LC-180 (XML Query comments on XML Schema)

Dear Paul:

The W3C XML Schema Working Group has spent the last several months
working through the comments received from the public on the last-call
draft of the XML Schema specification.  We thank you for the comments
made by the XML Query WG on our specification during our last-call
comment period, and want to make sure you know that all comments
received during the last-call comment period have been recorded in our
last-call issues list
(http://www.w3.org/2000/05/12-xml-schema-lcissues).

Among other issues, the Query WG raised the point registered as issue
LC-180, which suggests that the XML Schema specification be
reorganized so as to improve what might be called 'locality of
exposition'. As your note puts it: "it would be useful to enumerate
all aspects of each Schema component at a single place".

As you will find easy to imagine, the XML Schema WG has discussed
these and other proposals to make the spec easier to understand with
great energy, and we have discovered that we have widely varying views
of the utility of each proposal. For each proposal to improve the spec
there appears to be an equal and opposite counter-proposal which
appears to some WG members equally or more plausible.

In particular, the proposal to describe the XML Schema language
component by component, which would improve the locality of
information about any component, would inevitably destroy the locality
of exposition regarding the abstract and transfer-syntax layers of the
XML Schema spec, which some WG members would prefer to keep separate.
A matrix can be laid out in row-major or column-major form; each has
some advantages.

A task force has recently been active, experimenting with what is
sometimes called 'flipping the matrix' of the text; there has been
enough interest that this work will continue, and may, if the results
are persuasive to a sufficient number of the XML Schema WG, be
integrated into the XML Schema spec as an editorial change before the
end of the candidate-recommendation period.  The Schema WG felt, as a
body, that it would not be useful to delay publication of the
candidate recommendation for the relatively long period necessary to
implement this editorial reorganization.  We are hopeful that current
work on editorial changes will bear fruit before XML Schema becomes
a Recommendation.

It would be helpful to us to know whether you are satisfied with the
decision taken by the WG on this issue, or wish your dissent from the
WG's decision to be recorded for consideration by the Director.

With best wishes,

- C. M. Sperberg-McQueen
   Dave Hollander
   Co-chairs, W3C XML Schema WG

Received on Thursday, 21 September 2000 08:52:35 UTC