From: Mark Needleman Date: August 1, 2012 11:08:50 AM EDT To: Nettie Lagace Subject: Re: JATS Working Group response to ASIS&T Comment on approval of NISO Z39.96-201x, JATS Nettie thanks for the reply im not sure I agree with the part of their response that says: This paragraph says that any new model built from elements and attributes already defined in the JATS should be considered conforming to the standard. if they want to go that route I think they should have done what NCIP did and just define the tags and elements in the standard - and leave the definition of tag sets to implementation profiles ( or some other mechanism outside the standard itself) But i can accept what they are planning to do mark On 8/1/2012 10:58 AM, Nettie Lagace wrote: Dear Mark, I'm writing on behalf of the JATS working group in reply to the comment from ASIS&T on the recent approval ballot for NISO Z39.96-201X, JATS, which closed on July 15.  ASIS&T voted YES to approve the standard, but included a comment: --------------------- "ASIST votes YES on this standard with some reluctance. Because the standard has been a DSFTU we feel that potential implemented have gotten experience with it and have vetted it for technical issues. "We actually don't have any problems with the technical contents of the standard itself. "Our concern is with the sentence in Section 2 Scope: ""The Tag Suite has been designed to be extensible. Any of the tag sets may be extended or restricted to meet the needs of a given project. Also, new tag sets can be built from the elements and attributes in the Tag Suite and should be considered conforming to the standard." "We feel that this definition of allowed extensibility is too liberal and has the potential to lead to interoperability issues. We feel, at minimum this should be replaced with language to the effect that new tag sets and attributes may be defined for use among agreeing partners (their use is outside the scope of the current version of the standard) and may be proposed for addition to future versions of the standard." --------------------- The Working Group has met to consider your comment and has the following response.  The standard will progress to ANSI approval and publication as-is, and further clarification will be made in the next version. ========================================================= It became obvious to us after reading your comment that this paragraph within the "Scope" section of the standard, although correct, could be clarified. We intend to address this in the next version. Extensibility is a property of all XML-based vocabularies, and it needed to be addressed. As you mention in your comment, this is how models grow, and this has been the experience of the "NLM DTD" predecessor project to JATS Z39.96. Certainly any restriction of one of the article models would produce article instances conforming to the original model. This paragraph says that any new model built from elements and attributes already defined in the JATS should be considered conforming to the standard. Any model that incorporates elements or attributes not defined in JATS would not be considered to be conforming, although use of the JATS as a basis of such (non-conforming) models is an expected use of standard. ========================================================= Please let me know if you have any further comments or questions. Sincerely, Nettie ---------------------- Nettie Lagace Associate Director for Programs National Information Standards Organization (NISO) 3600 Clipper Mill Road, Suite 302 Baltimore, MD 21211 Mobile: 617-863-0501 Fax: 410-685-5278 E-mail: nlagace@niso.org