[sc34wg3] TMQL - Chapter 3

[Patrick Durusau]

Greetings!

There has been a few posts recently concerning the current draft of TMQL 
with suggestions that parts of it aren't as clear as possible. Shocking 
I know but there you have it. ;-)

Since that is not a new comment and as in the past it isn't really clear 
(ironic isn't it?) what is unclear about the current draft, I thought it 
might be helpful to at least walk through the current draft, one part at 
a time to see if we can get specific comments on what works, what 
doesn't, etc.

I have had a number of personal issues that have been distracting but I 
need distraction from those so I am going to attempt to post something 
every Friday to work through the current TMQL draft, which you can find 
at: http://www.isotopicmaps.org/tmql/tmql.html.

Don't worry, I will repost that URL with every post that I make.

The chapter for this coming week is Chapter 3 Notation and Semantics.

The question is: Is there anything that is unclear or could be improved 
about this section? (Rani suggests that I ask about "features" but 
Section 3 really doesn't have "features" as such. I will use that 
question when we reach some features.)

Comment: My answer is yes, under Section 3.1 Syntax Conventions, 
numbered paragraph 3 should be removed and all use of it in the main 
part of the draft expunged. This is the mapping to an alternate syntax 
in the main body of TMQL.

I don't doubt that sort of thing is useful but it would be sufficient to 
put a page in an annex listing those mappings. Multiple syntaxes 
threaded through the document have the potential to be confusing.

Note that this suggested change has the potential to make other parts of 
the draft less confusing.

I would note that TOMA follows the single line syntax for comments. Is 
everyone comfortable with that? The single line nature of comments?

Hope everyone is looking forward to a great weekend!

Patrick

PS: I cross-posted this first post to both the sc34wg3 at isotopicmaps.org 
and topicmapmail at infoloom.com mailing lists. Since this discussion 
concerns the current TMQL draft and the sc34wg3 mailing list is open to 
public subscription (see 
http://www.isotopicmaps.org/mailman/listinfo/sc34wg3), future posts will 
be appear only on the sc34wg3 list.

-- 
Patrick Durusau
patrick at durusau.net
Chair, V1 - US TAG to JTC 1/SC 34
Convener, JTC 1/SC 34/WG 3 (Topic Maps)
Editor, OpenDocument Format TC (OASIS), Project Editor ISO/IEC 26300
Co-Editor, ISO/IEC 13250-1, 13250-5 (Topic Maps)