RE: [ubl-ndrsc] [Fwd: Fwd: ISO 3166-1 -- Change of Alpha-3 CodeElement for Romania]

["Gregory, Arofan" <arofan.gregory@commerceone.com>]

Folks:

I must point out that one of the things that has always struck me about EDI
was that, because non-intuitive alphanumeric "codes" were used to such a
great extent, the language became arcane and subject to abuse. This leads to
expensive implementations.

This is *not* a point about the separation of presentation and content,
which can be achieved in any number of ways (at least two of which underly
the current discussion, and I'm not sure they're compatible).

I think we want to do a few simple things that EDI has failed to do with
codes:

(1) Present our semantics clearly: intuitive tag names with absolutely clear
definitions
(2) Make sure that our "presentation" of code values has a simple default
that doesn't rely on the implementer's interpretation of it
(3) Make things human-readable where there is no good reason not to

If we return to using alphanumeric codes to (supposedly) convey complex
semantics, we have merely added a layer of obscurity that doesn't really buy
us very much.

The point of separating content and presentation reads, to my way of
thinking: "don't let presentation concerns cloud your semantic definitions".
I think that this is the heritage of XML, as I understand it. Having
non-readable alphanumeric codes is a violation of this rule, to my way of
thinking, and we should not go there unles it buys us something important.

(All right, Phil: let's talk about compactness of expression now! However, I
will point you to the design principles around tag naming that Eve had us
prioritize at the F2F...)

Cheers,

Arofan

-----Original Message-----
From: Burcham, Bill [mailto:Bill_Burcham@stercomm.com]
Sent: Monday, February 11, 2002 9:58 AM
To: 'Eduardo Gutentag'; Phil Griffin
Cc: NDR SC
Subject: RE: [ubl-ndrsc] [Fwd: Fwd: ISO 3166-1 -- Change of Alpha-3 Code
Element for Romania]


Point taken Eduardo: there does seem to be wide consensus that separation of
model from presentation is a Good Thing.  That's why it's ironic that in the
XML community we're always talking about how our document instances should
be "readable".  "Readablility" is a goodness measurement of "presentation"
right?  A model wouldn't have to be readable right?

There are a whole range of tradeoffs possible.  A presentation-free model
exists at one end... pure presentation details is at the other. Inasmuch as
we've already chosen a midpoint, I see nothing absurd about discussing
possible surrounding midpoints.  In order from presentation-free to
presentation-full here are some points in the continuum (choices we could
make for our document/message meta-structure):

* a binary structure -- you've got to read the schema (not included) to
understand the structure
* a text-encoded structure that's fairly readable but which carries no
"markup" save positional and nesting markup (think LISP S-EXPR's) -- you've
still got to read a schema to know what's going on
* some sub-XML type thing that's e.g. less verbose -- now you have "tags"
but perhaps structure end is a generic close delimiter -- not a repeated tag
name.
* XML -- now you've got tag names, but in what language -- you've already
picked a presentation right?
* XML with "human readable" code list values -- again, in what language

If we're going to go for a clean separation of "model" from "presentation"
the I'd guess that we'd want to e.g. use numbers to identify code list
values in a language-neutral way.  That being said I find it a little bit of
a double standard, given that we've chosen XML as a basis (what with all
it's redundancy-for-the-sake-of-readability)

I just re-read Phil's message:

> > The numeric representation of the country identifier
> > is the only part that we rely on in canonical XML 
> > markup based on the ASN.1 schema. Only the numeric
> > portion of an abstract value such as "ROM(642)" 
> > need ever appear in the transfer syntax where there
> > is typically no human reader involved.

I think the key word is "rely".  The way I would interpret this idea for UBL
would be that we would make the "pure identifier" (the numeric one)
required, and we'd make the textual one ("ROU") optional.

