Re: Locating the subject and dynamic content

søn, 03,.04.2005 kl. 14.20 +1000, skrev Charles McCathieNevile:
> On Wed, 23 Mar 2005 22:41:13 +1100, Carlos Iglesias  
> <carlos.iglesias@fundacionctic.org> wrote:

> > My conclusion is, is really necessary to add a complex pointer to the  
> > subject of a problem to the specification? Or maybe a simple pointer,  
> > like line numbers, could be enough.
> 
> I have yet to see a system based on line numbers that is robust over any  
> but the most trivial kind of repairs. In other words, it is fine if you  
> have an enclosed system, and you do one chec followed by one repair. But  
> if you have several tools runing together, or if you do a group of repairs  
> at once, you invalidate the line numbers much too fast.
> 
> In general, line numbers are not all that reliable even just in opening  
> the source code in a few different tools. Whichis perfectly aceptable for  
> HTML.
> 
> I agree that we should not look for a solution any more complex than we  
> need. But as far as I can tell, line numbers are almost always useless in  
> an open system - and there is no real need for a standardised reporting  
> language in a closed system.

Line numbers are not robust provided that the linenumbers refers to the
web page that was assessed, and that a second assessor or e.g. the web
designer has to reload the page a second time to find the source of the
problem. This stems from several sources that has already been
mentioned: Pages generated as a function of time, different user agents
may cause different stylesheets to be applied, javascript etc.

However, if the assessing tool saved the web page that was assessed,
then a line number reference would hit the correct spot on the saved
page. A web designer would then see exactly where the problem occurred. 

Other pointing strategies should work the saved page as well. 

Administrating the saved pages could be done by the accessibility
assessment tools by providing web proxies pointing to the saved, static
versions of the assessed pages.

Mvh.
-- 
Nils Ulltveit-Moe <nils@u-moe.no>

Received on Sunday, 3 April 2005 07:12:27 UTC