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Subject: [humanmarkup] Updating our progress and the TC process to date
- From: Rex Brooks <rexb@starbourne.com>
- To: humanmarkup-comment@lists.oasis-open.org, humanmarkup@lists.oasis-open.org
- Date: Sat, 12 Oct 2002 07:34:27 -0700
Title: Updating our progress and the TC process to
date
Hi Everyone,
Sorry for the mini-barrage but we have a lot on our plates, in
case you didn't notice.
Friday's exchange with Len over the Base
Schema Element 'thought' has focused a problem that is very
appropriate to the fact that this is the last of the single, atomistic
elements from the first draft or straw-man schema toolkit Len provided
for us in Phase 0.
I refer you to my separate post this morning on that in the "Base
Schema - thought" thread.
We still have the Global Attributes to discuss for our first pass
through the specification and then our final review including the new
elements we have added in the course of this process.
Hopefully we also field proposals for when and how to conduct the work
of creating both the adjunct Len mentioned to model specific processes
for using our elements as input and output, and the semiotic processor
which he and Sylvia have been exploring.
I also want to commend Manos, not only for
working on the RDF Schema to connect our elements to definitional
resources and to standards for measurements, but also for volunteering
to investigate the proposed User Interface Markup Language (UIML) TC.
Thanks Manos, if that group takes off, we will have yet another TC
with which we must interoperate.
I think we need to give a bit of thought to
adding additional spectra or scales besides decimal 0-1, but that is
for another message.
Wrapping this up by Oct. 31, 2002 will be a challenge, but I think we
can do it if we put the necessary effort into the last laps here.
Since I quite recently formatted our Working Draft Requirements
Document in the OASIS-approved plain-HTML with Cascading Style Sheets
and in Microsoft Word (which I have not yet added to the website as of
10-12-02) and which I will also format in XML which uses XSL with FO,
which if you are not familiar with the intricacies of the XML
standards family stands for Extensible StyleSheets Language Formatting
Objects. I mention all this as a preamble to this message because I
will shortly be casting our first OASIS TC Specification in these
formats, as well as in the .xsd file which will define all the
elements in our Primary Base Schema and be the first document of
record in our huml namespace, once it passes through the OASIS
process.
You will note that I am making a fairly bold assumption that this
first draft will proceed through our own TC process to become a TC
specification recommendation. I may well be assuming wrongly in that
since we do have a few sticking points to iron out, particularly with
regard to an additional set of Global Attributes and a method or means
for adding elements as needed in the future.
So the issue of 'thought' versus 'thought process' is apt for this
wider discussion, as well as for the atomistic element 'thought' on
its own merits, or liabilities.
First, to summarize, it appears that Len and I agree that 'thought' as
a poorly defined set of thought types, which is probably the best we
could come up with if we were to just bear down on arriving at some
consensus now, should not be in this version of the Primary Base
Schema. I just phrased this specification as a "version"
because that is the most universal process for amending or changing
specifications today, and I did that to bring that discussion into
this process.
So, while I think we should adopt the practice of assigning version
numbers mostly for the sake of appearances, I don't think we want to
establish one simple all-encompassing versioning process as it is
currently practiced. Neither do I think we should court criticism for
diverging too much from accepted and understood practices.
What I mean is that I do not think it would
work for us to conduct full-scale, specification-wide revisions to add
single or even groups of elements as the need is made clear by
application-area specific recommendations or offerings of candidate
elements. It should be, in my opinion, a narrowly-focused procedure
that considers only the specific elements on the basis of the merit or
purpose proposed for the elements. So what I would propose would be an
element-by-element process, with an exception for related groups (such
as an atomistic element in the Primary Base Schema with an associated
and derived set of elements in the Secondary Base Schema) with perhaps
another exception for a set of Primaries each with its own
Secondaries. (This corresponds to Primitives and Extended Primitives.)
However, I think that we can take that up later and I would suggest
that this process ought to be part of a finalized draft of the
Requirements Document where we can add specific clauses to the
Sections to which this process applies, such as Compatibility,
Modularity and Extensibility, where we stipulate these
considerations.
So how's that for equivocating for the sake of finishing up the
Primary Base Schema in the timeline at which we have aimed?
And while I am confessing to rationalizing a selfish goal, let me also
say that I have a great need to get out our specification now so as to
stagger our work ahead of my Web Services work because the latter is
much more complicated and time consuming in terms of two-hour weekly
working meetings and quarterly (although this first year will have
seen five (5) face-to-face meetings of which I will have only attended
three (3)--as opposed to HumanMarkup's monthly meetings. When both
(Now three TCs since I signed onto the WSRP TC to synch webmastering
for WSIA) approach target dates for deliverables in tandem, it is very
taxing, and my performance suffers.
So that about sets the record straight in term of updating the
progress of our work.
I will definitely be sending out an agenda
for Wednesday's meeting because we just have too much to discuss and
do for it to be a more wide-ranging and free form discussion, as we
all prefer.
I thought it wise to bring everyone up to date now because I have
been tossing out quite a lot of related standards progress reports
lately, and while this is not everything, since it leaves out
significant developments in the Web 3D Consortium which affect the
intersection of HumanMarkup and WebServices and 3D, but this is about
as much as I think it wise to ask you all to absorb.
The genda will be come out with the next reminder of the telecon
Wednesday.
Have a nice weekend,
Rex
--
Rex Brooks
Starbourne Communications Design
1361-A Addison, Berkeley, CA 94702 *510-849-2309
http://www.starbourne.com * rexb@starbourne.com
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