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RE: Should one adopt the tag naming convention of anexisting X

  • From: "Cox, Bruce" <Bruce.Cox@USPTO.GOV>
  • To: Alex Muir <alex.g.muir@gmail.com>, "Costello, Roger L."<costello@m...>
  • Date: Mon, 6 Feb 2012 18:22:20 -0500

RE:  Should one adopt the tag naming convention of anexisting X

In our case, we routinely used Near & Far, now XML Spy or even oXygen, to show schemas to users (surrogates for patent examiners or trademark examiners), primarily to verify the business logic schemas embedded.  This is during the design phase, which can take months, even years when other industrial property offices are involved.  Right now, biotech examiners are revamping the XML for sequence listings, replacing a decades old international standard.  Element name readability is indispensible.

 

Readability is paramount when troubleshooting an error in a process that produces the ~10,000 XML instances of patent grants and applications we publish every week.  The developers doing this must either themselves be business experts (rare, but priceless when it happens), or able to work with business experts, to detect the errors and then correct them correctly.

 

The patent grants and applications are exchanged with EPO and JPO.  Examiners don’t look at the XML, but those who build search systems for examiners do, and being able to read the schemas and contents with the business process in mind is essential for useful indexing.

 

Another class of users here are the editors of the Manual of Patent Examining Procedure (three attorneys and about six clerks).  They have learned enough XML in the past year to be able to manage about 3,000 pages of some fairly complex content.  They use oXygen to modify XML instances of chapters.  They generally prefer to work in text mode, rather that Author mode (wysiwyg).  They’re content with camel case.  Where they stumble is when an element name or the logic of a content model are unobvious.  Draft versions of chapters are distributed for review in PDF with comments then incorporated back into the XML by the editors.

 

Editors of the Trademark Manual of Examining Procedure (three attorneys), on the other hand, prefer to export the XML to MS Word, have their reviewers edit in Word, and then hand it back to a clerk to manually modify the XML source in oXygen.

 

The old process for the MPEP involved converting draft Word documents to something and then to something and then to SGML in Frame Maker where page layout was finalized for printing.  When we started the project to replace that system with XML, we ruled out any conversion to or from Word as being highly unreliable and essentially forced the editors to work in oXygen.  Two years ago, they hated it.  Now, they have ceased the burnings in effigy, and are all eager for the next round of training in XML.  They love being in control, even though it means they have to get their fingernails dirty in ways they didn’t have to in the past.  From the CIO’s perspective, it’s a big win in that producing a new edition does not involve anyone other than the content owners (no CIO contractors, no CIO staff), unless there is a problem.

 

And finally, a few years ago, some developers did actually threaten to add hundreds of thousands of dollars to a major project of ours so that they could develop a method of working around the dashes in the element names from WIPO Standard ST.36 that were so inconvenient in Java.  For various other reasons, that project was suspended.

 

Bruce B Cox

USPTO/OCIO/AED/SAED

571-272-9004

 

From: Alex Muir [mailto:alex.g.muir@gmail.com]
Sent: 2012 February 6, Monday 12:44
To: Costello, Roger L.
Cc: xml-dev@l...
Subject: Re: Should one adopt the tag naming convention of an existing XML vocabulary or create one's own tag naming convention?

 

 

On Mon, Feb 6, 2012 at 4:36 PM, Costello, Roger L. <costello@m...> wrote:


Seems to me this all depends...

> The convenience of a programmer should not be placed over the readability of the data.
> Business users take precedence over programmer convenience.

I would agree with this if say writing docbook or dita where someone pseudo technical is getting into the xml but outside of the document authoring realm I would think you would want to "balance convenience with readability"

What is an example of a business user then? Docbook author? I would think a large percentage of the business users of xml people I assume who gain some benefit of a xml process occurring on a server somewhere that makes them money can't read xml and don't care to and would rather read the resulting website or document content. No?


-- XML is so versatile so would the markup be. --


--

Alex Muir
Program Organizer - University Technology Student Work Experience Building
University of the Gambia
https://sites.google.com/a/utg.edu.gm/utsweb/

Come visit Gambia enjoy the sun and culture and help out! Software Engineering Lecturers needed!
Join UTSWEB do local contract work or give a student a contract remotely for slow, cheap and good work https://sites.google.com/a/utg.edu.gm/utsweb/


Some fantastic African/Canadian Fusion  http://bafila.bandcamp.com/



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