Bug 015: Unclear TestSubject Subclassing

This is feedback on a Last Call Working Draft:

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

This bug is specifically about ยง 2.3. TestSubject Class:

http://www.w3.org/TR/2011/WD-EARL10-Schema-20110510/#TestSubject

The following sentence is unclear:

"Rather than specifying only an earl:TestSubject type, it is
recommended that one of the following types be employed in addition"

Does it mean that they're subclasses of TestSubject? Or that you
should use extra subject-like properties? Or that the range of subject
is open? The last of these suggestions turns out not to be possible
because earl:subject has range earl:TestSubject, but the suggestivity
of it is still confusing.

A more precise definition could be as follows:

"One of the following subclasses of earl:TestSubject SHOULD be used to
type the object of an earl:subject property more discretely"

Using RFC 2119 conformance keywords. This could be followed with an
actual example, along with comments on the conformance of documents
who use varying levels of typing. For example, consider the difference
between these:

(1) :a earl:subject [ a earl:TestSubject ].
(2) :a earl:subject [ a earl:Software ].
(3) :a earl:subject [ a earl:TestSubject, earl:Software ].

Are they all equally conforming? All equally preferred? Is there a
case, for example, that (2) is preferable over (3)? This should be
stated in the specification and made abundantly clear.

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

Received on Wednesday, 11 May 2011 12:33:32 UTC