[wbs] response to 'TR Design Survey'

The following answers have been successfully submitted to 'TR Design Survey'
(public) for Michael Kay.

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> Group
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> On behalf of which W3C Working Group are you answering this survey?
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XSL WG. We also work closely with XQuery WG, so these answers supplement
those from Jim Melton. (In some cases I think I have interpreted the
questions differently.)

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> Sample(s)
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> Paste in URLs to a representative sample (1-3 links) of your specs. If
> styling differs substantially between /TR and your editor's drafts,
> please link to both versions. 
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https://www.w3.org/XML/Group/qtspecs/specifications/xslt-30/html/Overview.html
https://www.w3.org/XML/Group/qtspecs/specifications/xslt-30/html/Overview-diff.html

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> Specification Processor(s)
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> What spec pre-processor(s) does your WG use?
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The source text is maintained in XML, based on a customized version of
xmlspec. There is a complex pipeline (in Ant) to generate the final HTML
for publication.

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> Group style sheet(s)
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> Paste in URLs to any WG-specific style sheets you use.
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I guess you mean CSS here? The two HTML specs cited above include some
local CSS style declarations modifying/supplementing the standard W3C CSS
stylesheets. These have been used for many years and some of them may no
longer be relevant. One change I recall was to use "softer" background
colours for "diff" markup (new and changed text) as the original colours
were found to be very harsh. I think we also made some changes to hyperlink
rendition: the spec is very densely hyperlinked and to keep the text
readable we needed the hyperlinks to be less intrusive. We also introduced
a superscript notation for cross-spec hyperlinks within the family of
specification.

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> Like
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> What do you like about your current styles?
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They're not perfect but they work.

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> Dislike
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> What do you dislike about your current styles?
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The sans-serif font is sometimes a problem, e.g. lack of distinction
between upper-case I and lower-case ell. One can certainly envisage
improvements, e.g. "hover" actions to show the definition of a defined
term.

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> Complex style
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> Paste in URLs to any parts of your spec that are stylistically complex or
> tricky, and we should therefore be careful not to screw up.
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At one point the XSLT spec had some pretty complex SVG diagrams, e.g. here
http://www.w3.org/TR/2010/WD-xslt-21-20100511/#streamability-choice-and-repetition
but there is only one remaining (and very simple) SVG diagram in the
current spec.

Note the use of function signatures:
https://www.w3.org/XML/Group/qtspecs/specifications/xslt-30/html/Overview-diff.html#func-json-to-xml

Examples:
https://www.w3.org/XML/Group/qtspecs/specifications/xslt-30/html/Overview-diff.html#json-to-xml-mapping

Syntax templates for elements:
https://www.w3.org/XML/Group/qtspecs/specifications/xslt-30/html/Overview-diff.html#xsl-for-each-group

Of course, all of these could be improved.


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> Table style
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> The new styles will include rules for rendering data tables. These will
> be opt-in by class name, and rely heavily on good markup (use of THEAD,
> TBODY, COLGROUP, scope attributes, etc.). See Simple Example, Less Simple
> Example, and Extra-Complex Example. Paste in URLs to a sampling of any
> data tables you are using so that we can try to accommodate those in the
> styling, if practical. 
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In the XSLT spec:
https://www.w3.org/XML/Group/qtspecs/specifications/xslt-30/html/Overview-diff.html#func-json-to-xml

In the functions and operators spec, note the use of colour in the table
here:
https://www.w3.org/XML/Group/qtspecs/specifications/xpath-functions-31/html/Overview.html#casting-from-primitive-to-primitive
(scroll down a bit).

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> CSS WG Style
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> The CSSWG has made a number of minor improvements to the existing spec
> styles, which we might just adopt wholesale. Please comment on what you
> like/dislike about these styles, as demonstrated in the CSS3 Text
> specification.
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Looks nice, but of course one can't tell how it work for a different spec
without trying it.

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> Anything else?
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>     Is there anything else we should consider?
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Not that comes to mind...

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> These answers were last modified on 1 August 2015 at 16:04:08 U.T.C.
> by Michael Kay
> 
Answers to this questionnaire can be set and changed at
https://www.w3.org/2002/09/wbs/1/tr-design-survey-2015/ until 2015-09-01.

 Regards,

 The Automatic WBS Mailer

Received on Saturday, 1 August 2015 16:06:03 UTC