humanmarkup-comment message
[Date Prev]
| [Thread Prev]
| [Thread Next]
| [Date Next]
--
[Date Index]
| [Thread Index]
| [Elist Home]
Subject: [humanmarkup-comment] This Month's Meeting Minutes
- From: Rex Brooks <rexb@starbourne.com>
- To: humanmarkup-comment@lists.oasis-open.org, humanmarkup@lists.oasis-open.org
- Date: Sat, 18 May 2002 08:36:31 -0700
Title: This Month's Meeting Minutes
Here are the TC Minutes, which I will link to this post Sunday, May
19, 2002 and some other updates to the TC website.
May 15, 2002
Teleconference meeting of the OASIS HumanMarkup Technical
Committee.
USA Toll Free Number: 888-576-9014
USA Toll Number: +1-773-756-0201
Roll Call:
Voting Members:
Ranjeeth Kumar Thunga
Rex Brooks
Rob Nixon
Kurt Cagle by Proxy
Joseph Norris
Prospective Members:
Philip Rossomando
Non-members:
Sylvia Candlearia de Ram
Minutes taken by TC Secretary Rex Brooks
Meeting convened12:10 p.m. Eastern Time
This meeting was on our normally scheduled third Wednesday of the
Month.
Rex chatted with Kurt Cagle earlier in the
day, and discovered that Kurt would have to take a break from his
duties of Editor for the TC due to conflicting work commitments. As it
later turned out, he is also taking a hiatus from OASIS, so until he
can return to full participation, we wish him luck and Rex suggests we
treat him as an Invited Expert until then. This will be brought up in
the mailist lists, so there is no need to vote on it in response to
this this meething's minutes.
We welcomed our new Prospective Member,
Philip Rossomando, and spent a while getting to know him and his
background. We are very pleased to include him in our group's
work.
We are now involved in the process of writing our Primary Base Human
Markup Language XML Schema under the direction of Len Bullard, our
Invited Expert. To facilitate this process, Rex Brooks has initiated a
method to proceed by discussing each element currently contained in
the Phase 0 HumanML Schema Toolkit available through the TC
website.
These items are arranged alphabetically in the document itself, and
Rex proposed that we maintain that structure in our work as a way to
move forward methodically. It was agreed, with the note that it is
clear that we will be adding elements as we go, but these will be
collected separately for discussion after we have proceeded through
the list we have. It was also agreed that we would maintain the TC
policy of keeping our discussions of each element within the thread
Subject Line which will take the form of "Base Schema-element
name" with successive comments rendered through standard email
replies. Thus we will have a thorough record of our email discussions
about these elements as we proceed.
We had a brief discussion, in the process of acquainting Philip with
the most basic tenet of our work, which are the distinctions of sign,
signal and symbol from Semiotics Studies, which we used to also
acquaint him with the Yahoo archives of our Phase 0 work, which
includes the bibliographies and links for the research we conducted.
We then returned to the focus of the meeting on our Base Schema
elements.
We had, up to the meeting, looked at the first two elements: address
and artifact.
While there was some discussion about the necessity for providing a
classification or indexing method, or attribute, for the address
element to distinguish between residential addresses, work addresses,
email addresses, etc. and changes in these values over time,
necessitating a temporal attribute, as well, most of our discussion
related to the implications of the artifact element.
However, before moving on to artifact, it should be noted that the
discussion of address did turn up some previously unanticipated
concerns.
First, there was an obvious question of sustaining a clear connection
with identification authentication and certification mechanisms and
the data kept in that regard. This was known previously, what was new
was the notion of the time-binding attribute, if indeed such a
mechanism in XML ought to be an attribute of various elements, or an
element of its own that would be used as a consistent child element
for other elements. This was passed by rather quickly, which is why it
is being specifically mentioned here.
