Miscellanious questions re XMLspec DTD

Background: The Web Content Guidelines working group
(http://www.w3.org/WAI/gl/) is in the early stages of preparing a working
draft of one of its central deliverables, namely a document that may
eventually be proposed as the next version of the Web Content
Accessibility Guidelines.

We would like to take advantage of the XMLSpec DTD in order to facilitate
the editing and publication of this material. Naturally, it would be
advantageous to adopt XMLSpec as early as possible in the drafting
process. Consequently, the following issues arise:

1. Currently, what is the best XSL style sheet or other processing
application available to be used in generating (X)HTML from XMLSpec source
documents? What would be the most effective means of producing Postscript
or PDF output (preferably with a style sheet)?

2. The normative component of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines
consists in numbered checkpoints which are grouped under more general
requirements. In the HTML markup of WCAG 1.0, these are represented as
definition lists, with the defined term being the text of the checkpoint,
and the "definition" being the accompanying explanatory text. What markup
should be used in XMLSpec to characterize such checkpoints and their
accompanying explanations? Should the outer "guidelines" be represented,
as in the HTML markup of WCAG 1.0, as headings, or would a nested list
structure be preferable, with checkpoints included as lists within an
outermost list of guidelines? The GLIST element could potentially be used
to represent checkpoints, but this would be stretching the semantics
somewhat. GLIST with ROLE="checkpoint" could be another possibility; or
alternatively the DTD developers may wish to add markup to encompass this
kind of strucutre. What makes the situation more confusing is that the
terminology may not be stable (that is to say, what are called
"checkpoints" in the current guidelines may be referred to as
"guidelines", "strategies" etc., in the next version; and so a generic
term would need to be used in any markup). Basically the structure is akin
to a definition list, with a numbered statement (a proposition) being
associated with explanatory material that may include paragraphs, notes,
examples etc.

3. The technical report describing the XMLSpec DTD does not itself conform
to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0. In particular, there are
syntax diagrams in the report which depict the content models used in the
DTD; and these are not accompanied by textual equivalents. Can this be
corrected? The best solution would be to provide, as a textual alternative
to each image, the full content model, in XML syntax, with the parameter
entities expanded, as in the DTD fragments provided in the body of the
HTML 4.01 specification.

Any information or suggestions would be much appreciated.

Received on Tuesday, 1 August 2000 20:13:40 UTC