RE: [legalxml-econtracts] The case for Authoring

["John McClure" <jmcclure@hypergrove.com>]

Jason said:
>But - and this is a critical point - someone has to author the template
>contracts and the clauses which appear in the clause library you refer to.
>In my experience, these people are attorneys or other people who do
>not have an IT background, and know nothing about HTML or XHTML
>(unless they have web publishing as a hobby).
>
>Assuming an eContracts XML environment, those people will probably use
>XML tools to create the contracts and clauses.


Jason,
Again I patiently request, please describe these "XML tools" in some detail.
This baseline information will inform and guide us to a better standard.

Here's some specific questions ....

1. Do they require the user to interact with the markup directly? When?
2. Do they require the user to select elements? to select attributes? How?
3. Do they require the user to provide values for attributes? for IDs and
IDREFs?

Please answer these simple questions, most particularly #1. I'm interested
ultimately in answering the basic question -- who really needs to read and
understand our specification -- the end user attorneys, or software developers?
Your answers I hope will bring us closer to a resolution of this sticky issue
before us.

Thank you in advance,
John