[om] Re: [om-a] Updated OpenMath Content Dictionary Distribution

[David Carlisle]

   Thank you, David.  

   I have a quick comment, and I'm sure you have been discussing it
   internally.  

   You moved several symbols from one CD to another (e.g. "conjugate" from
   arith1 to complex1).

   I'm not sure it's a good idea to remove the symbol from the "old" CD
   altogether.  I'd prefer a solution where in the above example the new
   version of the arith1 CD contained some notification that the "conjugate"
   symbol has been deprecated, and that it should be translated to
   (cd=complex1,name=conjugate), the idea being that this can then be used
   for automatic upgrading of OpenMath software, and for improving
   backward-compatibility.

    -- Andreas

Yes you bring up an important point that changing CDs is bad for
OpenMath software. The new draft of the standard goes to some lengths
to explictly specify the kinds of changes that can be made without
chaning the name of the CD. (As discussed at the OpenMath meeting at
Eindhoven)

We really hope that this set can be reviewed and accepted by the OpenMath
Society and given "public" status, at which point such changes are no
longer possible. However it was felt that these draft CDs were explictly
"experimental" and we needed to be able to change them between releases,
to correct mistakes, to learn from experience, and to track additions to
MathML. 

Seeing as there are in fact rather few symbol names that occur in
multiple CDs it is hopefully not too hard to locate the new (final?) CD
name for the symbols, using the "index" list on the html page, it is
probably as easy to automate an upgrading based on that as from comments
that you suggest be added to the CD, or at least I hope that is the
case.

David

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