Re: progress on schemas for model testing

Comments inline:

On Mon, Aug 1, 2016 at 7:04 AM, Ivan Herman <ivan@w3.org> wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> this is a reflection on the whole thread (which I have just read, coming
> back from vacations) rather than just this specific mail.
>
> In general we should be careful with the analogies with standards like
> XQuery or CSS. The particularity of the Model spec (and this issue is
> specific to all specs that define, essentially, a vocabulary) is that there
> is no observable behaviour associated to the various features, which makes
> it very different than, say, CSS. To concentrate on the issue of optional
> terms, such a term does not have an operational effect *as far as the
> specification is concerned*, because we do not really check the user
> interface, application behaviour, etc, of annotation systems (we do not
> specify any of that). In this respect, the issue whether it is impossible
> to implement that feature or not does not really apply in this case, in my
> view…
>
>
And in mine.  And historically in the view of the Director.


> Based on this I pretty much agree with what Shane wrote below. Just one
> point to be clear: the way I read your answers, Shane, is that we *do*
> check whether the value of, say, textDirection is correct *if* an
> implementation implements it, right? I believe that should be the case,
> although we do not require the presence of that term.
>
>
Exactly what I have proposed.


> There is, however, an aspect that does come up around 'optional' terms.
> Ideally, we should document (not necessarily through the formal testing
> mechanism) that each term, including the 'optional' ones, are *used* in
> real practice, ie, real implementations. Eg, it would be good to document
> that, say, Europeana uses (or plans to use) textDirection in their
> application, thereby proving that it is indeed useful to have that term in
> the vocabulary as opposed to 'just' have it there without any real usage.
> That being said, it may be difficult to document that at this point because
> it is a bit of a chicken-and-egg-problem. But we still may want to try to
> ask all our implementers whether they have experience or intention to do so.
>
> Yes.  Because there are assertions about these terms. the results of
testing those assertions show up in the report for each platform.  So we
can show whether the term is used at all, and if used, used correctly.

-- 
Shane McCarron
Projects Manager, Spec-Ops