Tin Man Design Question 10 - to assign Jan. 9th?

[David_Marston@lotus.com]

Here is one of the issues identified in my message titled
"Test Case Markup & Cataloging, Tin Man edition" that I sent
to this list on 12/1/2000:
10. Extent to which we specify how to set external
    parameters, when applicable

DISCUSSION:
This is the main place where operating-system issues might
intrude. To test the external parameter capability, we need
to have name=value pairs specified somehow. My colleague
Shane Curcuru has also suggested that we plan now for the
ability to designate data types, expanding the pair to a
triplet. The most flexibility is achieved by requiring a
separate file that has name/type/value entries, like an old
.INI file with enhancements. It would be up to the test lab,
possibly with OASIS guidance, to determine how to extract
the values from the file and present them to each XSLT
processor. Each processor developer should be specifying how
they accept external parameters already. A much less
flexible system is to have name/type/value data right in the
<ParamSet> element in the test catalog.

I anticipate that any vote would just be a guideline, and
that we'd assign some person or subcommittee to work out the
details. If the guideline said that <ParamSet> has a file
name, that would suffice to move past Tin Man in the catalog
design.
.................David Marston