in preparation for beta9...

[Peter McCartney]

we should table the documentation and get the modules right. we are wasting
time overwriting each others changes by attempting to keep the documentation
current in the midst of dramatic content changes and debates. If we dont
have a final set of files that allows me to explain to people once and for
all how eml works at the upcoming workshop i fear that we risk losing any
credibility for EML as a standard within the LTER community. Im quite
concerned about this. As I look at the rewrites we're doing to accomodate
the latest files, its discouraging that all we're doing is making changes
that accomodate a different way of encoding the same( or less) information
than was in the last set of schemas we worked with, and in many cases making
it far more complicated. This process isnt taking us forward anymore.

so my vote is solve the content first, then worry about documentation for a
final release. Right now, the community needs resolution more than they need
documentation. 




Peter McCartney (peter.mccartney at asu.edu)
Center for Environmental Studies
Arizona State University
480-965-6791 

-----Original Message-----
From: Christopher Jones [mailto:cjones at lifesci.ucsb.edu]
Sent: Wednesday, June 12, 2002 1:24 AM
To: eml-dev at ecoinformatics.org
Subject: in preparation for beta9...


Hi all,

Since we've been making major changes to the current beta8 release of 
EML, we've been falling behind in a large portion of the documentation 
for the elements, attributes, complex types, and simple types, etc... in 
the .xsd files.

Some of the modules will need minor documentation fleshed out (~10%) 
left, whereas many of the newer modules have very little documentation 
(80%) left and/or the documentation does not at all conform to our 
tooltip/summary/description/example/lineage convention.  Many of them 
are merely pasted repeats through all of the doc: tags.

It seems to me that the documentation will be critical for anyone not 
within the immediate development group to digest, understand, and use 
EML as a community standard.

Since the pending beta9 release is intended to be the last beta prior to 
a candidate release for 2.0, I feel like any modules that are not 
completely documented should be tabled and should be included in the 
next release when they have matured as a code base.

Does anyone feel that any of the EML modules should be released without 
  the documentation and clean code conventions that we've agreed upon? 
It would be great to hear from anyone interested.

$.02,

Chris
--
_________________________________________________________________
christopher jones     cjones at lifesci.ucsb.edu      (805) 893-5144
marine science institute  university of california, santa barbara
_________________________________________________________________

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