Re: [qaframe-spec] conformance tools vs. broken specs

* Al Gilman wrote:
>>   If you submit a web page address to the W3C MarkUp Validator, it could
>>happen that the result page tells you that your document is "Valid XHTML
>>1.0 Strict" and provides a link to the XHTML 1.0 Recommendation. If you
>>follow this link you will encounter a problem: There is no definition of
>>what it means for a document to be identified as "Valid XHTML 1.0
>>Strict". This is an important issue for web authors and tool developers
>>who care about web standards and I think the current Specification
>>Guidelines draft does not sufficiently address it.
>
>For modular and multi-schema specifications there is complexity
>that can't necessary be laid out in the manner you recommend below.

I don't think so. Whether a specification uses a single or multiple
normative schemas does IMO not really matter - schemas are tools not
specifications. It does neither matter whether a specification is
modular or not. They have conformance requirements of which a subset
is machine-testable, identifying them is not all that hard.

>At least if one uses EARL to spell out the conformance claims, one can be
>surgically precise that the 'valid' in the clause "Valid XHTML 1.0 Strict"
>is valid-to-DTD as defined in XML 1.0 and the XHTML 1.0 Strict is a
>reference to the DTD, not the specification.

But users typically do not understand that.

>At least if all the tools we rely on for orthodoxy enforcement in our content
>development chains all offered EARL output, then one could mix and match and
>compose the results correctly.

I've looked at EARL support for HTML Tidy but I have actually no idea
how to do it. The W3C Validator reports

  <Assertion>
    <subject rdf:resource="http://www.w3.org" />
    <result rdf:resource="http://www.w3.org/2001/03/earl/1.00#passes" />
    <testCase rdf:resource="http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/" />
    <note>Valid!</note>
  </Assertion>

I have for example no idea how "http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/" qualifies as
a test case. It is probably a good idea to have machine readable reports
but in order to implement it I would need a specification that tells me
exactly how to do it.

Received on Tuesday, 9 September 2003 00:52:40 UTC