Re: [xtm-wg] Simplified requirements

[Murray Altheim <altheim@eng.sun.com>]

Sam Hunting wrote:
> 
> Here is a list of requirements for the PM that I believe meets Lars
> desires, and is also readable by all XTMers (implementors, designers,
> users)
> 
> 1.  The PM shall be formal and concise.
> 2.  The PM should be prepared quickly.
> 3.  The PM shall support a wide variety of applications.
> 4.  The implementor shall find it easy to write programs that
>     conform to the PM.
> 5.  The number of optional features in the PM should be kept
>     to the absolute minimum, ideally zero.
> 6.  PM documentation should be clear.
> 7.  The design of the PM shall consider interoperabilty of XTM
> documents
>     of paramount importance.
> 
> I honestly don't understand the controversy on "formal and concise."
> This is right out of XML 1.0. Can anyone argue that the productions in
> XML 1.0 are not useful -- particularly for ensuring interoperability?

My feeling (after having written my own com.sun.xml.xtm package) is that
the existing implementations I've seen (or discussed) stay close to the
syntax. Mine does too. The big problem I have is similar to Lars Marius'
complaint: where does one store <resourceData>? how does one keep track
of the complex structure without losing it in a graph? how does one 
decompose back to XTM? 

I can think of others. But I too while hope to see a formal processing
model, have had at least as much difficulty as anyone understanding 
how to implement it. I'm no genius programmer, but then there aren't
that many of them. The published PM needs to be accessible to people
like me (here I am acting as guinea pig again). I'm not saying that
you're barking up the wrong tree, but I like others need to be first
able to comprehend and then convinced that it works and is not an
enormously more difficult task than what we've already done. And if
it's impossible to implement a topic map engine without a very specific
graph structure that few can understand, then we've all participating
in generating business for a few individuals and nothing more. I 
refuse to believe that.

I'm all for "simplified requirements" and "simplified models."
 
Murray

...........................................................................
Murray Altheim                            <mailto:altheim&#x40;eng.sun.com>
XML Technology Center
Sun Microsystems, Inc., MS MPK17-102, 1601 Willow Rd., Menlo Park, CA 94025

      In the evening
      The rice leaves in the garden
      Rustle in the autumn wind
      That blows through my reed hut.  -- Minamoto no Tsunenobu

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