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Subject: Clarification of Section 1.1 Terminnology vs. Definitions


Mary,

I notice that in all of the current templates for OASIS Specification documents, section 1.1, Terminology, is pre-filled with a statement in reference to IETF RFC2119. A typical example is the 
OASIS Specification Template V4.1, <http://docs.oasis-open.org/templates/OASISSpecificationTemplateV4.1.html> (for XHTML documents).

Since there is nothing else, the specifications that I encounter tend to have exactly that information (or the ISO/IEC JTC1 counterpart) and nothing else.

I have two sets of questions.

1. Set #1: Is this also the place for brief Definitions when there are specialized terms that must be recognized as such in the given specifications.  Is section 1 also appropriate for a subsection for Document Notation and Conventions (about some specialized style and format matters) and Namespaces (where applicable)?   Finally, are there recommendations/requirements for these additional aspects or are they entirely discretionary?

2. Set #2: Meta-Question.  I am using two TC lists to communicate this question.  Where is a better forum for raising questions and obtaining responses on matters of this kind?

 - Dennis


SOURCES AND EXAMPLES OF DEFINITION CLAUSES IN EXISTING DOCUMENTS

Section 2, Terms and Definitions in the "Guidelines to Writing Conformance Clauses," <http://docs.oasis-open.org/templates/TCHandbook/ConformanceGuidelines.html>, which has terms and definitions up front.

Section 1, Definitions, in the current "OASIS Technical Committee Process," <http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/process-2008-06-19.php>, my favorite for providing links to definitive passages elsewhere where more detail/consistency is required.  This is apparently the preferable alternative to having a glossary, since it give unique form (capitalized proper names) to terms that have specific specialize usage in the context of the given specification.

ISO/IEC JTC1 Standards illustrate the use of Terms and Definitions sections.  The ISO/IEC Directives, Part 2, Rules for the structure and drafting of International Standards, have such a section and also describe such sections as they may appear in International Standards produced under ISO/IEC auspices.  (Can be found via <http://www.iso.org/directives>.)

The Publicly Available ISO/IEC Standards from ITTF provide numerous illustrations: <http://standards.iso.org/ittf/PubliclyAvailableStandards/index.html>.  Ones prepared specifically in the ISO/IEC format are the most useful, including
   ISO/IEC 14977:1996 Information Technology - Syntactic Metalanguage - Extended BNF, <http://standards.iso.org/ittf/PubliclyAvailableStandards/s026153_ISO_IEC_14977_1996(E).zip>
   ISO/IEC 11404:2007 Information Technology - General-Purpose Datatypes (GPD),
<http://standards.iso.org/ittf/PubliclyAvailableStandards/c039479_ISO_IEC_11404_2007(E).zip>

Dennis E. Hamilton
------------------
NuovoDoc: Design for Document System Interoperability 
mailto:Dennis.Hamilton@acm.org | gsm:+1-206.779.9430 
http://NuovoDoc.com http://ODMA.info/dev/ http://nfoWorks.org 



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