[dsdl-discuss] Re: Confidentiality of our documents

Hi Rick,

Rick Jelliffe wrote:
> I think it is pretty much up to each editor how they get their part
> developed and crediblet to present for committee discussion. In the case of
> the framework, there is obviously less scope for individualism
> than other parts.

Sure, and that's why I would like as much feedback as possible!

> James and Murata-san have been successful with JIS and OASIS.
> I am happy with my Sourceforge mailing list for Schematron.
>
> But I would suggest that you should not release your strawman
> in public yet, and certainly not announce it on XML-DEV.
> Early strawmen can easily turn people for or against a technology,
> they set expectations, and they provide ammunition for criticism
> by opponents. There were almost no comments from the public
> on XML Schemas until way after the most important decisions
> were cast in stone (despite repeated please from me!) and that is
> largely because it takes at least a year or three for ideas to trickle
> into the consiousness.
>
> So I would predict that the earliest you can expect much serious
> public response to framework issues will be 1 year after the
> XPipe and XMLPipelines proposals were published: not for several
> months yet! Time is on our side :-) I have seen this one year effect
> many times (during the first year, no-one can see the problem;
> after three years, everyone has an opinion!) So "exposing
> approaches" would be more useful than "publishing strawmen"
> at the moment, IYKWIM. The purpose of an approach is to
> help explore the functional possibilities, the function of a strawman
> is a technology we can judge and pull down.
>
> I would prefer that we could have a couple of "approaches" available
> in a couple of weeks instead (I want to make one up, too!). When thinking
> about openness and participation, it is important to realise that most
> people are not nearly up-to-speed enough to critique a single approach:
> by presenting alternatives we can bring more ideas out of the
> woodwork.

I may have missed what a strawman is but in my mind this is nothing more
than the description of an approach. Sorry if this not the right term.

> Instead, I suggest
> 1) Set up a public forum to discuss the framework

I would be happy to setup one, but can't we use dsdl-comment for this?

> 2) Concentrate first on gathering use-cases and exposing different
> technical approaches

Again, I would be happy to get use cases from the other editors.

> 3) Resist any temptation to move faster than the next obvious step.

This is a temptation which I am not very good at resisting :-) !

> 4) Prepare the strawman and circulate it to people whose judgement
> you value, especially to industrial publishing users.

That's also what I have suggested. Opening some of our documents to
experts would help.

> 5) Have a couple of strawmen ready, showing different approaches.
>
> But I am happy if we are seen to Zag whereever W3C Zigs, if it helps
> user acceptability and makes a better standard.
>
> Ultimately, any decisions are made by the National bodies voting.

Sure.

Thanks

Eric

> Cheers
> Rick

-- 
See you in San Diego.
                                http://conferences.oreillynet.com/os2002/
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Eric van der Vlist       http://xmlfr.org            http://dyomedea.com
http://xsltunit.org      http://4xt.org           http://examplotron.org
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