protocol and method: radical proposal

[Scott Chapal]

Tim,

Tim Bergsma <tbergsma at kbs.msu.edu> writes:

> For clarity, I suggest language that sees method and protocol as two
> kinds of procedures: method is a descriptive procedure and protocol
> is a prescriptive procedure.  Thus, protocol is an abstraction,
> albeit an important one; method is concrete, representing activity
> that actually occured, which may or may not be consistent with
> (validate against?)  some protocol.  This is pretty much how we've
> all been using the terms.

I like this proposal a lot.  At once, it defines and simplifies these
distinctions and provides an inheritance model of sorts:

> I like your idea of explicitly creating a base procedure type.  It
> allows a formal representation of the similarities and differerences
> between protocol and method.

> May I assume that procedureType has 'step' as well as 'substep'?
> 
> I'm beginning to appreciate your comment about 'clean line'.  In a
> certain sense, though, we don't want ANY formattting tags in eml -- only
> structural tags.  Even if procedure/step/substep emulates DocBook, I
> would still consider them eml.


DocBook doesn't concern itself with formatting tags at all, so there
isn't a contradiction.  The utility of procedure/step/substep is
obvious; and matching the tag names with those in DocBook is useful to
provide for the possible eventuality of expanding EML to include
additional DocBook vocabulary.

-- 
Scott E. Chapal_________________________________________________
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