[sc34wg3] occurrence - basename fuzzy border

[Nikita Ogievetsky]

Murray,


> This discussion begs a bigger question, i.e., is work being done
> on a new version of XTM that is intended to
>
>    a. fix bugs and correct documentation mistakes
>    b. add desired features not included in XTM 1.0
>
> While my opinion matters only as just another opinion on the matter,
> I'd not sign up to the latter; I'm not interested, I think it's
> dangerous, and ignores recent history. I've not looked at the
> requirements on the new work, so I'm speaking from ignorance here.
>

Most of your points are valid and I agree with them.
As you could see from my message I was just expressing
my reasoning without insisting on it.
I do not think that occurrence variants are as important as typing of base
names
which we had agreed upon in December.
Nevertheless the arguments towards it are:
- making model uniform
- it is a backward compatible change
- it does add significant flexibility to the syntax.

> We need more than any feature something a feature would not give us:
> stability. While many technologies spend their 1.0, 2.0, 3.0
> versioning history fixing bugs, others "improve" the spec by
> continually adding to it. At some point it reaches critical mass
> and explodes in uselessness. And along the way there's no stability
> and the entire community plays catch-up with each other. We've all
> watched HTML, now we're watching XML as they arc skyward and go boom.

Yes, but we DID watch them :-)
Imagine how many other standards passed by without being even noticed.
Yet I agree with your "critical mass" notion, but I do not think
that occurrence variants add much, although Lars might be right that
they may require different information items in SAM.

--Nikita

Nikita Ogievetsky, nogievet@cogx.com;
Cogitech Inc.        http://www.cogx.com
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