Re: Ways to get involved with the Markup

Hi Olivier!

Am/Um 08:46 24.11.2005 schrieb olivier Thereaux:

>Hi Sierk, and welcome to the list.

Thanks!

>[1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-qa-dev/2005Nov/0037.html

I think, I will do better to leave this point to Björn...

>But there's more than coding on our plate: making sure that *all* the
>functionalities and *all* the bugs we've every fixed have a test case
>(existing collection at [2]) would be a great task as well, something
>I've dont, partially, on and off depending on my available time, and
>for which I could use some help.
>
>[2] http://qa-dev.w3.org/wmvs/HEAD/dev/tests/

Do you have a list of bugs, which still don't have a related test case?

>As a Web developer
>(and therefore, frequent user of the tool)

Let's say: from time to time. Because I use mod_tidy as a day-to-day 
base, what makes the use of the validator less obligatory. ;-)

>you may
>also be aware of improvements to the error messages. The task is more
>difficult than it may seem: the error messages themselves are pretty
>much "fixed" and we can't change them, so all we can do is add
>explanations to make the error easier to explain. That often implies
>knowing all the cases that can cause such or such error.
>
>For instance:
>http://qa-dev.w3.org/wmvs/HEAD/docs/errors.html#ve-108
>"there is no attribute X" is such an awful message, and there are so
>many cases that can trigger the message: that the attribute is not
>available for the specific element, or for that element in the
>doctype used, etc. And of course, the error message explanations
>should hopefully not be too long.

That sounds very interisting for me to put some work into it.
But how to start?
If the error messages themselves are fixed and cannot be changed -- 
which explanations should be changed? And in what way?
In what way should the new error messages explanations differ from the 
current ones?
How is it possible (besides experiences) to know (or learn) all 
possible cases, which can cause such an error?

>Then there's "advocacy". Not really advertizing the service, mostly
>putting a human face on it. Reading forums or blogs, I always regret
>that the w3c, and the tools made by the w3c, are some kind of
>frightening headless beast.
>  Very little awareness that there the
>tools are open source, that there are a lot of people working on or
>around it (notably as user support on www-validator, for instance),
>etc. In a way it gives an aura of authority to the tool (a good AND a
>bad thing) but it does feel as a barrier to more and better
>participation to its development.

That is, why in October 2005 I published an article in Germany's most 
serious IT magazine iX (http://www.heise.de/kiosk/archiv/ix/05/10/162/) 
about Tidy and its several siblings (especially spotting on the Tidy 
PHP Extension and the Apache module mod_tidy concerning the automated 
work). The publishing company has been very pleased, that somebody 
writes about these tools. If you or somebody else are wondering -- 
looking to mod_tidy and the relation to the published article -- it 
happened by accident during the process of writing the article, that I 
have taken over the mod_tidy project. It hasn't been planned. But 
that's only a footnote.
My interests in helping promoting the W3C tools (I also see Tidy as a 
W3C tool) is still high enough to continue, so if there is anything to 
do in advocating the validator and/or the other w3c tools: what can, 
what should I do?



Cheers,
Sierk

Sierk Bornemann | Hannover | Germany
e-mail:  sierkb@gmx.de
URL:     http://sierkbornemann.de/

Received on Saturday, 3 December 2005 16:44:54 UTC