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Subject: Groups - New Action Item #0017 Spin off a separate numbered issue
OASIS Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) TC member, Seraphim Larsen has created a new action item. Number: #0017 Description: Spin off a separate numbered issue Owner: Don Day Due: 06 Sep 2005 Comments: Seraphim Larsen 2005-08-22 16:27 GMT From 8/16 TC meeting -- see this discussion thread. I. General issue: CamelCase for attributes? Don Day invites Erik Hennum to briefly describe the arguments for standardizing on a camel case naming convention for attribute names. Erik -- With DITA, as with any extensible system, there is a risk of developing large quatnity of names. Need to manage names and make sure names are intelligible. Other systems, particularly object-oriented programming languages, have seen value in self-documenting names. These names may be somewhat verbose, but can tell what the obeject is about by looking at a name. Camel case makes clear where the word boundaries are. The TC should consider naming issues as new elements are brought into system. How do we make those names legible? For example, with single-case, compound names, how do we handle the case where the last letter of a word and the first letter of the following word are the same? Don -- What about the issue of renaming of legacy attributes? Erik -- clearly we do not want to change existing names. Paul Prescod -- if we dont change existing names, we will have inconsistent names for some time. If we propose to change legacy names at 2.0, we would have to go through cost/benefit analysis. Benefits must outweigh the cost for migrating legacy documents. Erik -- If we stick to our existing convention, as we increase the names, were going to have increasingly cryptic names. E.g., the name properties is taken. Any new properties-related attribute would be a compound name. Bruce Esrig -- consider namespace convention. Module dash. Rob Frankland -- Camel case is easier than hyphen. Robin Cover -- Will convey a set of references for several NDRs (Naming and Design Rules) documents being used and/or drafted by 6 or 7 organizations and government agencies. Already logged as Action Item: http://www.oasis-open.org/apps/org/workgroup/dita/members/action_item.php?action_item_id=1000 Paul -- Authors would need to remember whether an attribute is camel case or not. Alan Houser -- Most tools present lists of attributes, and dont require that authors remember attribute names. Don -- Would this (camel case) possibly influence processing architectures? Would this encourage processing based on camel case features? Paul -- Would processes depend on Camel Case to identify word breaks? Don -- Do we start this at 1.1, or waight for 2.0. Erik -- Are we presenting a problem by doing it now? Paul -- I propose separate issue: do we revamp naming convention now or later? Erik -- Concurs. Rob -- Is this strictly a human issue or a parser issue? Don -- Do folded case conventions make sense in non-English DTDs? E.g. many asian languages dont have the concept of case. Is there an implicit assumption that were using a mixed case language? Bruce -- Word boundaries are always a problem in asian languages. Don -- Question to Paul Prescod: Have you seen customers rewrite DTDs to a non-english language? Pauls response -- We encourage people to use the authoring tools user interface to present different names to authors. This doesnt break processing. Erik -- any convention for names thats specific to a language does not present a problem for other languages. Don -- spinning off a separate numbered issue. Will add issue, make Erik owner (ACTION ITEM). Paul -- DITA is not currently consistent with respect to use of dashes, capitalization. Document-oriented DTDs dont tend to use camel case as much as data-oriented. This is probably an artifact of our case-insensitive SGML legacy. View Details: http://www.oasis-open.org/apps/org/workgroup/dita/members/action_item.php?action_item_id=1001 PLEASE NOTE: If the above links do not work for you, your email application may be breaking the link into two pieces. You may be able to copy and paste the entire link address into the address field of your web browser. - OASIS Open Administration
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