Re: ICRA Response to Call for Review: Evaluation and Report Language (EARL) 1.0 Schema Working Draft]

Hi Phil,


Phil Archer wrote:
> You invited WCL-XG to comment specifically on your public working draft. 
> The XG is currently quiescent while we wait for our rebirth as a WG so I 
> can only respond as ICRA, not as WCL-XG.

Thank you for reviewing and commenting! Please find some initial 
responses below in addition to those already sent by Charles. Most of 
your suggestions have been recorded for further processing by the group.


> In section 1.2 [1] you raise the issue of namespaces. I don't think you 
> need to issue a new namespace every time you make a change as long as it 
> is clear that it's a working draft. After that, of course, the next 
> iteration will need a new namespace.

The ERT WG decision was to switch to a new namespace only once when EARL 
1.0 becomes stable. This probably means after Last Call.


> In the core vocabulary, you define earl:Subject [2] as a single 'thing'. 
> The approach outlined in the WCL Report [3] will, I hope, be useful in 
> future where an Assertor wishes to make assertions about a thing that is 
> group of resources. The approach to be confirmed and encoded under the 
> proposed WCL WG is flexible and provides a powerful set of methods for 
> unambiguously defining such a group.

As you know, our previous review of the URI pattern matching indicated 
several issues in the approach and hence we decided to go for the simple 
solution of one assertion per test subject. We would be interested in an 
unambiguous solution to be able to address groups of resources in one go 
but were not sure if and when that would be available. Do you have a 
rough time estimate as to when this could be expected from WCL?

This issue has been added to our list of known issues:
  * <http://www.w3.org/WAI/ER/EARL10/issues#webcontent>


> In section 2.2 you have used foaf:Person, based on this term's 
> stability. ICRA (and WCL) uses the foaf:Organization term believing it 
> to be sufficiently stable to use. We do so, however, with caution, 
> making sure that we talk about the organisation whose homepage is at ... 
> etc. rather than giving the domain name _as the foaf:Organization_. I 
> would prefer ERT to use foaf:Organization for Assertors that are 
> companies rather then individuals.

Interesting approach, we will rediscus this issue. It has been added to 
our list of known issues:
  * <http://www.w3.org/WAI/ER/EARL10/issues#assertor>


> I really like the CompoundAssertor term!

Thanks! It took quite a bit to put it together...


> In example 7, where the Test Subject is a Java applet, you give a 
> dc:description etc. and say that it is "part of http://example.org".
> I think this might be wrong, depending what you mean by it - and the 
> fact that I can't tell what you mean by it suggests that it at least 
> needs some clarification.
> 
> Do you mean that the Java applet is embedded in the resource that is 
> resolved from http://example.org? If so, that's OK (but please clarify); 
> but I suspect you mean that the Java applet is part of the website that 
> has a homepage at http://example.org?? This comes back to the resource 
> grouping issue. Whatever the object of a dct:isPartOf predicate is, it 
> should be something that is able to have parts, i.e. a set definition of 
> some kind. http://example.org does not obviously fall into this category.

Agreed. This issue has also been recorded:
* <http://www.w3.org/WAI/ER/EARL10/issues#testsubject>


> I may be alone in this but I find the term validity level 
> (earl:validity) to be confusing. What you mean is "this is the result" 
> and the answer is pass/fail/don't know. Validity is surely a particular 
> kind of check? As the Class here is called Result, maybe you can use a 
> synonym - like 'outcome' rather than validity?
> 
> When I first read it, I though validity level meant something like "the 
> validity of the test carried out" - something like a degree of 
> confidence in the outcome - but no, that concept comes later.  So, in 
> concrete terms, please consider using 'earl:outcome' instead of 
> earl:validity.

This naming is a historic artifact :) The issue is recorded at:
* <http://www.w3.org/WAI/ER/EARL10/issues#validitylevel>


> In section 2.6.3 you give vocabulary terms like earl:xPath, lineCharLen 
> etc. These seem application-specific to me and I suggest you consider 
> splitting these out into a specific vocabulary to be used when using 
> EARL to assess Web content for accessibility.

Interesting thought. We *did* ensure that these pointers are stand-alone 
but did not go as far as separating it out into a different vocabulary. 
Recorded at:
  * <http://www.w3.org/WAI/ER/EARL10/issues#instancelocation>


> Finally, in 2.8 you have an editor's note about terms for a URI. WCL is 
> going to need an RDF vocabulary for the different parts of a URI for the 
> grouping mechanism so we have another common interest there. DanBri had 
> an exchange with TBL and Dan C on the issue and I think there's probably 
> a case for 'someone' just creating a pretty simple RDF vocabulary 
> covering scheme, authority, port, host etc.

We have a separate vocabulary called "HTTP Vocabulary in RDF" which we 
use to record the HTTP request/response headers for Web content. 
However, we decided not to split the URI into its sub-parts because we 
did not have a specific use case for it.

Furthermore, we recently also decided to drop that URI term you are 
referencing because we agreed that the rdf:about (together with the HTTP 
request/response headers) would be sufficient to describe even dynamic 
Web content. Please find the minutes to this most recent discussion:
  * <http://www.w3.org/2006/10/04-er-minutes#item02>

Finally, it would be great if you could also skim the Internal Draft of 
our current "HTTP Vocabulary in RDF" document and let us know how this 
fits in with the WCL work. Note that the URI property is in a separate 
namespace (uri:uri) so it would be pretty easy for us to drop it in 
favor of a different vocabulary for URI. Here the document:
  * <http://www.w3.org/WAI/ER/HTTP/WD-HTTP-in-RDF-20060705>


> Hope this helps.

It does! Thanks for your time, I am looking forward to aligning EARL 
with the work of WCL.


> [1] http://www.w3.org/TR/EARL10-Schema/#namespaces
> [2] http://www.w3.org/TR/EARL10-Schema/#assertion
> [3] http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/wcl/XGR-report/#scope


Regards,
   Shadi


-- 
Shadi Abou-Zahra     Web Accessibility Specialist for Europe |
Chair & Staff Contact for the Evaluation and Repair Tools WG |
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Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI),   http://www.w3.org/WAI/ |
WAI-TIES Project,                http://www.w3.org/WAI/TIES/ |
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Received on Tuesday, 17 October 2006 12:17:31 UTC