What is an agent compelled to do when it encounters a violation?

I understand that a writer (enricher, modifier, extractor, . . .) who creates XLIFF that violates a constraint or processing requirement is identified as being non-compliant, and the XLIFF they create is non-compliant.

 

But I am not clear on what a reader (or even a writer) is compelled to do what it encounters a violation.

 

I think some interpret the requirement to be that the reader or writer rejects the XLIFF and expresses an error. But I have not found an explicit statement in the spec that compels this.

 

Consider this use case.

 

I am a reader and a writer. Let’s say my application decorates an XLIFF file with Fragment IDs. And I get the following XLIFF file where we have an empty skeleton, but we do not have an @href. This violates

 

4.2.2.3 skeleton

. . . 

Constraints

The attribute href is REQUIRED if and only if the <skeleton> element is empty.

 

So if my agent receives 

 

<xliff xmlns="urn:oasis:names:tc:xliff:document:2.0" version="2.0" srcLang="en" trgLang="fr">

<file id="f1">

  <skeleton></skeleton>

  <unit id="1">

   <segment>

    <source>source</source>

    <target>target</target>

   </segment>

  </unit>

</file>

</xliff>

 

At which point does the agent become non-compliant if it does the following steps:

 

(1)   
Read the XLIFF file

(2)   
Generate a report that says “Bad: an empty <skeleton> must have an href attribute”

(3)   
Writes a decorated file

(4)   
In this decorated file inserts a comment that flags the violation, like this:

 

<xliff xmlns="urn:oasis:names:tc:xliff:document:2.0" srcLang="en" trgLang="fr" version="2.0">

<file id="f1" xmlns:xmrk="http://www.xmarker.com" xmrk:FragID="bad_EmptySkeletonWithoutHref.xlf/#f=f1">

  <skeleton/><!-- Bad: an empty <skeleton> must have an href attribute -->

  <unit id="1" xmrk:FragID="bad_EmptySkeletonWithoutHref.xlf/#f=f1/u=1">

   <segment>

    <source>source</source>

    <target>target</target>

   </segment>

  </unit>

</file>

</xliff>

 

I suppose we might say the agent became non-compliant at step (3). But given the output file that flags the violation, is the output non-compliant? Or to make the use case even sillier, what if the application’s purpose is to decorate XLIFF
 files with comments that identify every place in an XLIFF file that there is a violation of a constraint or processing requirement? Is such an application, or its output doomed to be non-compliant?

 

I suppose what I’m asking in the end, where do we say *how* an agent must react to a violation?

 

Thanks,

 

Bryan