[Om3] Being pragmatic about the semantics of, eg, variables and functions

[Paul Libbrecht]

Le 23-mars-09 à 18:05, Robert Miner a écrit :
> 2) The two-stage translation of qualifiers into a domain of  
> application,
> and thence into OM may not be ideal, but we know it is
>  a) as mathematically meaningful as anything else,
>  b) is most compatible with the bulk of the current text in Ch 4
>  c) compatible with the large amount of XSLT David has developed over
> many years
>  d) backwardly compatible with MML2/OM2

I have the exact opposite feelings here about the addition of a  
condition child to bind/ombind:
- it makes it easy to translate condition and domain-of-application  
elements which were in many places in MathML-content-2
- it's an extension that seems easy to manage in a set of XSLT: any  
match for ombind is enriched with a check on cardinality 2, probably a  
single template can do it for ombind of three children applying  
templates on a rephrased object (that might need an extension).

But unfortunately, I'm neither David's XSLTs author, nor an active  
writer in chap 4 so my voice maybe does not count.
Under my own perspective, I promise it would help readability and  
writable of a lot of expressions.

> 3) A change to something such as Michael and James have proposed  
> is[...]
>  d) is not backward compatible, and would introduce a heavy dependency
> in MML3 on OM3, even though the latter shows no sign of being done  
> any time
> soon.

I felt convinced by, indeed, the lack of activity of OM3, even though  
James' activity can't be said to be zero. But really, it is a pure  
extension where only erroneous objects would be endowed with a new  
semantic.

Calling this backward-incompatible is as wrong as calling this a  
breaking change, it is breaking errors!

paul
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