Hi all,
I am posting this to address my action ite from the last meeting to inform our decision to develop the DMLex Standard in OASIS or in ISO style.
First of all, even if we are going for the ISO style to facilitate ISO fast tracking at a later stage, we are publishingÂthis primarily under OASIS, so we will obviously have to stick to the OASIS front matter as per the docx document model provided to us by OASIS admin back in January 2020
That's approximately the 1st two pages of the document model.
The most importantÂhallmark of the OASIS Style is the IETF BCP 14 style normative keywords
See e.g. this usage in the DITA 1.3 specification
In contrast to that, ISO documents style uses a semantic notion of normativityÂand so it strictly speaking doesn't use or define normative keywords easily mappable to and from BCP 14. As the keywords are neither exhaustively defined nor taxatively listed, it also doesn't make sense to typographically distinguish the normative keywords,Âwhich is a requirement with the BCP 14 style keywords.
ISO follows the following directive (ISO Directives, Part 2, clause 7) on "verbal forms" to express document "provisions"Â
This lists the preferred forms such as shall, should, may etc. but also gives examples of other normativeÂlanguage expressing requirements, recommendations, permissions etc. Unlike BCP 14, it distinguishes between a logical or natural necessity as compared to a requirement (must vs shall) and between a logical or natural possibility as opposed to permission (can vs may).
So all in all, transitioning from a document written with BCP 14 style of keywords to ISO house style conformant normative language is not as trivial as it might seem at a first glance.. It is much better to selectÂone of the styles and stick to it long term..Â
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Also in the ISO style, they are more strict as to organization of the material between front matter and clauses. Some of the stuff that is numbered in OASIS either doesn't exist in the ISO Model or goes unnumbered as part of ISO front matter. ISO standards must start with 1 Scope, 2 Normative references, and 3 Terms and definitions, then goes 4 acronyms and abbreviations and only then the material provisions of the specification can start. ISO also prohibits "hanging paragraphs" that are possible in OASIS and few other minor points.
You can check some of the examples of standards written in ISO style here
For instance the DSDL multipartÂseries (search for DSDL on the above location) for instance the RelaxNG standard that originates in OASIS but had been transformed to ISO house style as it is being maintained by the ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 34.
While OASIS doesn't care which English spelling we use, we mandated UK spelling which is enforced by ISO house style, so we are good here..
I hope this will help us to decide for the right format and style next week
Cheers dF
ÂÂ
Dr. David Filip
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ISO/IEC JTC 1 PAS Mentor | Convenor, ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 42/WG 3 Trustworthiness of AI | National mirror chair, NSAI TC 02/SC 18 AI | Head of the Irish national delegation, ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 42 AI | Chair & Editor, OASIS XLIFF OMOS TCÂ | Secretary & Lead Editor, OASIS XLIFF TC | NSAI expert to ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 38 Cloud Computing, ISO TC 37/SC 3 Terminology management, /SC 4 Language resources, /SC 5 Language technology | Chair Group Member, Unicode CLDR TC/MFWG | GALA TAPICC Steering Committee Member
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