the problems of "understanding".
The current editors' draft of SML-IF has an improvement on the old wording, but I have one further suggestion. In the paragraph which now reads A program is a conforming SML-IF Consumer if it processes a conforming SML-IF Document using, in whole or part, semantics defined by this specification. A conforming SML-IF Consumer is not required to process all elements defined in this specification, but any element processed must be processed as defined here. perhaps the last words should be changed to something like "must be processed in ways consistent with the semantics defined here", to avoid possible confusion over the fact that many useful consumers will perform application- or domain-specific processing which goes behond what is defined here. The editors may be able to find better words.
Changed text as suggested to: A conforming SML-IF Consumer is not required to process all elements defined in this specification, but any element that is processed must be processed in a manner that is consistent with the semantics defined here.