Effort to simplifying our spec

DaveO & Jonathan,

SUMMARY
I don't think the style sheet approach will work.  I recommend we continue 
as is.

EXPLANATION
I've looked over our Part1 spec to think about how we might simplify the 
presentation to the reader.

At present, I don't think a style sheet approach that would expand or 
contract the text is feasible.  The main issue is that each section has 
both a subsection on the properties of that component, and a subsection on 
the mapping from the XML infoset to those properties.  For example:
http://dev.w3.org/cvsweb/~checkout~/2002/ws/desc/wsdl20/wsdl20.html#Definitions_XMLRep 
and
http://dev.w3.org/cvsweb/~checkout~/2002/ws/desc/wsdl20/wsdl20.html#Definitions_Mapping

Much of the content of those subsections is fairly boilerplate, merely 
repeating what is evident from the pseudo-schema above.  But the problem is 
that they aren't ENTIRELY boilerplate: both of these subsections have 
meaningful, non-boilerplate text mixed in with (boring) boilerplate text.

It might be possible to factor out the meaningful, non-boilerplate text, 
but I'm not sure we could reliably ensure that no meaningful text ever 
crept back in, so I'd be wary of using a style sheet to hide parts.

I don't see an easy solution to this problem, so at this point I suggest we 
continue as is.


-- 
David Booth
W3C Fellow / Hewlett-Packard
Telephone: +1.617.253.1273

Received on Wednesday, 17 March 2004 17:21:15 UTC