[Ops] New IVOA Validation Page

[Tom McGlynn (NASA/GSFC Code 660.1)]

Presumably it would not be very hard to contemplate multiple ways of 
rendering the underlying information with the data saved as XML and 
different stylesheets to render it in a tabular or hierarchical or ... 
fashion.  However I suspect that way lies madness.

I think your style would be fine.  I was deliberately mimicking the 
table we use for the standards documents which I thought that would make 
it easy for a person looking for validators to find the correct one.  
 From the perspective of the IVOA it would also give a clearer sense of 
the coverage of validators for the IVOA standards.

What if we were to replace your table of contents with a real table 
which has the same rows as the standards table, includes a column which 
indicates the status of  validators for that standard, but points to 
text below for the descriptions and URL? That would give us both the 
view of how we're doing but not squeeze long descriptions into the 
table.   So we'd just have WG, Standard name, versions? and validator 
status in the table so we'd  get a  compact table highlighting where we 
have good validator coverage and where work is needed.

I considered whether we might want to add another column to the existing 
standards table, but I'd be concerned that it's too difficult to change 
that table.  Having the validator page on the wiki makes it more 
flexible.  However we will want a link from the standards page to the 
validator page.

     Tom




Mark Taylor wrote:
> Tom & ops,
>
> concerning the format of the IvoaValidatorsSummary page:
> it's a bit hard to flatten this kind of structured information
> into a table (e.g. some rows of the table represent WGs, some
> standards and some validators, so entries in a given column
> are not always directly comparable).
>
> Just to see what it looks like, I've had a go at representing
> (some of) the same information in a more hierarchical/document-like
> twiki page.  You can see the results here:
>
>     http://wiki.ivoa.net/twiki/bin/view/Sandbox/MarkTaylorSandboxValidators
>
> I'm not sure if it's an improvement or not.
>
> Pros:
>     - can link to an entry for a particular standard from outside the page
>     - easier to navigate (from TOC)
>     - more space available for detailed descriptions (where required)
>     - more flexible
>
> Cons:
>     - less compact
>     - harder to compare entries by eye, e.g., versions supported by
>       different validators or validator availability status for
>       different standards
>
> Others may have opinions on which presentation is more useful.
> If you/others prefer the tabular format - that's fine by me.
>
> I have some content to add for some of the standards (at least SAMP,
> VOTable; also taplint contributions to UWS, ObsCore, TAPRegExt and maybe
> others), I'll do that in due course.
>
> Mark
>
> On Mon, 18 Apr 2016, Tom McGlynn (NASA/GSFC Code 660.1) wrote:
>
>> During the last TCG telecon I volunteered to help put up a page providing an
>> introduction and summary of all validation capabilities associated with IVOA
>> standards. I've begun this effort at
>> http://wiki.ivoa.net/twiki/bin/view/IVOA/IvoaValidatorsSummary where my plan
>> would be to ultimately mirror the IVOA standards page with an entry for every
>> standard -- there's a long way to go.  There will be a talk on this at Cape
>> Town, but I'd certainly be interested in comments earlier or from those who
>> are not attending.
>>   I've sent out this original note generally, but I'd suggest responses on the
>> Ops list.  Feel free to comment on the format, arrangement and such as well as
>> the content.  What would make this most useful to the IVOA and our
>> constituents?
>>
>> I would be <very> appreciative of people responsible for various validation
>> capabilities adding to or revising the current entries.
>>
>>      Regards,
>>      Tom McGlynn
>>
>>
> --
> Mark Taylor   Astronomical Programmer   Physics, Bristol University, UK
> m.b.taylor at bris.ac.uk +44-117-9288776  http://www.star.bris.ac.uk/~mbt/
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