Kevin Thiele writes:

Date: Wed, 1 Nov 2000 17:21:45 +1100 From: Kevin Thiele kevin.thiele@PI.CSIRO.AU To: TDWG-SDD@usobi.org Subject: Re: TDWG-SDD XML proposals

From: Mike Dallwitz md@ENTO.CSIRO.AU To: TDWG-SDD@USOBI.ORG Sent: Tuesday, October 31, 2000 1:32 PM Subject: Re: TDWG-SDD XML proposals of Kevin Thiele

| There is no mention of character lists in this draft (perhaps it is to come | in later versions). There is currently no way of ensuring that descriptions | are comparative.

The intention (at least from where I sit) is to incorporate (optional) character lists later - again, once idrefs are implemented.

Our intention exactly. But not *too much* later, given how important interoperability with the large amount of list based data there is. In fact, it will be the next thing we work on. I don't think that a start (including translations back and forth from lists to trees) will be very difficult. I do suspect that discussion of details will end up being extensive. At W3C this kind of thing often goes through 7-8 rounds of comment and revision before a recommendation appears. People may wish to see Sec 6.2 of the W3C Process Document to see how they proceed to bring something through to the status of Recommendation. (They leave "Standard" to standards bodies).

Cheers - k