Re: Upcoming Compatibility table update

Hi, PhistucK–

In addition to what Renoir said…

On 9/12/14 8:27 AM, PhistucK wrote:
> Looks reasonable.
> Thank you!
>
> Perhaps off topic, but regarding the data itself -
> 1. Is there a scheduled task that updates the data from the various
> sources (only MDN at the moment, right?)?

No, there is no scheduled task yet.

We don't plan to retrieve data from MDN again, for a few reasons:

1) The MDN data is not well-structured for extraction; I think they are 
working on this, but for now, it's not trivial to get the data, and it 
requires a good bit of post-processing;

2) Once we have the MDN data, and have normalized it, we still have to 
map the naming and category conventions to those of our own pages and 
site structure, which is not 1:1;

3) There is no regular update of their data, such that we could retrieve 
it on a schedule; this might change in the future, since they are 
working on their compatibility information;

4) The MDN data is not necessarily accurate; the intent is certainly 
there, but their compatibility results are not based on tests, but only 
on the judgment of their contributors; and where those contributors may 
used tests, the tests are not exposed to the reader for verification of 
the quality of the test;

5) The MDN data is not detailed enough; though they have some 
subfeatures listed, it's not systematic or consistent, and doesn't 
typically cover edge cases, or combination with other features.

The MDN data was an excellent basis for a first start at our compat 
info, and we're glad it was there; we're grateful that they allowed us 
to use it.

CanIUse.com has also offered the use of their data, which is more 
test-driven (and thus more accurate), is easily extracted, and which 
does have regular updates; however, at a feature level, it is organized 
more broadly than our pages, so the mapping between our page/category 
hierarchy and CanIUse is even more challenging then that of MDN. Still, 
it might be worth the effort, because of the other advantages.

Ideally, we will use the W3C test-suite results data [1]. That also 
needs some normalization and adaption, but the value is high because 
it's extremely detailed and accurate information.


> a. If so, are conflicts handled (user added data using pull requests)? How?
> b. If not, how is the data kept up to date and synchronized?

These will be issues, but not for MDN data, as mentioned above.


> 2. The data-human.json file is huge and cannot be edited in the web
> interface of GitHub as a result. Can you split it to folders by topic
> and files by names (or any other way that creates small files that can
> be easily edited)? During the build (or whatever it is that processes
> the data), everything could be combined and then processed.

That seems like a good idea. Do you have a proposal to handle the split 
(and the merge)?


[1] https://github.com/w3c/web-platform-tests

Regards-
-Doug

> ☆*PhistucK*
>
> On Fri, Sep 12, 2014 at 4:31 AM, Renoir Boulanger <renoir@w3.org
> <mailto:renoir@w3.org>> wrote:
>
>     Hi all,
>
>     I am about to push an update[1] on our wiki and I thought i’d ask for
>     text validation.
>
>     There’s nothing to see on the wiki or staging —I had no time to work on
>     a staging server yet— but you can look at the screenshots in the
>     issue [0].
>
>
>
>     Wanna help with the text?:
>
>     * When no data found:
>
>     [[
>     There is no data available for topic "%s", feature "%s". If you think
>     that there should be data available, consider <a href="%s">opening an
>     issue</a>.
>     [[
>
>
>     * When data found, to give advice how to help:
>
>     [[
>     Do you think this data can be improved? You can ask to add by <a
>     href="%s">opening an issue</a> or <a href="%s">make a pull request</a>.
>     ]]
>
>
>
>        [0]: https://github.com/webplatform/mediawiki/issues/17
>        [1]:
>     https://github.com/webplatform/mediawiki/compare/compatables-update
>
>     --
>     Regards,
>
>     Renoir Boulanger  |  Developer operations engineer
>     W3C  |  Web Platform Project
>
>     http://w3.org/people/#renoirb  ✪ https://renoirboulanger.com/  ✪
>     @renoirb
>     ~
>
>

Received on Saturday, 13 September 2014 18:37:27 UTC