[Om3] [Om] Kicking off an OpenMath2+Process (Standard Enhancement)

[Lars Hellström]

Professor James Davenport skrev 2011-02-13 19.24:
> On Sun, 13 Feb 2011, Manfred Riem wrote:
>> I would propose to support more than the 2 encoding strategies.
>>
>> One particular that comes to mind is a JSON encoding format.
> Part of the same 'topic', if I read Michael's distinction correctly, is
> the topic of a Content MathML encoding.

Since additional encoding strategies probably would have development cycles 
that are different from that of OM itself, it might be useful to keep them as 
separate documents. In particular, that would make it easier to put forth a 
new encoding at a point in time where noone is actively working on updating 
the standard. I believe Unicode has something called "Standard Annexes" which 
are part of the standard but separate documents; perhaps this is a term that 
could be reused.

My gut feeling is that an encoding "designed for language X" would probably 
be best off in such a separate-but-standard document. For the binary encoding 
and a hypothetical content MathML encoding, one could probably go either way.

Finally, one might perhaps want to give some thought to how original an 
encoding strategy needs to be in order to qualify. For example, I've got 
something I've been using occasionally for writing OMOBJs by hand, which can 
look like
     OMA {
         /OMS symocat1 label
         /OMS Hopf-algebra mult
         OMA {/OMS list1 list; /OMV a}
         OMA {/OMS list1 list; /OMV b; /OMV c}
     }
However, this is basically a method of transcribing XML(1.0, no namespace 
handling), plus some shorthands for common OM stuff, so I would be somewhat 
hesitant to suggest it as an encoding of its own. I suspect the same could be 
true for many other "designed for language X" encodings out there.

Lars Hellström