Explicitly references annexes that are not provided in a humanly-readable format, whereas a human-readable format is required by JTC1 Directives 8.3.5 and JTC1 Directives Annex H
Annexes should be provided in a humanly readable, lined-numbered format so it can be referenced and cited. The reference to electronic form only annexes should be removed.
page vi, line 9 Part 4, Foreword
ed
Proposed Disposition of DIS 29500 Comment US-0271 (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-0602 , GB-0604 , IN-0055 , US-0005 , US-0006 , US-0007 , US-0008 , US-0009 , US-0010 , VE-0004 , VE-0005 , VE-0006
This should probably be connected to other objections related to inappropriate citation to inaccessible sources.
It goes without saying that this is a substantive, important objection.
Dupe of 602
zip is actually one of the most common formats readable on vitually any platform. And line numbering XML schema’s would render them useless as that are not valid XML then.
yes, it is a dupe of GB - 602. The point is that the rules call for a typeset copy of things like this to be provided, so people can say - “your app is implementing the spec wrongly, see page x line y of the spec” I think (and hope) they can provide the valid XML file in addition to the typeset document, but it seems the rules might not permit what they have done.
http://ra.dkuug.dk/jtc1/sc22/open/n2793.doc