CDFN: WG organization

[devinkouts@earthlink.net]

Hello All,

>In choosing a name one thing to bear in mind is cavers. Professional
>speleologists know about Karst but many cavers don't. Cavers will start

>to hear about XML soon as it makes its way into browsers and is useful
>to them . They will be able to guess what CaveXML or CaveSurveyXML or
>CaveMapXML is or at least have an idea that it might be useful to them.

>CDX won't ring a bell or pickup on the XML 'bandwagon'. Suppose this is

>really a bit of marketing here but it might help if we choose a name
>that cavers will understand and remember.

Mike's argument is pursuasive. I'll reiterate my support for CaveXML. I
even find the two subordinate names, CaveSurveyXML and CaveMapXML
appealing. My own work (www.psc-cavers.org/xml) is narrowly focused on
cave survey data and could be considered a form or version of
CaveSurveyXML.

>If we go for DTDs and Schemas and we want to produce documentation in
>HTML and prob PostScript for printing it would be nice to produce all
>this from the one source file and if for all of us to be able to
>contribute. The way I have all my documentation is in 'noweb' which
prob
>isn't suitable as few people know it. Eg I have my 'noweb' source file
>and "make dtd / make html / make ps creates the DTD, HTML and
PostScript
>documentation. Do any of you guys use SGML DocBook. Thats a far more
>used documentation tool and I'd be prepared to learn it.

This may be a decision best left to the person who's actually
maintaining the website and core documentation of the site. I've seen
noweb in use and admit it's pretty intriguing, but I wouldn't force
someone to use it if they were volunteering their time to maintain this
projects documentation. Let them use what they're comfortable with.

>Also what browsers are you using for viewing XML and parsers for
>DTDs/Schemas. Do we want to try and use a particular one. I've not used

>one at all yet. (Linux system)

I'm doing most of my work on Windows 2000 and consequently use MS XML
Notepad and MS Explorer. Neither of these are validating and naturally
of no use on the Linux platform. I've also employed Netscape 6, which
has some support for XML and will run on Linux, but I've not found it
very useful (maybe I nedd to RTM). XML Spy on the otherhand, running on
Windows (sorry) has proven to be a pretty slick, yet pricey authoring
and validating tool. I'm not sure if there's value in mandating the use
of a particular XML tool. If we're building our XML store correctly
there shouldn't be any problem using it across a wide variety of tools
(but this remains to be proven).

Devin Kouts