XML News from Monday, July 19, 2004

The OASIS XSLT Conformance Working Group finally noticed that their test suite didn't actually contain any expected output, which rendered the entire suite pretty much useless. They never bothered to acknowledge or respond to my repeated queries on this issue, but the Mozilla Project managed to get their attention on this matter. They've posted a new version of the test suite that includes the expected output for the first time. However, it seems the catalog is still out of sync with the actual output files. That is, the catalog says you'll find the output somewhere like attribset/attribset01.out but you'll actually find it in REF_OUT/attribset/attribset01.out. And there are some tests like boolean_bool15, extend_ac137.xsl, namespace_nspc05, namespace_nspc24, expression_expr04, and most of the Xalan output test cases where the file names given in the catalog don't match the file names you'll find in the directories. There's at least one test case, mdocs_mdocsxxx, where either the files are missing or the test was never written or finished. I'd report the bugs directly to the working group, but based on past experience using their online form or posting to the mailing list appears to drop the message into a black hole where it's never heard from again. I figure if I post it here, there's at least a chance someone in the working group might see it. Still, despite the bugs, I'm glad to see test suite is moving forward again. For a long time, I was afraid they'd given up.