Nils said:

private int rows = 10;
... public int getStartPageMaximum()

so there should only be 3 pages by default. changing to 5 rows should cause statePageMaximum to return 6
and it does because the text says pages 1-6
however the validator isn't updated somehow
nothing to do with the table directly
looks like it could be myfaces issue with validators

MyFaces saves and restores state on every request. In this case, it's restoring the state of the validator to the values it had when it was saved. In this case, it was saved when the bean value was 1-3 and wasn't updated to 1-6 (presumably because the validator is resolved before the rows+pages values can be resolved and recalculated) so the validation fails. In short, the validation min/max values are always one state behind when they validation is applied.

However, I'm finding that Mojarra is doing the same thing. You can see it on the public version of the showcase:

http://icefaces-showcase.icesoft.org/

So it appears it's not specific to the RI. Instead we need a different way to do the dynamic maximum value in the validator. Assigning back to Ken for changing how we do the validation. I'll log bug/test case into MyFaces and Mojarra.

I've opened up cases in both Mojarra and MyFaces systems for this behaviour:

http://java.net/jira/browse/JAVASERVERFACES-2417
https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/MYFACES-3547

For now, I've modified the example by removing the validator and simply using logic in the backing bean to ensure that the pages value stays within the min/max limits.

According to feedback on the MyFaces ticket from Leonardo Uribe:

"It is a known weakness in jsf standard converters and validator. To overcome this limitation, some converters and validators were created in MyFaces Commons project that evaluates its parameters when the value is checked, There is no variant for f:validateLongRange, but there is a mcc:convertNumber and mcc:convertDateTime.

Unfortunately, by compatibility with the spec it is not possible to change the current behavior. A change should be done at spec level. It is possible to write a custom implementation of that validator using myfaces builder plugin."

So right now the answer is that you can't do this until the spec changes and the solution is to do it in a custom fashion (or use the custom ones supplied by MyFaces). No comment from the Mojarra group yet.

This has been changed to a spec issue: http://java.net/jira/browse/JAVASERVERFACES_SPEC_PUBLIC-1104.