[Om3] CD group and signature markup naming issues

[Christoph LANGE]

Dear David, dear all,

On Thursday 30 October 2008 23:44:46 David Carlisle wrote:
> >   what was the design rationale for having different namespaces and
> > different element names for the same metadata markup in CDs, CD groups,
> > and signature dictionaries?
>
> This seems to be a fairly natural consequence of the decision to have
> a separate namespace for cd groups and sts.

Sorry, I didn't have the fact that we have separate namespaces for these fully
on my mind when issuing my objections.  Maybe I was biased by OMDoc here, as
in OMDoc all those different things are in the same namespace and can even
coexist in the same document -- but I'm not implying that this would make
sense in the OpenMath case.

> STS is deliberately  kept at a distance from the core OM, it is not the only
> possible type system for OM, and so should not have a privileged position of
> using the CD namespace.

I agree.

> > It looks like poor man's XML namespaces,
>
> Not sure what you mean by this. As it happens the basic design of
> CDGroups etc predates namespaces, but I don't think the use of
> multiple namespaces in each  file (which appears to be what you are
> suggesting) is an improvement.

Now I have to rephrase my original message.  One thing that actually struck me
was the fact that the local names of the elements in different namespaces also
have a reference to the namespace.  Why not just cd:ReviewDate and
cds:ReviewDate, or cd:Name and cdg:Name?  XML-syntactically that wouldn't be a
problem, and I think that the human author does not need additional mnemonics
like the CDGroup in CDGroupName, as he knows anyway what he is editing, be it
a CD, a CD group, or a signature dictionary.

> CDGroups are the basic of the navigation construct of the CD area of
> openmath.org, why do you say they are infrequently used?

Oh, of course…  What I rather meant was: Does anybody else except ourselves
use them?  People "out there" use CDs, and I think they also use signatures,
but do they maintain their own CD groups?

Cheers,

Christoph

-- 
Christoph Lange, Jacobs Univ. Bremen, http://kwarc.info/clange, Skype duke4701

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