Re: W3C's XHTML QA plan

There is a huge difference between a test suite and a good test suite.  I
think what the HTML Working Group wants is a good test suite, not just a bag
of HTML documents that got collected from here and there.  We are taking a
thorough, analytical approach to the specifications, and producing
assertion-level tests that fully exercise the specification.  This type of
work requires significant investment and expertise.  ApTest does this all
the time, but we are a small company and cannot afford to just eat the cost
of this work. That is why we have asked the interested parties to help share
the burden of producing the quality tests that are needed.

Karl Dubost wrote:

> Shane,
>
> At 18:33 -0600 2002-01-29, Shane P. McCarron wrote:
> >Just to be clear... While this project involves people from the HTML
> >Working Group, and while we will give the results to the W3C membership
> >when we are done, it is not a W3C project.  We needed to fund the
> >project, and we found a way to do it.  Early access is the carrot that
> >is getting people to pony up some funds to get the development work
> >done.  Once it is done, we will make it available to all W3C members.
> >
> >This is farily common practice in the standards industry.  If the W3C
> >had chosen to fund this project, we wouldn't need to do it this way.
> >They didn't.  So we do.  I don't like it, but I don't really have a
> >choice.
>
> Most of the working group have done their test suites without funding
> of the W3C. It has happened that someone has been hired to coordinate
> the work, but no funding to create the test cases themselves. As
> members participate to the working groups, and give resources to
> elaborate the standards, they commit resources also to create such a
> test suite.
>
> For the newly created WG charters, I'm trying to make it a part of
> the charter. It means, that the test suite is a deliverable of the
> WG. I never understood why the HTML WG has always been so reluctant
> to create such a test suite. I perfectly understand that it was not
> on the charter. But HTML being the most used language on the web, it
> would have been not difficult to have a broad participation from the
> community.
>
> --
> Karl Dubost / W3C - Conformance Manager
>            http://www.w3.org/QA/
>
>       --- Be Strict To Be Cool! ---

--
Shane P. McCarron                     Phone: +1 763 786-8160 x120
Managing Director                       Fax: +1 763 786-8180
ApTest Minnesota                       Inet: shane@aptest.com

Received on Wednesday, 30 January 2002 11:53:11 UTC