3rd in series - Ideas

Ideas:

In trying to answer these questions and achieve our objectives, we have
thought about or tried the following approaches.

1.  We tried rewriting a few sections of the guidelines using a "logical
structure."  For example "IF you are using a table that has x, y, z...." or
"FOR ALL tables..." (see
http://trace.ie.wisc.edu/wai/analysis/tables/draft2.html ).  We tried this
because we have several required guidelines that do not apply to all
tables, but only to tables that meet certain criteria.  This is also a
problem in audio and video, image and image maps, and applets and scripts.  

issues:
* if/then structure currently too complex
* hard to read in current form


2.  Josh Krieger suggested converting the guidelines to an XML file, then
filter the guidelines by user selected criteria.  For example, the
author/user could select only those guidelines that apply to HTML4.0, which
is a list of the "future" items.  All documents generated from this
procedure would also include the items that are "timeless" (such as
alt-text on images).  If an author is concerned about backwards
compatibility, he/she could receive a generated set of guidelines that
include all of the iterim guidelines that are there to work around
shortcomings in earlier browsers and ATs.  Or, someone could select to just
receive required, or just recommended, or some selection of strategies.
Notice that most of the guidelines, as they are written today (the 04141998
release) are timeless (except for a few) but it is the suggested strategies
that are not timeless.  Using the XML format as a type of database would
allow us to add strategies as they are discovered and to track older
strategies that are not used anymore.  See the last question - are we
limiting creativity and design by requiring and recommending certain
strategies?  Do we need to separate the strategies from the guidelines?

This is currently in development as Bobby will use this type of filtering
for reports.

issues:
* each printout need to list the restrictions applied for the current set
* There ought to be fixed numbering for guidelines, so that a set shows
that guidelines are missing.

Received on Tuesday, 9 June 1998 10:43:45 UTC