[sc34wg3] One standard or several?

[Martin Bryan]

One aspect that needs to be considered in a proposal to create any multipart
standard is the order and timing of the delivery of parts:

>    The parts of the new ISO 13250 standard will be:
>
>    *  Part 0: A guide to the structure of the standard
>    *  Part X: The Standard Application Model
>    *  Part X: The Reference Model
>    *  Part X: The XML Topic Maps syntax (XTM)
>    *  Part X: The HyTime Topic Maps syntax (HyTM)
>    *  Part X: Canonicalization of topic maps

Do we have to publish the parts sequentially, do we want to have the SAM and
RM released at different times, with or without the accompanying XTM and
HyTM parts? Would the guide and the canonicalization parts be much later?
Having separate standards avoids the need to co-ordinate releases.

If we are willing to wait until everything is ready then a multipart
standard to provide a new release of the existing 13250 standard would be
ideal. But if you want to release the sections one at a time then you would
do better to publish separate standards, with Part 0 being a Technical
Report.

Interestingly enough ISO 13254 and 13255 have not yet been published and do
not appear to have been assigned to a project. It might be an idea to try to
book them for use for SAM and RM. 13257, 13258 and 13259 also appear to be
free at present. Its a pity 13252, 13254 and 13255 are published, and 13251
is in the pipeline.

Martin Bryan