Re: Unifying testsuite policy and getting rid of CSS exceptions

On 21/09/17 03:22, Alan Stearns wrote:
> On 9/20/17, 7:02 PM, "fantasai" <fantasai.lists@inkedblade.net> wrote:
> 
>      On 09/15/2017 06:54 AM, James Graham wrote:
>      > In practice anyone sufficiently knowledgeable to be interacting
>      > with a test can likely identify the relevant parts of the specs
>      > rather quickly.
>      
>      As a CSS spec editor who was tasked with reviewing some totally
>      uncommented layout tests, I disagree with this statement.
> 
> And here’s a recent non-CSS example: http://logs.glob.uno/?c=freenode%23whatwg&s=29+Aug+2017&e=29+Aug+2017&h=comment#c1036038
> 
> I expect wanderview is sufficiently knowledgeable, but could have benefitted from some test comments/metadata there.

I;m obviously not claiming that comments have no value. But a link to 
the spec is not a comment, it's less precise than a well-written comment 
to explain the details of what the test author believed the test was 
testing. Nevertheless I agree that it has some value. But requiring 
links to pass the link also has a cost in terms of developers' 
willingness to contribute tests. Given the relative lack of vendor 
contributions to CSS tests I claim that reducing the barrier to entry is 
a more significant win to the platform as a whole than the value offered 
by a mandatory spec link.

Received on Thursday, 21 September 2017 15:11:55 UTC