Portable "documents"

[Patrick Durusau <patrick@durusau.net>]

Greetings!

Apologies but I will be missing today's formula call.

I have more comments I will be filing on various formula definitions but 
those are mostly questions of being more explicit about processing 
assumptions. Such as coupon periods being counted backwards from the 
maturity date. I am sure that is a common assumption among those in the 
finance industry, the problem is that we are writing a standard that has 
to make every step explicit.

My major concern at present is what to do with the notion of "portable 
documents."

First, understand that my role is really to help the formula SC and the 
ODF TC to say what they want to say. I may or may not agree and will 
argue for my position but ultimately, my task is one of expressing the 
committee's view in standards prose.

So, I really don't have a personal stake in whatever is decided on 
"portable documents" but I can tell you its current state in the draft 
does not pass muster as being in standards prose.

Second, in order to fix the current difficulty, I really need to have 
the formula SC and ultimately the ODF TC agree on what is meant by 
"portable document."

To illustrate, I think Rob's initial suggestion of thinking of 
conformance as being divided between expressions and evaluators provides 
part of the superstructure I need to parse out the various threads of 
shall, may, required (sic), etc. in the current draft.

However, I understand "portable document" to cut across whatever 
conformance classes (I assume for example, large group conformance for 
expressions includes supporting the syntax of all fo the large group 
plus the lesser groups, but that medium group conformance for 
expressions is something less than that), but is not itself a 
conformance class. Yes?

One aspect of the editorial work, once the "portable document" issue 
(and whatever it should be called) is decided, will be how to best 
present that information for a standard. I certainly think it should be 
captured but if it isn't normative behavior, that pushes in the 
direction of a non-normative annex. Which would have the additional 
advantage of centralizing all the information that developers or even 
users would need when striving for or evaluating what is possible with a 
"portable document." As it stands now, they would have to search the 
entire document to piece together a (hopefully) coherent and consistent 
picture of what constitutes a "portable document."

I think once we have a common agreement on conformance classes being 
composed of expressions and evaluators (with the details on those yet to 
be decided) and on the treatment of "portable documents," I should have 
enough to start restructuring the prose along those lines. Untangling 
those lines is something that I would prefer to do once and only once so 
some direction on what to do about "portable document" would be greatly 
appreciated.

Hope everyone is having a great week!

Patrick

PS: I will be mostly online throughout the holiday season. Should anyone 
have some free time or simply need a break from relatives, I will 
probably be posting/responding to emails on the formula draft.

PPS: I have continued to edit the current draft, minor editorial stuff 
but I would prefer to not lose it. Let me know if I need to post another 
version for others to take over the editing pen.


-- 
Patrick Durusau
patrick@durusau.net
Chair, V1 - US TAG to JTC 1/SC 34
Convener, JTC 1/SC 34/WG 3 (Topic Maps)
Editor, OpenDocument Format TC (OASIS), Project Editor ISO/IEC 26300
Co-Editor, ISO/IEC 13250-1, 13250-5 (Topic Maps)