Seems like we ought to give some guidance that says: "A UBL-compliant
processor will operate only on the pure identifiers -- not on the textual
ones".  In what artifact could we make such a statement?  Is that part of
our charter?  I think it should be.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Eduardo Gutentag [mailto:eduardo.gutentag@sun.com]
> Sent: Monday, February 11, 2002 11:05 AM
> To: Phil Griffin
> Cc: NDR SC
> Subject: Re: [ubl-ndrsc] [Fwd: Fwd: ISO 3166-1 -- Change of 
> Alpha-3 Code
> Element for Romania]
> 
> 
> The separation of content from presentation is fundamental to
> how XML is supposed to work, either via stylesheets (preferrably)
> or via the applications themselves.  So I'm not sure what
> novelty you're proposing. I thought this was a given.
> 
> Phil Griffin wrote:
> 
> > FYI. This seems relevant to our work. And I believe
> > illustrates just how subject to change character
> > string code lists can be.
> > 
> > I note that while the numbers are not as expressive
> > perhaps for human readers, they are stable and work
> > reliably in software.
> > 
> > The numeric representation of the country identifier
> > is the only part that we rely on in canonical XML 
> > markup based on the ASN.1 schema. Only the numeric
> > portion of an abstract value such as "ROM(642)" 
> > need ever appear in the transfer syntax where there
> > is typically no human reader involved.
> > 
> > Perhaps we should consider that the characters to be
> > displayed or read by an application could be disjoint
> > from the value actually used for validation purposes.
> > 
> > That is, I might send you 642 and you might choose to
> > display "ROMANIA" or "ROM" or "ROU" or nothing based on
> > you own local copy of the characters that map to these
> > numeric values. 
> > 
> > Not a perfect solution, just an idea for consideration.
> > 
> > Phil
> > 
> > 
> > 
> --------------------------------------------------------------
> ----------
> > 
> > Subject:
> > 
> > Fwd: ISO 3166-1 -- Change of Alpha-3 Code Element for Romania
> > From:
> > 
> > Francois Vuilleumier <fvuille@attglobal.net>
> > Date:
> > 
> > Sun, 10 Feb 2002 18:38:08 +0100
> > To:
> > 
> > moumg@ties.itu.int
> > 
> > 
> >> From: "Wischhoefer Cord" <wischhoefer@iso.org>
> >> Subject: ISO 3166-1  --  Change of Alpha-3 Code Element for Romania
> >> Date: Mon, 4 Feb 2002 10:58:28 +0100
> >>
> >> Dear All,
> >>
> >> For your information here's the latest on ISO 3166-1:
> >>
> >> On request of the Romanian Government the ISO 3166/MA decided to 
> >> change the ISO 3166-1 three-letter (alpha-3) code element 
> for Romania 
> >> from ROM to ROU.
> >>  
> >> The two-letter code element RO remains unchanged.
> >>
> >> The change took effect on 1 February 2002.
> >>
> >> Below are the URLs of the two language versions of the ISO 3166-1 
> >> Newsletter V-3 announcing the change.
> >>  
> >> English version of the Newsletter: 
> >> http://www.din.de/gremien/nas/nabd/iso3166ma/nl_pt1/nlv3e_rou.html
> >> French version of the Newsletter: 
> >> http://www.din.de/gremien/nas/nabd/iso3166ma/nl_pt1/nlv3f_rou.html
> >>  
> >> Best regards
> >>
> >> Cord Wischhöfer
> >> ISO 3166/MA Secretary
> >>  
> >> Tel.: +41 22 749 72 33
> >> Fax: +41 22 749 73 49
> >> Email: wischhoefer@iso.org <mailto:wischhoefer@iso.org> 
> >> <mailto:wischhoefer@iso.org>
> > 
> > Part 1.2
> > 
> > Content-Type:
> > 
> > message/rfc822
> > 
> > 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Eduardo Gutentag               |         e-mail: 
> eduardo.gutentag@Sun.COM
> XML Technology Center          |         Phone:  (510) 986-3651 x73651
> Sun Microsystems Inc.          |
> 
> 
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