[eml-dev] EML 2.1.0 update

[Margaret O'Brien]

Hi eml-dev -
Lovely to see all the chatter here. Even before today, I was drafting an 
update of 2.1.0, including some issues for discussion. We havent talked 
about what's going into EML2.1 in a while (although the release is 
slated for asap), and some people aren't quite sure what is there 
already. I hope it's pretty clear that is is more than the simple schema 
bug fixes that were originally planned. And since EML2.1.0 is 
backward-incompatible, we have opened the door for other enhancements.

To my mind, EML 2.1.0 should be reasonably close to 2.0.1 so that 
documents are easy to upgrade, but have enough new features that people 
will be excited about using it and won't just wait around for the next 
version. Right now, 2.1 is very close to 2.0.1, but there are several 
requests out there that we could consider. Some of these have had 
comments added to bugzilla in the past few days.

So this email is the summary of what is in 2.1.0 so far (straight out of 
the README in head). The next will summarize the bugzilla entries that 
haven't been addressed, some of which might be considered reasonable and 
would make 2.1 a better step forward without severely impacting release.

These are the EML2.1.0 features that are included so far, and are in the 
head. The bug number is there if you want more information, and the 
[effect on instance docs is in square brackets] :
1132: eml.xsd, physical.xsd; access rule ambiguities -- NOT in head yet, 
later today or monday. [access trees moved]
1154: resource.xsd; required element offline has no required children 
[offline/mediumName is now required]
2054: eml.xsd; added the <metadata> tag to additionalMetadata [ new 
required tag ]
3051: attribute.xsd; missing units added to enumeration list to match 
eml-unitDitionary [authors have 2 new std units]
3163: literature.xsd, cardinality of volume and pageRange is now 0..1 
[authors can leave off these elements if necessary]
3227: coverage.xsd; gRing is declared as GRingPointType, but should be 
GRingType [authors can now use these elements]

These items are behind-the-scenes (also in the head). While they are 
generally invisible to instance authors, they are certainly not trivial:
3232: EML parser limitations, parser should use full-schema-checking for 
2.1, lax checking for 2.0
3480: resource.xsd, physical.xsd; refactor complexTypes: 
DistributionType and PhysicalDistributionType
2703: text.xsd; refined element declarations in txt:TextType for para, 
section; added ulink, citetitle
2083: stmml.xsd; dimension 'current' was wrongly entered as 'charge'
3445: stmml.xsd; non-deterministic

thanks -
Margaret

-- 


========================
Margaret O'Brien
Information Management
Santa Barbara Coastal LTER 
Marine Science Institute
University of California
Santa Barbara, CA  93106-6150

805-893-2071
mob at icess.ucsb.edu
http://sbc.lternet.edu
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