Special states

[Eric Goda]

On Wed, 26 Mar 2003 08:24:17 +1100, Steve Shattuck
<Steve.Shattuck at CSIRO.AU> wrote:

>The fundamental problem I see is making SDD truly extensible and yet
>generic at the same time.  The big problem with the DELTA standard is
>that every time Mike needed new DELTA program functionality he extended
>the DELTA standard by adding new directives.  This meant that if you
>wanted to support the DELTA standard you needed to follow Mike's lead.
>It's hardly a "standard" if it's being pushed by one group.

Hi there,

I'm new to this group and was envolved with DELTA writing my TAXASOFT
programs years ago. I agree that there was some mixture between the DELTA
standard and special needs (directives) for the programs using it, which
was a wrong choice (discussed these polutions with Mike years ago, to keep
the chars, items and specs file free from this).

The power of DELTA is its simple flat format and I agree that the new
format must be as simple and transparant as possible.

I do not know in what stage this SDD devellopment is, but I'm highly
interested in a DELTA like format that is XML based (done a lot with XML
lately) to provide hirarchical features in the items part.

Eric Gouda