A few ASIS comments

[Robert Orosz <roboro@AUTO-TROL.com>]

I've looked through everyone's comments so far, and the general consensus
seems to be that this document is not ready for prime time.  I agree.  I
commented on AIR, that it was "overly complex and somewhat difficult to
read."  I find some improvement here, but there is still a long way to go.
A TC member should be able to read this document, and easily understand what
is required for the particular standard they are working on.  However, the
document is unclear in some places, and contradictory in others.

For example, Appendix B gives a nice ISO 14977 compliant grammar for
constructing an ArtifactName.  Unfortunately, Appendix B is Non-Normative.
The normative sections of the document talk mostly about "Artifact
Identifier."  Is this the same as "Artifact Name"?  It's not really clear
since there are entries for each in the normative definitions (Section 3.1).

Line 350 states that Revision must be associated with each Artifact, but
line 305 seems to imply that Revision does not apply to OASIS standards.

Chapter 4 has several lines which appear to be intended as EBNF, but they do
not comply ISO/IEC 14977.  For example, line 356:

artifactIdentifier: [OASISdefinedName | TCdefinedName]

If this intended to be EBNF, it should read:

artifactIdentifier = OASISdefinedName | TCdefinedName;

line 359:

oasisDefinedName:[OASISdefinedName]

If this is intended EBNF, it makes no sense to define a meta-identifier with
another meta-identifier that differs only in the case of the letters used.

line 364:

product:[product]

This would be an infinitely recursive rule if it were EBNF.  Again, since it
doesn't comply with ISO/IEC 14977, I'm not 100% sure what the intent is
here.  Again, there are many lines like this in Chapter 4 which appear to be
EBNF, but don't comply with ISO/IEC 14977. 

To summarize, I think the document still lacks clarity.  TC members have
plenty of work to do within their own committees.  OASIS policy documents
shouldn't have to be read over and over again to figure out what the exact
requirements are.

Regards,

Rob Orosz
Senior Software Engineer
Auto-trol Technology
12500 North Washington Street
Denver, CO. 80241-2400
(303) 252-2262
http://www.auto-trol.com