- From: (unknown charset) Alex Rousskov <rousskov@measurement-factory.com>
- Date: Mon, 27 May 2002 10:56:46 -0600 (MDT)
- To: (unknown charset) Dimitris Dimitriadis <dimitris@ontologicon.com>
- cc: (unknown charset) www-qa@w3.org
On Mon, 27 May 2002, Dimitris Dimitriadis wrote: > > GOALS: > > Allow an external document (test case, erratum, email, etc.) to point > > directly at a "testable" normative sentence in a Recommendation. > > > > [dd] This would clearly simplify the task of, if we look at tests, > > knowing which part in particualr is being tested, but requires > > structure and issues tracking. This in turn implies that it may need to > > be an intra-W3C "standard". > > [dd] The "standard" I mention here would be the testable assertion > markup we've discussed and the linking technique (pointing to a testable > assertion from a part of the actual test, say). From technical point of view, "pointing to normative sentence in a Recommendation" does not imply a need for structure or W3C documentation standard. An external document can point to normative sentences using a variety of already available techniques, which will depend on the format of the Recommendation and on the test tool preferences. In the extreme case, one can use byte offsets and a simple rendering engine to highlight relevant citations. In many cases, approaches like XPath/XPointer could be used. Also, linking using short quotes (rather than some sort of addresses) can simplify maintaining the index across Recommendation changes. Yes, having a one-for-all standard will simplify linking and tracking document updates until the document becomes stable. However, it is not clear to me whether these somewhat temporary advantages outweigh the drawbacks of one-size-fits-all approach and introduction of yet another standard. $0.02, Alex.
Received on Monday, 27 May 2002 12:56:51 UTC