RE: possible bug in t100801-c42-ibx-ht-00-d-a.xht

> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ian Hickson [mailto:ian@hixie.ch] 
> Sent: Monday, September 25, 2006 10:44 AM
> To: Peter Sorotokin
> Cc: public-css-testsuite@w3.org
> Subject: RE: possible bug in t100801-c42-ibx-ht-00-d-a.xht
> 
> On Mon, 25 Sep 2006, Peter Sorotokin wrote:
> >
> > What is incorrect in this test is that it makes an assumption on
where 
> > the border of the inline element should occur (it relies on the
border 
> > exactly overlapping red characters in the previous line). Border 
> > location in the vertical direction depends on the dimensions of the 
> > content area of the element and the height of the inline element
content 
> > area is explicitly left undefined in the current draft of CSS 2.1 
> > (section 10.6.1).
> 
> Ah, yes, indeed.
> 
> As noted in one of the other threads, the tests make several
assumptions 
> (like this one) in order to test certain hard-to-test aspects of CSS.

Ian,

As I understand the purpose of the test suite, it is designed to help
users (who are not necessarily CSS experts) to quickly see the level of
compliance for any implementation and to help implementers to find bugs.
When a test makes non-obvious assumptions about environment or
implementations, it should be noted in the test, otherwise users and QA
engineers assume that there is a bug in the implementation without
looking any further. In this case the test relies on the specifically
undefined part of CSS spec. It does not say that anywhere. I think this
is very misleading.

> Is the assumption here one that is inconsistent with your
implementation?

The assumptions are OK and my implementation actually passes this test,
it is just that the assumptions are quite nontrivial in this case. Also,
in this specific case, I think it would have been much better to just
define the height of the inline box in the spec.

> I can look into the feasibility of marking tests that make assumptions
of 
> this nature, if you think that would help.

That would certainly help - especially if it would mention the
assumptions in the prose of the test (like "your screen must be 96dpi"
or "your user agent must calculate content area height according to
non-normative language in section 10.6.1)". Suffix alone just would not
cut it - people would still just ignore it and submit bug reports.

Do you want a list of files that make 96dpi screen assumption? For
those, actually, it would have been better to split each of them in two:
one that makes the assumption and the other one that does not.

Peter

> 
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Received on Monday, 25 September 2006 18:11:57 UTC