Re: [help-GIFT] MRML stuff

[Wolfgang Müller]

Hi,
First of all, thanks for the great work. I like the background :-)

>  # MRML site: As announced in a previous message, I updated the site. I
> have completed it further with (have a look at the site map):
>   -a FAQ : I have put tentive items in there

OK. Cool. We will try to think up some other reasonable stuff.

>   -an "extension" page. This was a request from Ralf. For now it

I would say: we have announced the page for quite some while, and now people 
start asking us to keep our promises (which is encouraging, thanks).

> contains the exerpt of the original document. Should be completed
> further. The intentional aim of the Extension section in the prev site
> was to post extensions that people where proposing.

Yes, and I will post some within the next month. Which format would you like? 
I think it would be good to propose us some XML DTD for our extensions. Then 
you can add these extensions by simple inclusion.

> I suppose we can also have an extension-HOWTO...
Yes, and what you are doing is a good start for that.

>   -contact page so that it is not only my address :-; I geenrally do not
> like setting others aemail addresses on pages without their permission.
> If you feel you should be listed, please tell me.

BTW: I think you have to subscribe to help-gift using the following page: 
http://mail.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/help-gift
I don't know if ...request works.

(snip)

>  # The above items have led me to the following proposal/questions?
> ADMIN:
>    -Should we have a MRML-specific mailing list. The fact of many
> mailing lists may dilute the dialog. On the other hand, MRML should not
> be tightly linked with GIFT (confusing for people) and stand by itself
>    -Should we have an MRML sourceforge/savannah space (with mailing
> list, solving the above issue) to gather software or is the resource
> page with a list of links sufficient?

Difficult question. What do the other ones think?

> MRML spec:
>    - My intention in the next future is to mak e a list of proposal for
> the MRML spec.
>    - i18n: the W3C has defined some styleguide (xml:lang...) why not
> following it?

I think what I was proposing is more easily usable for clients that do not 
know the xml:lang tag. More importantly, the last proposal does always send 
only a single-language version, however this single-language version is the 
language the user requested. The user will be able to request a sequence of 
preferred languages, which does not seem possible according to that: 
http://www.opentag.com/xmli18nfaq.htm#lang_xmllang
as this is focused on the text transferred, and not on negociation. Please 
point me to a more appropriate page, if you know one. However, I agree that 
it is surely a good idea to post an xml:lang tag which tells the user which 
language we are using.

>    - should we create a schema (XSD) for MRML, thus documenting it more
> precisely...
>    - MRML version 2.0: it is cited in the site. What is meant is to
> gather a set of proposal to better further MRML so that people can start
> doing collaborative thinking (standard procedure in collaborative
> efforts)...
>    - some inconsistencies in MRML have been reported on the mailing list
> (eg type attribute). I will take the messages and make some
> corrections...

I guess all this depends quite a lot on what our user base wants (speak up, 
folks!). In some ways we surely can argue that free libraries for use with 
XML have become more widely used, so that we can start using more complex XML 
features. In particular, there is a great XSL-T processor by the GNOMEs which 
might make it simple to translate more sophisticated versions of MRML into 
more simple ones and vice versa. This might make large direction changes much 
more simple.

> Note:  I do not intend to restrain the site for my own self. The way it
> works is that each HTML page is associated with an XML page (same name).
> I maintain the pages in CVS. If you wish to make an update, download the
> XML file, modify it and send it to me, I'll commit the modifs. You'll
> understand that I cannot open the modif procedure more...

How do we get access to the XML? It might be good to open read-only access to 
CVS. Like that we can provide you up-to-date patches using cvs diff.

Cheers,
Wolfgang