- From: Dimitris Dimitriadis <dimitris@ontologicon.com>
- Date: Mon, 27 May 2002 20:23:19 +0200
- To: Alex Rousskov <rousskov@measurement-factory.com>
- Cc: www-qa@w3.org
comments inlined On Monday, May 27, 2002, at 06:56 PM, Alex Rousskov wrote: > 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. > [dd] You're right, it doesn't necessarily imply that. However, given the possible migration to a common markup for specifications being discussed here, it may seem to be a positive spinoff to have a uniform linking mechanism, especially considering that there are tendencies to try to streamline the test suites being produced. Pointing to a spec can of course be done in a variety of ways, but the question I raise is whether it is desirable to make the W3C-produced test related efforts do it in similar ways. > 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. > [dd] It's not clear to me either. We'll have to discuss it a few rounds here and try to map advantages/disadvantages. €0.02 (did the euro sign show up?) /Dimitris > $0.02, > > Alex. >
Received on Monday, 27 May 2002 14:23:23 UTC