Re: Towards a better testsuite: Metadata

On 04/12/2016 02:15 PM, ishida@w3.org wrote:
> On 12/04/2016 18:58, Geoffrey Sneddon wrote:
>> there if it isn't self-evident, somewhere, typically in a comment. A
>> comment seems easier and more normal syntax for such descriptions than
>> anything else, and hence less to remember.
>
> wait, wait....  markup is about labelling data so that it has meaning
>
> for example, it's quite possible that some application will want to
> pick up the assertion and do something with it.  I certainly need to
> be able to do that for the i18n test suite results.  In that case,
> it needs to be labelled as an assertion in some way.

Agreed it needs to be machine-readable; therefore better to be in the
markup somehow.

> sorry to raise a difficulty.  I'd like a simple solution to this too,
> but as i said i agree with Florian that if we use the title element
> no-one (well very few people) will give specific enough information
> in a title element to allow for proper understanding of the test.

I think we can solve this by updating the template and having good
examples of tests that write proper assertions in the title. I can
even process all of our existing tests that have an assertion to
move it into the title.

The test template would look like this:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<title>
   Title of your test on one line [optional]

   ... Assertion of your test, i.e. what does passing this test
   prove. E.g. When text-align is not set, its initial value depends
    on dir attribute.) ...
</title>
<link rel="match" href="references/reference-filename.html">
<link rel="help" href="http://www.w3.org/TR/...">
<link rel="help" href="http://www.w3.org/TR/...">
<style>
   ... CSS for test ...
</style>

... body of test ...

It's not exactly a "title" in the <title>, but this solves
several problems:
   * <title> is required for validity, so we have to have one;
     it might as well have a purpose applicable to everybody
   * Description is in an element, which makes it easier to format
     than in an attribute, where long text values are awkward.
   * Less memorization of boilerplate than with <meta> tags.

~fantasai

Received on Tuesday, 12 April 2016 19:10:43 UTC