Feedback on "The Matrix"

Regarding The Matrix of W3C Specifications:

http://www.w3.org/QA/TheMatrix.html

Three comments (1. Excellent, 2. W3C icon for W3C test suites, 3. Selectors 
is in CR and has a test suite).


1.  This is an excellent document.  In many ways it is much more useful than 
http://w3.org/TR/ for quickly looking up a specification and related 
resources (test suite, errata, etc.).

Well done QA folks!


2. I have heard that there are a lot of great improvements planned for this 
page, but I would like to request one particular simple (and hopefully 
quick) general improvement which I think would help much better communicate 
the status of test suites for various specifications.

The "Test Suites" column is currently just a boolean (hyperlinked!) 
indicator  of whether or not there is anything even remotely resembling a 
test suite available for a particular technology.

While this is useful, it would help significantly if the test suites which 
were actually hosted at w3.org used a "W3C" icon instead of the "hammer and 
wrench" icon.

E.g. the CSS1 test suite could be linked like this:

<a href="http://w3.org/Style/CSS/Test/CSS1/current/"><img 
src="http://www.w3.org/Icons/WWW/w3c_home" style="height:1em" alt="CSS1 Test 
Suite"  /></a>

The height:1em will proportionally scale the W3C icon to fit in a cell of 
the same height as a line of text thus not increasing the height of its row.


The other test suites (which are not hosted by W3C and are in various 
unknown states) could be left with the "hammer and wrench" icon.

Note that links to W3C pages which describe or refer to test suites but 
aren't actually part of W3C hosted test suites themselves should should 
_not_ use the W3C icon, and should instead still use the "hammer and wrench" 
icon.

For example, the hammer and wrench icon for HTML 4.01 links to 
http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/Test/ which is not a test suite - it is merely a 
place holder and reference to other test suites.  Thus the Test Suite link 
for HTML 4.01 should continue to use hammer and wrench icon until an 
official W3C HTML4.01 test suite is hosted at that location.


This will help quickly call out at a glance which specs actually have 
official W3C test suites, vs. which have some sort of test suite or plan for 
a test suite, and which have no form of test suite at all.


3. Selectors[1] is now a CR[2], and has a test suite [3] and should be added 
to The Matrix.

[1]
http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-selectors

[2]
http://www.w3.org/TR/2001/CR-css3-selectors-20011113

[3]
http://www.w3.org/Style/CSS/Test/CSS3/Selectors/current/

Here is the markup that needs to be added to the Matrix table, just before 
the SMIL 1.0 row:

     <tr>
      <th><a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-selectors"
        title="Selectors">Selectors</a></th>
      <td class="cr">CR</td>
      <td><a href="qalog-style.html"><img src="images/icolog" alt="Style 
Log"
        /></a></td>
      <td><a href="http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/"><img
        src="images/icovalid" alt="Validator" /></a></td>
      <td><a
        href="http://www.w3.org/Style/CSS/Test/CSS3/Selectors/current/"><img
        src="http://www.w3.org/Icons/WWW/w3c_home" style="height:1em" 
alt="Selectors Test Suite" /></a></td>
      <td><a
        href="http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/">Comments on 
the CR</a></td>
      <td><a
        href="http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-selectors/#Conformance"><img
        src="images/icoconf" alt="Conformance" /></a></td>
    </tr>



Thanks for your consideration,

Tantek Çelik

Received on Wednesday, 27 February 2002 09:01:18 UTC