RE: [oic] first impression on conformance tests ? - <office:metadata> <dc:creator> element.

["Dennis E. Hamilton" <dennis.hamilton@acm.org>]

1. I agree, for <office:meta>, there's not much by way of conformance for
many of these elements.  Some of them have better-defined content values
though.  I trust that what we discover will lead to better normative
language and precison in ODF-beyond-1.1 somewhere.  

It does seem to be more of an interoperability consideration at this point.
We can provide tests for determining what are the are the supported elements
and what is the level of interoperability among implementations, along with
what the edge/failure cases are. 

[The <dc:creator> thing is more problematic.  Now it is not possible to
introduce a <dc:creator> element into <office:meta> and mean the Dublin Core
1.1 interpretation.  That makes me so cranky I am afraid to look at the
other uses of Dublin Core 1.1 elements.]

2. I am still scratching my head on what these tests are.  Function point is
used as a term of art in a different way (and there is an ISO/IEC Standard
20926 on the subject).  I don't think there is anything comprehensive about
these, and I wouldn't want to use completeness for that reason either.  I
think of these little tests as little probes.  They seem to be useful in
confirming support of a feature (being very loose about what a feature is).
I think of them as feature support probes, maybe.

Ah, my Encarta Thesaurus (must get the latest version before taken off the
market later this year), offers "inspection" as a term related to probe (in
the sense of investigation).  

Feature-support inspection.  Feature-support inspection point (well, maybe
not).  As distinct from feature-support coverage.

Something there appeals to me.  "Feature-support inspection" covers a lot at
the simple level.  (Going to let that sit and stew for a while.)

 - Dennis

-----Original Message-----
From: Hanssens Bart [mailto:Bart.Hanssens@fedict.be] 
Sent: Tuesday, March 31, 2009 15:43
To: dennis.hamilton@acm.org; OIC TC List
Subject: RE: [oic] first impression on conformance tests ? -
<office:metadata> <dc:creator> element.

Hello Dennis,


thanks for all the remarks. Really nice to read the discussion on the
tests.

(...)


> I think there should be test cases like this.  I don't know what to
> call them. 

Hmm, "feature" tests ? Completeness tests ? Function point tests ?


[ ... ]


> 2.2 The problem I have with this is that I am speaking of representative
> consumer behavior for an ODF Text document.  There is no way to know
> what the connection with a dc:creator element is and what constitutes
> conformance.  Furthermore, there is no ODF conformance requirement on
> this information being available and on how implementations influence it,
> either mechanically or as an user agent or both.  There is, of course,
> also nothing specified for ODF on who has control over the dc:creator
> content and what is allowed for that content.

So, in this case the test is more heading towards interoperability, and
ODF-Next should be clearer on the conformance requirements ?


> 3. SERIOUS CONCERN
>
> 3.1 I looked at section 3.1.7 Creator, and I find this statement to be
> abominable...

Testing good old boring meta-data sure is a lot of fun isn't it  :-)



Best regards,

Bart