RDDL / RSS and simplifying "busy work" for spec' editors / staff?

["David RR Webber \(XML\)" <david@drrw.info>]

Folks,

 

Like all of us involved in moving spec's through the process - I'm constantly wanting the mechanics to be easier to facilitate and the burden on the OASIS supporting staff to be lessened - while retaining the rigour needed.

 

It seems that the new IPR changes have introduced a doubling up on the number of steps to go through - and hence potential revisions of documents.

 

I'm wondering if we can de-couple the actual status of the specification from the specification documents and schemas themselves by referencing to a central status tracker instead?

 

This would therefore reduce the continual editing of each item - just to update the status indicator.  That editing also adds confusion factor - because every document appears to change at each step even if no substantive changes were actually done.

 

One candidate for the tracker is the RDDL - another would be to create an RSS document - that tracks the status of the specification of each TC centrally, and locally on each TC page.  The RSS would have the side benefit of allowing subscription to that to do notifications of changes.

 

Either way the RDDL and RSS could be directly linked on the Kavi TC page as a "Status" link that would be clickable along with the other standard links.  That linkage would be noted on the title page of the specification and in-line in schemas - something like http://status.oasis-open.org/tcabbrev .

 

Thanks, DW

"The way to be is to do" - Confucius (551-472 B.C.)