This annex was not provided in a humanly-readable format as required by JTC1 Directives 8.3.5 and Annex H.
Proposed change: The annex should be provided in a humanly-readable, lined-numbered format so it can be referenced and cited. Additionally, an electronic machine-readable version can be provided according to Annex H.
ANNEX D [p5206, OfficeOpenXML-SpreadsheetMLStyles.zip]
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Proposed Disposition of DIS 29500 Comment GB-0602 (Modified: 2008-01-08) The Foreword to DIS 29500 Part 1 states, “Parts 2 and 4 include a number of annexes that refer to data files provided in electronic form only.” These data files are identified in various Annexes of those parts. ISO/IEC JTC 1 Directives §8.3 discusses Document Distribution of the various Document Types discussed in §8.1. The cited reference in §8.3.5 addresses documents posted by an SC Secretariat to an SC web site for SC use however, the current discussion is about the final form of a DIS which would be published by ITTF as noted in §8.3.1. We would note that ISO/IEC have already confirmed that the presence of these annexes in electronic form was not an impediment to conducting the DIS Ballot, as this issue was previously raised during the Contradiction Period. However, we recognize that there is concern about the presence of these annexes and offer the following points: a) The contents of these annexes are all Plain Text documents using ISO-10646 (UTF-16), which are easily readable by implementers if they so desire. These documents can be read on many platforms (Linux, Macintosh, Windows, DOS, and others) and through the use of many widely used text editing tools including Emacs, VI, Brief, TextEdit, BBEdit, Notepad. These files are intended to be processed mechanically (by software, such as XML processors that can validate XML files or XSD or RelaxNG schemas) rather than read directly by humans as text. Providing additional files which replicate this information with line numbers would simply enlarge the specification without any material benefit. Making references to various parts of these text files is not a significant issue. b) Directives §8.3.5 specifies that all documents must be published in an “acceptable document format as specified by Annex H.” Directives §H.4 discusses “Document Preparation and Distribution”, and the third paragraph of §H4.2 expressly allows the use of documents which are of value only when provided in a machine-readable format the TTCN example (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ttcn) is mentioned and a typical example of a TTCN module is shown in this Wikipedia example. This is consistent with the electronic-format annexes in DIS 29500 and not an unusual practice for ISO/IEC standards. We are prepared to make line-numbered PDF versions available if ITTF desires to include them in the specification document set for reference purposes. Similar Comments: CL-0033 , CL-0034 , CL-0035 , CL-0036 , CL-0037 , DE-0130 , DK-0047 , DK-0048 , DK-0049 , DK-0050 , DK- 0051 , DK-0052 , FR-0035 , FR-0575 , FR-0580 , FR-0581 , FR-0586 , FR-0588 , FR-0592 , GB-0060 , GB-0063 , GB-0125 , GB-0598 , GB-0600 , GB-0604 , IN-0055 , US-0005 , US-0006 , US-0007 , US-0008 , US-0009 , US-0010 , US-0271 , VE-0004 , VE-0005 , VE-0006
This may very well rank amongt the stupidest comments of them all.
And it has several dupes as well.
I personally find it a disgrace that the national bodies even bother to submit such comments.
Formally they may have some point but complaining that schema files are submitted in a zip format is just pathetic.
Mayby they should complain that .doc files of the format specification are not humanly readably either ??
it does sound a bit daft, but the important part might be that it is hard to cite references to parts of it. Kind of depends what is in the zip file as to whether this is important.
tagging it as fluff and has dupes for the moment, but that could change if a better suggestion arises.
see also DE - 130
there are a bunch of annexes in the same situation, comments have been raised against each and duplicated loads of times. The general point about being zip files only needs to be answered once. I am retagging it as just fix it. It should be technically possible to provide a line numbered printout to go in the standard in addition to the zip file if that is what the JTC1 directive calls for.