ids in eml

[Peter McCartney]

bug 1662 ( http://bugzilla.ecoinformatics.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1662  )
covers the issue of id resolution in EML that has come up in several
discussions.  One issue is the fact that users want to reference
identifiers that are scoped to different systems which could violate the
existing spec which states that no two id attributes in an eml document
can have the same value. the benefit of those not on the bugzilla
notify, here is the content of my proposed fix. This would apply toward
a 2.02 release.
 
I checked in changes to eml-resource.xsd and buildDocbook.xsl as a
proposed fix
to  some of this bug. The fix introduces an optional system attribute to
the
references element, which corresponds to the existing system attribute
accompanying the id element through out EML. if used, it qualifys that
the
matching id pointed to by the references tag has a scope defined by the
system
attribute. Thus, EML documents can contain more than one id attribute
with the
same value provided that they are scoped with different system
attributes.
Changes to the "reusable content" section reflect this. if system is
defined, it
must be defined for both the target and the referencing element and it
must
match. Otherwise it must be absent from both.

I think there is still some ambiguity in the wording of the docs that
could
benefit from some additional input. the eml root has an attribute called
scope
which is "document" by default and "system" by option. We now allow
there to be
more than one system referenced. if system tags are used once, does this
mean
they must be provided in all cases? or, can i write an eml where the ids
for
attribute are document scope, but the ids supplied for literature cited
are
scoped to a particular system? Do we really need the "scope" attribute?
if it is
 left as default, is it invalid to use the system atrribute anywhere in
the
document? 
Peter McCartney (peter.mccartney at asu.edu)
Center for Environmental-Studies
Arizona State University
 
 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mercury.nceas.ucsb.edu/ecoinformatics/pipermail/eml-dev/attachments/20040901/64f5f946/attachment.htm