RE: [ws-rx-editors] FW: [chairs] RDDL / RSS and simplifying "busy work" for spec' editors / staff?

["Gilbert Pilz" <Gilbert.Pilz@bea.com>]

I think I have a partial understanding of this idea. The thing that leaps out at me is the possibility of stripping the metadata about the document (date, stage, revision, etc.) from the documents themselves. That way you could "promote" a specification from Working Draft to Committee Draft status without having to edit and rename the actual documents.

 

The thing that bothers me is the problem of maintaining the relationship between specification metadata and the actual document outside of the context of Kavi or whatever. Once I download a copy of a document, how do I know what the status of specification for which the document is a part? Obviously there is a many-to-one mapping; a single document could be WD-12, and CD-04, and CS-02, and OS, but how do you know?

 

I wonder if there might be a way to parameterize the documents and then, at download time, fill in the parameters (stage, revision, date, etc.) with information that was "contextualized" by the link used to download the document. For example; if I download wsfoo-1.5-spec-**-**.doc using the "CD-04" link, I end up with a doc named wsfoo-1.5-spec-cd-04.doc with the correct dates, links, etc. in the title page, correct footers, etc. One problem with this is that, to minimize the cost of developing such a system, OASIS would probably have to designate one document format as the "official" format (either that or develop multiple parameter resolution/injection mechanisms). Another problem with this approach is that OASIS would have to be stricter about the mapping of metadata to document names, etc.

 

- gp

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From: Patil, Sanjay [mailto:sanjay.patil@sap.com]
Sent: Thursday, April 05, 2007 3:02 PM
To: ws-rx-editors@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: [ws-rx-editors] FW: [chairs] RDDL / RSS and simplifying "busy work" for spec' editors / staff?

Here is an idea about simplifying maintenance of the status metadata of specifications. I thought you may be interested in this.

 

Personally, I am not sure how decoupling the status information helps in solving the problem. Perhaps I have not misunderstood the problem itself!

 

-- Sanjay

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From: David RR Webber (XML) [mailto:david@drrw.info]
Sent: Wednesday, Apr 04, 2007 9:46 AM
To: chairs@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: [chairs] RDDL / RSS and simplifying "busy work" for spec' editors / staff?

Folks,

 

Like all of us involved in moving spec's through the process - I'm constantly wanting the mechanics to be easier to facilitate and the burden on the OASIS supporting staff to be lessened - while retaining the rigour needed.

 

It seems that the new IPR changes have introduced a doubling up on the number of steps to go through - and hence potential revisions of documents.

 

I'm wondering if we can de-couple the actual status of the specification from the specification documents and schemas themselves by referencing to a central status tracker instead?

 

This would therefore reduce the continual editing of each item - just to update the status indicator.  That editing also adds confusion factor - because every document appears to change at each step even if no substantive changes were actually done.

 

One candidate for the tracker is the RDDL - another would be to create an RSS document - that tracks the status of the specification of each TC centrally, and locally on each TC page.  The RSS would have the side benefit of allowing subscription to that to do notifications of changes.

 

Either way the RDDL and RSS could be directly linked on the Kavi TC page as a "Status" link that would be clickable along with the other standard links.  That linkage would be noted on the title page of the specification and in-line in schemas - something like http://status.oasis-open.org/tcabbrev .

 

Thanks, DW

"The way to be is to do" - Confucius (551-472 B.C.)

smime.p7s