Testing of RNG / DTD / XSD

Subject:
            
            Testing of RNG / DTD / XSD
          

          

            Date: 
            Tue, 15 Apr 2014 08:25:53 -0500
          

          

            From: 
            Robert D Anderson <>
          

          

            To: 
            Eliot Kimber <>,
              , , Scott
              Hudson <>
          

          

            CC: 
            Kristen James Eberlein
              <>, Eric Sirois
              <>
          

        
      
      

      

      
I was supposed to start this
          thread last week but fell down on that. Better late than
          never.

        

        We need to discuss how we want
          to handle testing of the RNG -- what policy do we want to have
          in place, who is doing the work, and (if needed) how can that
          work be repeated by others. I think it's important that
          whatever our Official Process becomes, anybody should be able
          to set it up and repeat it with minimal work. That was not the
          case with DITA 1.2, where everything relied on a long series
          of tools and scripts on my own system.

        

        High points - here are the
          things I did while testing with 1.2:

        * Kept an XML rendering of each
          doctype

        * For each new feature:

        ** Integrate the new change

        ** Verify that the DTD still
          parsed (run through my generally very picky Omnimark parser,
          open in a validating editor)

        ** Verify that the desired new
          markup was there

        ** Regenerate the XML version
          of the DTD, and do a diff to ensure no unintended changes

        * Repeat for each new feature

        

        For 1.3 I think Eliot has
          already been doing some of this - validating with parsers, and
          ensuring that the new markup is available. 

        

        Do we want to keep up the "make
          sure no unintended consequences" test, and if so, how? I think
          this is much more difficult with doctypes that are already
          essentially complete (it's easiest when checking as each
          feature is added).

        

        Do we have tools that can do
          other DITA based validation -- ensure that the specialization
          is correct, maybe catch a Learning and Training element that
          has an incorrectly constructed class attribute, etc?

        

        Who here wants to sign up for
          testing of RNG, DTD, or XSD? We don't want to be wasting time,
          but it might be a good thing if we're doing some of this
          testing with different parsers, for example -- I've found
          things in the past that opened OK in Arbortext, while Omnimark
          threw out an error, or vice versa.

        

        Thanks,

          

          Robert D Anderson

          IBM Authoring Tools Development

          Chief Architect, DITA Open Toolkit (http://dita-ot.sourceforge.net/)