Re: DTD for techniques documents

Your AERT document was pretty much the reason for the rule element. I think
it needs to be expanded to be machine-readable, though there are going to be
areas ("write clearly and simply") where no machine-readable rules exist.

I guess my issue is whether that machine-readable part belongs in the
document proper, or elsewhere. I would envision a ruleset as an individual
document linked to the techniques or the guidelines document, but with its
own schema optimized for machine parsing, since machines can extract links
more easily in, say, an evaluation and repair tool, and humans aren't going
to be reading the machine-readable rules anyway.

I'm also unsure whether the rules can either be processed from English to
XML or vice-versa. The AERT document has much more detail than what I would
consider to be plain-English rules. More important, I think, is optimizing
the English rules for readability, which is something I haven't seen done
well when a machine-friendly grammar is applied to it. I think both need to
be done.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Chris Ridpath" <chris.ridpath@utoronto.ca>
To: "Matt May" <mcmay@bestkungfu.com>; <w3c-wai-gl@w3.org>
Sent: Wednesday, July 04, 2001 12:15 PM
Subject: Re: DTD for techniques documents


> The language that describes the rule needs to be precise and I'm wondering
> if it should be marked-up as well.
>
> The language in your example is "All documents, including individual
frames
> in a frameset, should have  a <code>TITLE</code> element that defines in a
> simple phrase the purpose of the document. "
>
> We need to define things like:
> "all documents" (text files, sound files, stylesheet files, XML, XHTML or
> whatever)
> "simple phrase" (minimum number of characters? NULL OK? all spaces OK?)
> "purpose" (does a title always give the purpose of a document? How can
this
> be tested?)
> "should" (under what conditions? must?)
>
> After we define these, can we mark them?
>
> Example: We decide that a title can't be NULL, can't be all spaces and
> shouldn't be placeholder text. In our XML techniques document we could
> specify something like:
>
> <rule>
> <element name="title">
> <canbenull= "no" />
> <canbespace="no" />
> <suspicious="title goes here" />
> <suspicious="title placeholder" />
> </element>
> </rule>
>
> Make sense?
>
> Chris

Received on Thursday, 5 July 2001 14:10:37 UTC