Re: [oiic-formation-discuss] Acid Tests

["Sam Johnston" <samj@samj.net>]

On Fri, Jun 13, 2008 at 9:36 AM, Dave Pawson <dave.pawson@gmail.com> wrote:

2008/6/13 Luc Bollen <luc.bol@gmail.com>:

>
>
> On Fri, Jun 13, 2008 at 3:35 AM, Sam Johnston <samj@samj.net> wrote:
>>
>> I have identified two (possibly complementary) approaches:
>>
>> A (single or multi-page) document (or documents) available online
>> An online engine for testing documents submitted via eg web form, email
>>
>> [...]
>>
>> I'm not sure which of these two approaches is most interesting/useful in
>> the context of an acid test, or if both are required, but perhaps it is
>> better to specify the requirements such a test must meet without specifying
>> the implementation. In any case an online test engine would be interesting
>> eg for verifying profile conformance.
>
>
> Sam, I'm convinced both approaches are needed.  An "ODF tool" can be either
> a consumer (e.g. a viewer), a producer (e.g. a tool producing an ODF
> document from a database) or both (e.g. a text editor).
> - a document available on-line will be of no use to test an ODF producer
> - an online verificator engine will be of no use to test an ODF consumer.

Finance.

Let's make a guess. Somewhere between 5-60% of the tests will require
manual intervention.
Who will host the site, maintain the service. No, not Oasis.
Would you use it if you had to pay for it?
Who would use it? Vendors ( <6?)
Large corporations... Possibly.
.gov organisations? Possibly.
Others?
I don't think it's financially viable in this format.

Actually the TC itself may indeed be best /not/ to produce the validator itself, but not for reason of financing so much as distraction from the core tasks in favour of something which can be done by others. Rather they could work in the prerequisites, primarily:

• Prioritisation of ODF features by real world usage (see previous comments on parsing real world documents)
• Creation of reference documents directly from the spec (which comprehensively test subsections eg tables?)
  
• Implementation of a comprehensive test suite (eg xml containing all of the atomic tests, hyperlinked back to the spec and with applicable version info?)
  

Once this information is available it could be used directly by the anticipated audience, for example by creating a python based validator (similar to the ODf validator) which could run, for free, on Google's AppEngine (or equivalent). The project itself could be open source (but the test inputs could presumably adopt the usual OASIS licensing regime) and could be hosted on Sourceforge or Google Code.

Similarly (and critically) those concerned about the security of their information need not be placated by reassuring messages like this as they could run the code on their own servers:

We take your privacy seriously. Neither the Fellowship nor Cyclone3 will ever sell or distribute any document you upload. Uploaded documents are not used for any purpose other than validation. All documents are destroyed as soon as validation is complete.

Kind regards,

Sam

-- 
Sam Johnston
Australian Online Solutions
http://www.aos.net.au/
+61 2 8898 9090