Re: Towards a better testsuite: Metadata

> On Apr 13, 2016, at 06:29, fantasai <fantasai.lists@inkedblade.net> wrote:
> 
> On 04/12/2016 03:50 PM, ishida@w3.org wrote:
>> On 12/04/2016 20:10, fantasai wrote:
>>> The test template would look like this:
>>> 
>>> <!DOCTYPE html>
>>> <title>
>>>   Title of your test on one line [optional]
>>> 
>>>   ... Assertion of your test, i.e. what does passing this test
>>>   prove. E.g. When text-align is not set, its initial value depends
>>>    on dir attribute.) ...
>>> </title>
>> 
>> i'm still not keen on this.  It's risky. For example, how do you tell whether there's a one line short title followed by an
>> assertion paragraph or no short title but two paragraphs? It also requires dealing with different line breaks, and there's a
>> risk of lines not being properly separated, etc.
>> 
>> if we have to use the title element, how about using the title attribute with it for the optional bit, ie. the short title.
>> Then at least we can tell the difference easily.
>> 
>> ie.
>> 
>> <!doctype html>
>> <html>
>> <head>
>> <meta charset="UTF-8">
>> <title title="short title for your test">Assertion, i.e. in situation X, Y will happen. E.g. When text-align is not set, its
>> initial value depends on the dir attribute.</title>
>> 
>> 
>> and btw in the documentation i'd say that the title attribute is optional, but recommended.
> 
> This makes sense to me!

If we're using markup in a way that is unconventional enough that people won't get it without looking at the documentation, I am not sure what we gain over an assert meta.

Also, considering that a key goal is to enable synchronization from browser vendors' test repos, this is not going to be super friendly. Existing tests won't be conforming to this pattern, since it is not standard. So we'd have to fix the tests after importing them, but there's no automated way to detect which tests have an assertion-in-a-title, and which just have an old fashioned title. Also, I don't know for sure, but there is a chance that the title element is already used in some way in the vendors internal systems, and that this usage would be disturbed by us changing it and synchronizing back.

My preference still goes to the assert meta.

* Unlike the flags meta, you don't need to look up the documentation to know how to write it. You need to be made aware that it exists, but once you are, the actual syntax is completely obvious.

* We can programmatically detect which tests don't have one when importing large amount of tests from external sources

* It doesn't go against authoring habits. Sure, people aren't used to writing one, but unlike a title element, they don't have a conflicting preconceived notion of how it should be used.

 - Florian

Received on Wednesday, 13 April 2016 00:10:11 UTC