[sc34wg3] CTM: Realistic use cases or toy examples?

[Lars Marius Garshol]

* Steve Pepper
>
> You, Lars, are not representative of the kind of person to whom
> I think we should be targeting CTM.

I find this style of argument completely unacceptable. To imply that  
the editor of CTM should disregard his own sense of what is good/bad  
CTM syntax ought to be below you, Steve. You have already been warned  
by Patrick not to argue along these lines, but apparently the warning  
was not understood.

There is nothing to suggest that you are right about who is and is not  
representative of the future users of CTM, nor is there anything to  
suggest that any one member of this committee has a better sense of  
what will appeal to these users than any other member.

If we are going to turn this into a debate about who is qualified to  
have opinions about what we are basically going to turn this into a  
flamewar. That is *exactly* what we don't need.

I think Patrick captured this perfectly when he wrote:

> While I understand that we all have preferences in terms of language  
> design, I would caution against the notion that we are in anyway  
> representative of any larger community that is likely to use CTM or  
> even topic maps.
>
> [...]
>
> The reason why I bring this up is that both at the meeting in Kyoto  
> and at other meetings there is a tendency to argue that some  
> language styles are more intuitive to users rather than simply  
> saying "I really prefer this style and it has been successful when  
> teaching users to do X."
>
> I don't think there are any formal studies that would justify global  
> statements about what users will or will not find "intuitive" about  
> CTM and that the best we can do at this point is have a language  
> design that:
>
> 1) Works with both TMCL and TMQL (which means with choices their  
> editors have or are making)
>
> 2) Represents a consensus judgment (as much as possible) of the  
> editors as far as language design
>
> 3) Is reasonably "compact" and yet "readable," realizing that both  
> of those are subjective judgments on which reasonable people will  
> differ
>
> And that ultimately CTM is subject to approval by national body  
> votes. Participation of the committee and their comments are very  
> important but realize it is ultimately editors who propose a  
> coherent whole as a proposal that either is approved by the national  
> bodies or is not.

--Lars M.