Steve Shattuck writes:

Date: Thu, 22 Nov 2001 10:41:55 +1100 [...]

4. At the Sydney meeting I thought we agreed to restart this discussion with

specific examples based on real-life characters (in the biological sense). This current thread would seem to be very much a continuation of the one started 2 years ago: 80% focus on solutions (largely round XML syntax) and 20% on specific problems (addressing business needs). I fear we'll end up the same place we were before.

Amen. More explicitly, what was posed was to provide "data challenges", i.e. (as I understood) problems about characters that the poser feels important to model. Implicit (as I understood) in that discussion---and in almost all of this recent thread---is that a particular representation (e.g. XML) is NOT what is initially desired. If, indeed, my understandings were correct, and if a sufficiently inclusive set of challenges were identified, what would then be accomplished sets the stage exactly for the modeling Leigh urges. Further, this complies with one of the admonitions in Rob Atkinson's talk to first find out what you are trying to make a standard about, i.e.:

<not> <adage>XML is the answer. What is the question?</adage> </not>

Finally, I would paraphrase what I understood the subgroup meeting arrived at:

The first job is to identify with these data challenges the strengths and the limitations of what DELTA-motivated applications can accomplish, rather than throw out the experience of DELTA and start over.

Probably Gregor's meeting minutes will reveal whether that understanding is correct and perhaps how it came to be.

--Bob Morris