Second, the time-binding, or temporal aspect, while not specifically
mentioned in depth in this particular connection, needed to be
explained as part of another set elements which will be used later,
namely Chronemics. Again, this is mentioned here because it was passed
over rather more quickly than it perhaps ought to have been. There are
some very serious concerns connected with the distinction between a
temporal element requiring some value such as "current"
or "changed on 00/00/0000" or some other wording along those
lines, and Chronemics which concerns such issues as cultural context
for values such as "anticipation" and "readiness"
in regard to such things as "willingness to wait" and
"punctuality." It has been noted, here.
In moving on to the artifact element, we began noticing that the
Schema Toolkit is based, as is XML. largely on nouns in terms of
operational language, and we think we may need, in order to do what
our charter requires, verbs and other operational language. This was
mentioned in the original email initiating the discussion of this
element, but the more wide-ranging implications did not surface until
our meeting.
One other aspect of this lack of verbs per se, was the mention made
that the one element in the Toolkit which does provide a basis for
such operational language for us in our use of Semiotics, is the
element signal, which Rex requested be dealt with in its turn, rather
than abandon the essentially unbiased methodology of using
alphabetical order a the basis for our examination of the Base Schema
Toolkit.
Briefly, the artifact element, which stands for objects such as
clothing and jewelry--as a symbol--communicates various concepts about
a human's culture and behavior and beliefs. As such, it is a result of
an act of human creation, for which we do not have a verb. The term
itself comes from artifice as a verb.
In the discussion which followed a number of concepts surfaced which
Rob Nixon volunteered to chronicle separately in order to keep track
of them. This seems like a good adjunct to the policy of also
collecting up new elements separately as well. Due to that, it won't
be attempted in these minutes to capture that entire conversation,
though a few highlights will be mentioned.
No attempt at a chronological account is being made in the items that
follow, since note taking became problematical during our discussion
in terms of concepts derived from one or another of these items tended
to refer or relate to earlier and later discussions, so please don't
assume that one item led to another in the order I present them. I
will use the option of bulleting these items in order to call this out
as a non-chornological part of this meeting's minutes.
* Artifacts, alphabetically, are the first door into the area of
culture, which concerns Human Markup greatly, so we need to be
especially careful in the way we deal with it, because it is creating
a de facto methodology. This brings up one essential fault in the
procedural decision to deal with elements in any particular order.
However, what this concern in itself brought out is that artifacts act
as association nodes, or meta-conceptual objects. Teasing out specific
cultural, or wider social meanings will require attention.
* Artifacts also point out the way in which elements can be nouns
yet have verb-equivalent attributes from which operations and/or
methods can be derived.
Philip volunteered to work up a way to use this to create a
"grammar" that could be used in programming.
* Artifacts act as compression points for cultural, scientific,
economic and other contexts. Rob mentioned this and Philip readily
agreed, and while this writer still doesn't quite grasp exactly what
they mean, both of them have volunteered to explore this connection
more thoroughly in separate posts.
* Artifacts also pose the question of what a culture is.
This prompted a discussion that included the notion that artifacts
needn't be physical, at least not in the sense of being a physical
object such as a bracelet or a necklace, or a burka. Again, due to a
lack of knowledge and experience, the writer doesn't quite grasp this,
though the idea that the concept of an artifact can symbolize a wealth
of connotations is clear. How that symbol exists separate from an
object, or the representation of a physical object in digital
information terms is not clear. No doubt we will hear more on this. (I
hate to sound so utterly literal but could this notion of
non-physicality be explained by the example of a perfume, which simply
can't be worn or carried or used physically as an object but can be
"worn" and can operate as an artifact?)
* Artifacts also have time-bound meanings, and this aspect, along
with the notion of artifacts as compression points deserves to be
explored more thoroughly.
* Artifacts can act as educational devices.
There was more discussion which I did not write fast enough to capture
in my notes, which also points up the limits of we, as humans, can
reasonably expect ourselves to be capable of doing.
For what I have missed, I apologize.
We ran out of time on the teleconference call and on some schedules
before we ran out of ideas and willingness to continue the
discussion.
We adjourned.
--
[Date Prev]
| [Thread Prev]
| [Thread Next]
| [Date Next]
--
[Date Index]
| [Thread Index]
| [Elist Home]
Powered by eList eXpress LLC