[sc34wg3] a new name for the RM

[Martin Bryan]

Jim

>From chair of the International XML/SGML Users Group I'm surprised to be
told:

>Our duty is to both end users and implementers, but primarily
>to implementers. We are to interpret the needs of end users and then
>instruct the implementers, through standards, how best to meet the users'
>needs.
>
> Explaining to the users how we went about this is only minimally part of
our
> charter. Without the users, we have no justification for having a
committee,
> but training the users is more a function for IDEAlliance conferences and
> publications in the open literature than it is something we have to do
> inside SC34 and its publications.

The big difference between SGML and ODA is that SGML had a real user
community that asked our legally oriented formal language techie "what the
hell do you mean by ...." to try to understand the gobbledegook that was the
formal definitions. Even then the formal definitions had to have
(un)explanatory text.

Unless we sell the basic concept of topic maps to users there is no point at
all in producing tools for creating or viewing topic maps. It doesn't matter
a hoot how technically sound the standard is if users cannot understand how
to use topic maps in real world scenarios. As you rightly point out:

"Without the users, we have no justification for having a committee"

While I agree that producing training material is outside the scope of SC34
the fact is that we still need to train the trainers, and they need
documentation to back up their statements. Simply publishing a formal
definition, a la ODA, is the way to kill the standard. At the very least we
need examples of the good use of realistic topic maps that can be talked
through.

Martin