[sc34wg3] Feedback on the CTM draft

[Lars Heuer]

Hi,

[...]
> | Why allow prefix-directives and templates to mixed in with assertion
> | blocks?

> Some of the editors felt it would be wrong to prevent this; others felt we
> should encourage the best practice of keeping all directives and templates
> in the header. More opinions on this are solicited.
[...]

Since I am "some editors" I was asked to explain why I think we should
allow to mix templates and assertion block definitions.

Short explanation: Flexibility.

Longer explanation: I think we should encourage the users to define
their templates in the header of a CTM document. That is good
practise. But we should not force users to do so. If someone wants do
define a template in the middle of the CTM document, why should we
prevent that? Allowing to define templates anywhere has the obvious
advantage that the template definition and the utilization of the
template are closer to each other. The user is not forced to scroll to
the header of the document to look-up the template content / variable
names etc. That may be important if the templates become more complex
than just two / three variables.
Additionally users can cut and paste the template defintion and its
usage easily between different CTM documents without the need to paste
the template in the header and the utilization to be completely
differnt place.

I think we lose nothing if we allow free defintion of templates and
assertion blocks.

Best regards,
Lars
-- 
http://www.semagia.com