Re: Outline of Boston presentation

At 12:55 PM 2/18/03 -0800, you wrote:

>Thanks. I wondered about the "tools" statement myself - I took this from 
>earlier presentations. It sounds as if we don't actually have any 
>"software tools" today (templates are certainly very valuable, and are a 
>"tool" in the broad sense, but probably don't qualify in most peoples' 
>minds). Should we strike this reference for now?

I'd favor keeping some reference to tools.  Reasons:

** As you point out, things like templates are tools in the broadest 
sense.  We have them now and can point to them.

** It is our intent to have more, esp in the "Test" arena.  But we could 
also have more fairly quickly -- e.g., forms based on the templates, that 
would auto-generate the markup of the templates with the fill-in-the-blanks 
completed.  (Such things could be done, if we decided they were worth the 
resources.

The offending statement is:  "We do provide guidance, tools, and 
processes".  If "do provide" is bothersome, we could always weasel-word it 
as "aim to provide", and then talk around the point in-person -- "do" for 
some of these things, "plan to" for others.


>When we've had a chance to catch our breath, I'd like to talk to the group 
>about tools, and about some of the work we're doing at Sun. In particular, 
>we're planning to update a specification markup tool that I think would be 
>of general interest. I hope (and believe) I'll be able to fund this, and 
>to get permission to donate it. The other area where I see a great need is 
>for a test-harness, and again I think we can help.

Excellent!  This is partially on the Boston Agenda already, for Friday.  It 
falls under the TTF and "futures" topics of Friday,

http://www.w3.org/QA/2003/03/f2f

It could come up also Thursday morning, during outreach results review (I 
am keen to hear whether the WGs have any feedback about what they'd like us 
to supply in the way of tools).

I said "partially", because TTF would encompass tools like test frameworks, 
but not necessarily spec-writing aids such as you and Karl both 
mention.  Btw, the current draft of the Test Task Force (TTF) charter is at:

http://www.w3.org/QA/WG/2003/01/qawgttf-20030122.html

Regards,
-Lofton.

Received on Wednesday, 19 February 2003 13:38:58 UTC