mobileOK Checker and URIs that use the "file" scheme

[Dan, Jo, do you think we could add this as an agenda item?]

Hi,

mobileOK tests can only be applied to URIs with the HTTP/HTTPS scheme, 
according to the standard:
  "mobileOK tests are only meaningful when the URI under test resolves 
to HTML content delivered over HTTP." [1]

Although some tests of the mobileOK Basic Tests 1.0 rec do not mean 
anything outside of the HTTP context, others are still useful when 
applied to local content (e.g. PAGE_TITLE, TABLES_NESTED). The "local" 
use case is not that stupid in the sense that it allows to run tests 
while a Web page is being edited, even before the page is published on 
the Web.

In an email to the public-mobileok-checker mailing-list [2], Yeliz 
mentioned that she was going to work on extending the library to support 
the file scheme so that mobileOK checks could be combined with WCAG 
tests as part of a single tool (IIRC).

We exchanged ideas about the changes that would be required in the 
Checker library for that to happen, and ended up with a wonderful plan 
that involves, among other things, the creation of an additional test 
outcome "CANNOTTELL" (we currently have PASS, FAILED, WARN).

That's when Jo dropped in the discussion [4] to make the point that what 
we were discussing was good but not mobileOK.

In particular, given the following points:
- file checking would stay an option set when running the Checker (i.e. 
the Checker would reject URIs with the file scheme by default)
- the CANNOTTELL outcome would never be returned when running the 
Checker in normal mode (i.e. nothing changes in the Checker by default)
- the report returned when a file is checked will never return a 
"mobileOK" status (i.e. the best outcome one could get would be "tests I 
checked look fine, you now need to publish your content so that I can 
run the full set of tests")

... the questions are:

1. can we directly update the mobileOK Checker Java library to include 
such an option?
  - Pro: that's useful
  - Con: the library should be a reference implementation of the spec, 
this is not defined in the spec

2. do we need to publish a WG Note on off-line mobileOK testing?
  - Pro: that would define things properly
  - Con: does the group really want to publish another document?

We wanted to get the group's opinion on this.

Thanks,
Francois.


[1] http://www.w3.org/TR/mobileOK-basic10-tests/#testing_validity
[2] 
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-mobileok-checker/2009Feb/0000.html
[3] 
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-mobileok-checker/2009Feb/0006.html
[4] 
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-mobileok-checker/2009Mar/0002.html

Received on Monday, 16 March 2009 15:56:53 UTC