Metadata extensibility ballot

I thought it might be useful to reiterate some of the main arguments supporting each of the options in the extensibility ballot. It’s a complex area, but a number of good points were raised during Tuesday’s call. Since there was no support for “namespaces only”, it’s clear that there is strong support for elements to a greater or lesser degree. Our preference is for a definitive decision in this area, rather than a hybrid approach.

My colleagues and I voted for ‘elements only’, as we see more benefits with this approach and it fits the majority of the business scenarios we’ve considered. Here’s a summary of how we perceived the arguments for both sides.

Elements only

Elements + namespaces

· Simplify the XLIFF 2.0 solution by having a single, clear option instead of 2 competing options. It’s clear from XLIFF 1.2 that choice leads to fragmented support

· Tools providers only have to support one extensibility method, not two (we won’t force them to choose which)

· Ability for standardization/interoperability of extensible metadata via commonly typed metadata types

· Greater predictability and integrity of XLIFF content; the open nature of namespaces risks introducing invalid data to files

· XLIFF 2.0 will require migration and conversion of data anyway; moving away from namespaces is one such activity

· Companies have already invested in namespaces; we don’t want them to dump these solutions

· There are scenarios where namespaces is a better solution than elements. We can specify clear use cases to recommend when to use either

Thanks,

Kevin.

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