Re: [ISSUE 34] Potential problem with high-level quality issues

Hello all,

I was discussing the high-level quality issues with Felix this morning and we have an issue. If they are to be normative, then we will need to find at least two interoperable implementations for each value, not just for the mechanism as a whole, and to test those implementations against test cases. While that would not be hard for some like terminology, it would be difficult for others like legal, because, while they are used in metrics, they are not particularly embedded in tools that would produce or consume ITS 2.0 markup.

One solution is to put the issue names in an informative annex and very strongly recommend that they be used. That approach is, I realize, unlikely to satisfy Yves, for good reason: if we cannot know what values are allowed in that slot, then we cannot reliably expect interoperability. At the same time, if we only go with those values for which we can find two or more interoperable implementations, that list of 26 issues will probably become something like six or eight, thereby leaving future tools that might address the other issues out in the cold.

I have to confess that I do not see a solution to this issue right now since we really need the values to be normative but if we cannot test them in fairly short order they cannot be normative. The test cases must be more robust that simply seeing that a tool identifies an issue and passes it on: we also need to see that they do this consistently with each other, which is hard since the set of issues from the various tools only partially overlap.

If anyone has any brilliant ideas on how to solve the issue, please feel free to chime in. We're still working on this and hope to find a way to move forward with normative values.

Best,

Arle