Comments on WD-xmlgl-20010829

Hi,

General:

  * I'm not happy with the term "tagset" used throughout the document.
    This should be element or feature set. It's all too common to refer
    with "tag" to elements and attributes, which is definitly wrong and
    makes it hard to talk to each other about them. Other possible
    replacements would be "schema", "language" or "application", but
    please don't use "tagset".

  * The document uses 'schemata' while e.g. XML Schema uses 'schemas'
    instead. I suggest to use the latter for reasons of consistency.

  * All those abbreviations and acronyms should get appropriate title
    attributes, im not happy with all those PFWG, WCAG, WAI GL, ATAG,
    UAAG, etc.pp.

Abstract:

  "[...] This document explains how to design accessible applications
   using XML, the Extensible Markup Language. Compared to the HTML or
   MathML languages, XML is one level up: it is a meta syntax used to
   describe these languages, as well as new ones. [...]"

This statement is wrong, XML isn't used to describe HTML. I recommend to
change s/HTML/XHTML/.

Status of this document:

  "[...] Depending on the feedback received, this document may become a
   W3C Note, be integrated in the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines
   suite (e.g as a technique for XML) or enter its own Recommendation
   track. [...]"

I strongly recommend to make it a recommendation, not a note.

Introduction:

[...]
 <title>XML and Accessibility</title>
 <address lang=fr>Daniel Dardailler</address>
 <h1>Background</h1>
[...]

I recommend to change this example fragment to indicate, that this isn't
meant to be a document, e.g. by using empty lines or "[...]" or
something similar.

The address element isn't used the way it should, HTML 4 says about
address: "The ADDRESS element may be used by authors to supply contact
information for a document or a major part of a document such as a
form".

HTML 4 recommends (i.e. a RFC 2119 "SHOULD") to quote attribute values,
even if you don't have to, this should be changed here, too.

"[...] and they can only use elements (title, h1, etc) [...]"

There is a missing period after 'etc'. I've seen
<span lang='la' title='et cetera'>etc.</span> in some recommendations,
maybe this should be also done for this document, but I'm not convinced,
this is a that good idea.

XML Grammars, and The Scope Of XMLGL:

I'm not happy with "Data-oriented" and "Metadata-oriented". I think
there is a common distinction between "Data-oriented" or "data centric"
and "document centric/oriented" design of XML applications, e.g. the
distinction between

  <product>
    <price currency='EUR'>35</price>
    <shippingDate format='ISO-compact'>19940203T141529Z</shippingDate>
  </product>

and

  <p>Product costs <price currency='EUR'>35</price> and will be shipped
     on <shippingDate format='ISO-compact'>...

(certainly no good examples, but I think you get the point).

Problem statement:

  "[...] freedom of design it bringshas and can result in a loss of
                                    ^
   accessibility [...]"

There is a missing white space (and possibly a comma, but I'm not an
expert for US English grammar ;-)

Guideline 1.2:

  "[...] Another way would have been to add an "appliesto" attribute to
   the <img> element [...]"

I recommend to s/appliesto/appliesTo/ or use another name; I read this
as some italian word I didn't know. I general, I'd call that name an
accessability flaw :)

Guideline 2.2:

  "[...] Authors must be able to mark up documents with proper
   structural elements and control presentation with style sheets rather
   than with presentation elements and attributes. [...]"

There should be some "unless" for applications like XSL, since XSL would
be (and probably is) superfluous otherwise. XSL isn't really accessible,
is it? If so, XSL shouldn't be refernce material for this document.

Techniques for 2.2:

[...]
  mystyle.css: .news { text-align: center; font: bold arial }

  <?xml-stylesheet href="mystyle.css" type="text/css"?>
  <p class="news">News items 1</p>
  <p class="news">News items 2</p>
  <p class="news">News items 3</p>
[...]

As above, this example is very bad. First, the class attribute may be
considered harmful and it's somehow abused here. The style sheet should
use another selector e.g. 

  #news > p { } /* or */
  #news p

or something like that and the document should reflect this. Second, the
style sheet is bad, since it doesn't define a generic font family as the
last alternative and "Arial" isn't named "arial" and there may be
operating systems treating font family names case-sensitive. Last but
not least this example implies, we look at a complete document. The
xml-stylesheet processing instruction is only allowed in the prolog of
the document; authors often get this wrong (there are W3C TRs which use
them at inappropriate places, thus rendering the document invalid); if
it were meant to be in the prolog, we have multiple document elements,
which is not valid in XML.

Techniques for 2.3:

I don't see any good reason for changing element "mylink" to "crossref".
This is confusing and not reflected by highlighting the element type.

Guideline 2.5:

  "[...] non- visual [...]"

one less white space here.

Techniques for 3.3:

The example document violates some WCAG checkpoint by using h3 in place
of h1; additionally, it's an transitional document (and it shouldn't be)
since it uses inline elements ('a') as child of element 'body'. HTML
provides by the way elements to mark up lists,

  <p>x.x.x ...<br />x.x.y ...</p>

isn't an appropriate way to mark up a list.

Techniques for 3.4:

Element 'script' lacks of required attribute 'type'.

Appendix A: Techniques Rationale:

XHTML doesn't only have ul and li to mark up lists, there is also dl,
dt, dd and ol.

I'll comment on the guidelines and techniques in more detail when I get
time. I think there are some things missing...

regards,
-- 
Björn Höhrmann { mailto:bjoern@hoehrmann.de } http://www.bjoernsworld.de
am Badedeich 7 } Telefon: +49(0)4667/981028 { http://bjoern.hoehrmann.de
25899 Dagebüll { PGP Pub. KeyID: 0xA4357E78 } http://www.learn.to/quote/

Received on Thursday, 30 August 2001 00:03:45 UTC