Hi all,
Karim and I met yesterday to review some open issues from recent meetings, the schema writing and the recent discussion on the list and came to some conclusions. Here's the notes. Please feel free to share comments.
1. ARRAYS - non-apply-to-tall
* We both like the syntax recently proposed on the list. Karim is adding this to the word doc.
2. ARRAYS - invalid boundaries (from last TC meeting)
* iThink uses 0 for arrays out of bounds. Some other software (including Forio) return NaN.
* New syntax for options
<options>
<uses_arrays invalid_index_value="0">4</uses_arrays>
</options>
Means the model has arrays (max 4 dimensions) and defaults to 0 for the value of invalid indexes. Valid choices are 0 or NaN.
I have added this to the word doc.
3. MODULES. We had discussion about <of> and <to>. Right now this is in the standard, but Karim is polling people on the committee (specifically Bob, who hasnt spoken up yet) if this might make sense to remove.
4. MODEL.URL vs INCLUDE.RESOURCE
* We wish to leave a url type property for <model> and <module> as the include functionality does not completely replace this. Specifically, the model.url property allows the inclusion of submodels without a name.
* For consistency, we are changing the "url" property across the board to be "resource" instead of url. The difference is that a resource can be
-- relative file path
-- absolute file path
-- URL
For includes the URL is an unchanging resource which may be cached, but this is not necessarily try for URLs on other tags.
* On a related note the <image> tag now takes an optional parameter "resource" which allows the image to load a file or url with the same rules. And the "sound" attribute is now a resource not a URL.
I have made these changes in the word doc.
5. EVENT POSTER
* There has been discussion on the email list about pros/cons of removing this from the spec. We would like to leave it as it is for the time being.
6. MODELS WITHOUT DIAGRAMS
* I have added an explicit comment that models without a diagram should be simulatable. (i.e. software which now requires a diagram -- like iThink -- should be able to load a model without a diagram).
7. DASHES vs UNDERSCORES
* We looked at elements such as <style> which mostly have attributes with dashes (the CSS properties) but also have some attributes with underscores. I'd proposed making all attributes dashes for consistency. After discussion, we want to now leave this as is, due to the last minute nature of this proposal. (But it's possible we could reopen this issue in the Fall).
8. NUMBER FORMAT/SCALE
* Billy mentioned this on the list. He and Karim are discussing further.
9. FLOATING POINT NUMBERS
* I have added a comment recommending the use of IEEE 754 double precision floating point numbers.
Best, WILL
--
William Glass-Husain /forio | +1 (415) 440 7500 x89 | forio.com