Re: [ubl-dev] Simple description of XML-Spreadsheet format

["G. Ken Holman" <gkholman@CraneSoftwrights.com>]

At 2008-10-23 00:43 +0800, Chin Chee-Kai wrote:
>G. Ken Holman wrote:
>>>I would offer to work out the UBL v2.0 IDD draft if you could 
>>>share the draft spreadsheet online somewhere.
>>
>>These are the spreadsheets I'm using as the basis for my release 
>>this afternoon:
>>
>>   http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/ubl/200810/msg00020.html
>Thanks.  I've got XML-Spreadsheet versions of all the spreadsheets 
>given in the zip attachment above uploaded  into UBLish website at:
>
>http://ublish.sourceforge.net/tmp/UBL-2.0-IDD-prd01-XML-Spreadsheets.zip
>
>The above zip contains only the XML equivalents of the spreadsheets.

Today I announced a revision to the XML equivalent of the 
spreadsheets published as standard OASIS genericode files here:

   http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/ubl/200810/msg00025.html

Also included is a single HTML summary of the complete set of UBL IDD 
2.0 update prd01 spreadsheets for users to review all languages of 
all UBL elements in a single hyperlinked page.

>They are readily produced using UBLish v2.0.alpha using the 
>XML-Spreadsheet function and selecting the batch directory conversion.
>Perhaps this XML equivalent version might be useful as an input into 
>further transformation into genericode representations because it is 
>already in a simple XML format.

Thanks, Chee-Kai, but no thanks.  As mentioned before, I'm already 
using other preexisting standardized vocabularies rather than 
inventing my own.

For getting information from the spreadsheets I'll continue to use 
OASIS ODF as the standardized vocabulary.  A couple of years ago I 
published a free resource that uses OpenOffice to convert .xls files 
to .ods, an Ant script for extracting XML file content from .ods 
files, and a stylesheet library of XSLT functions and templates to 
access content in any XML instance of the ODF vocabulary:

   http://www.CraneSoftwrights.com/resources/index.htm#OOo

I grant creating yet another XML vocabulary to contain the stylesheet 
information reduces the steps to get the information when compared to 
getting the same information out of the OASIS ODF file.  But that has 
now been done by both of us behind the scenes so developers don't 
have to.  With the information in the IDD available as OASIS 
genericode, developers need only access that and not the IDD 
spreadsheets themselves using a colloquial vocabulary.  I do not 
share your earlier observation that genericode is limited to codes:

At 2008-09-19 03:37 +0800, Chin Chee-Kai wrote:
>I haven't really ploughed through the whole history of genericode, 
>but from the nice intro on your web page and browsing the examples 
>.gc files, I get the sense that genericode is, as its name suggests, 
>designed more to represent code lists, though there can be creative 
>use in  other purposes like representing model spreadsheets.

The conclusion above does not recognize that, in fact, genericode is 
a standardized representation of a keyed table information set, where 
codes are the keys, and can be used generically regardless of the 
actual element names.  Yes, it is being used for codes in many 
contexts, but just as OASIS/CALS tables (with sequential columns and 
rows that are typically full) are a standardized tabular structure, 
OASIS genericode (with random columns and keyed rows that may be 
sparse) may can be regarded as a standardized keyed tabular structure.

As such I see it wholly suitable for representing the IDD to 
developers of user interfaces or those with other multi-lingual 
tasks.  And they may already have genericode support for code lists 
and so this would just re-use their existing keyed-table representation.

And now with the combination of the HTML summary and the XML 
representation, perhaps developers don't even need the actual IDD 
spreadsheet files anymore.  Having both human-readable and 
machine-readable versions should suffice.  I've already done the 
consistency checking across the suite of IDD spreadsheets to 
determine there are no discrepancies.  From what I can tell, there is 
no information missing from the collection I just published (and has 
been published for a while for earlier versions of the IDD).  What 
more can a developer get out of the published IDD spreadsheets that 
they need to be opened again?

Anyway, as discussed before there is no right way or wrong way, and 
it is good that the community has choice ... hopefully they'll be 
aware there is a choice.

. . . . . . . . . . . . Ken

p.s. note that I'll be publishing another version of the genericode 
files when the TC completes the next round of review, as Jon has 
withdrawn the proposed IDD spreadsheets cited above from consideration:

   http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/ubl/200810/msg00026.html


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