Re: LC-110 Team comments

QAWG --

Styling (CSS) volunteer needed!

Yesterday. we discussed LC-110.7, "introduction needs to be much more 
efficient to read".  I think I see Dom's point now.

I have been thinking... should we take it further?

For example, we could make "Ch.3 Guidelines" more friendly looking, with 
some styling.  E.g.,

** indenting and/or boxing and/or bg-coloring the verbiage after the GL and 
before the CPs,
** indenting/boxing/etc CP Rationale and Discussion,
** some sort of styling offset for examples (the brief "for example" 
sections in lots of places).
** Etc.

Our stylesheet (guideline.css) has lots of stuff in it that I haven't 
looked at or explored yet.

OpsGL has a lot of markup already, e.g., for ConfReq, for Rationale, for 
Discussion, etc (but warning -- markup is inadequate for multi-paragraph 
instances of Discussion, etc.)  More could be added, e.g., "Related CPs.", 
and we could make markup uniform and "adequate" throughout.

Have a look at Guideline 1 here:

http://www.w3.org/QA/WG/2003/05/qaframe-ops-20030512

Any volunteer to play with it, and show what we might be able to do to make 
it more reader-friendly?

This is something that has been on the back burner for about a year now 
("document technology for our specs").  Perhaps it is time to move it to 
the front burner, before next pubs cycle for the LC specs.

-Lofton.

p.s.

Btw, "How User's Read on the Web" is interesting.  Most suggestions are 
right on.  But I'm not yet convinced that one can always follow something 
like "half the words of conventional writing" in normative GL specs.  They 
need the precision of a legal document in some places.  There is a balance 
between brevity and precision, and I'm always annoyed at how the 
(perceived) requirement for precision bloats the word count.

At 09:12 AM 5/12/03 +0200, Dominique Hazaël-Massieux wrote:
> > LC-110.7
> > =====
> > The introduction needs to be much more efficient to read. Proposal [DH?]:
> > some kind of an executive summary rather than the long prose we 
> currently have.
> >
> > Discussion.  Some of the prose is there as a consequence of SpecGL
> > compliance.  Some is there to clarify the contents of the document.  Some
> > is "semi-normative" (e.g., Terminology).  In fact, numbers 110.5 and 110.6
> > suggest to add *more* clarification to the Introduction.  It is not clear
> > what could be removed, to implement the "...summary rather than long 
> prose.."
> >
> > Proposal.  Clarification from originators.  Could originators be more
> > specific?  Do you mean "rather than", or do you mean to preface it with an
> > exec summary?  If "rather than", could you please propose what bits of the
> > intro should be eliminated?  Would you like to propose a "for example"
> > executive summary that meets your proposal?
>
>I meant "rather than". The truth is that right now you have to read
>around 3 pages of prose before going into the meaty stuff (the
>guidelines). What I was specifically thinking of was to reduce the prose
>aspect of it, that is making it something lighter to read than those
>long paragraphs (to be honest, just after the call that generated these
>comments, I read:
>http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9710a.html "How people read on the Web?"
>which suggested to me that we should use more emphasis where necessary,
>more concise sentences, more bullet lists and so on).
>
>Dom
>--
>Dominique Hazaël-Massieux - http://www.w3.org/People/Dom/
>W3C/ERCIM
>mailto:dom@w3.org

Received on Tuesday, 13 May 2003 13:21:41 UTC