Bug 003: Machine Readable Conformance Data

This is feedback on a Last Call Working Draft:

Developer Guide for Evaluation and Report Language (EARL) 1.0
W3C Working Draft 10 May 2011
http://www.w3.org/TR/2011/WD-EARL10-Guide-20110510/

The section in question here is § 4.1 Conforming EARL 1.0 Reports:

http://www.w3.org/TR/2011/WD-EARL10-Guide-20110510/#EARL10Reports

This bug assumes that my suggestion in Bug 002 will be implemented,
and the section moved to the EARL 1.0 Schema specification.

The data in § 4.1 is only presently available, as far as I know, in
English. This is as though the HTML 4.01 DTD were to have been written
in English, instead of as an SGML DTD. An appropriate language for
this would be OWL, and that data should go in the normative EARL
schema here:

http://www.w3.org/ns/earl

It should also be repeated in the EARL 1.0 Schema specification, first
in terms of the OWL constructs, and then in general terms which
closely mirror the existing English.

Rationale: This data should be machine readable so that conformance
checkers can be more easily implemented. It may even be possible, for
example, to use off the shelf OWL conformance checkers rather than
having to build your own specific EARL conformance checkers, or at
least to integrate the former in the latter.

Moreover, when conformance criteria are expressed in a machine
readable way, they can be more easily tested. Bugs may more easily
become apparent. When this section is moved per Bug 002, then, it
should be expanded to include OWL or other appropriate vocabulary data
to describe the constraints, and a modified English section to explain
the specialised schema vocabulary. This should be accompanied by
changes in the actual RDF/XML schema available by dereferencing the
EARL namespace.

-- 
Sean B. Palmer, http://inamidst.com/sbp/

Received on Tuesday, 10 May 2011 22:05:37 UTC