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Re: Please stop writing specifications that cannot beparsed/pr

• From: Shlomi Fish <shlomif@shlomifish.org>
• To: Roger L Costello <costello@mitre.org>
• Date: Fri, 26 May 2023 06:21:15 +0300

hi Roger and all,

On Thu, 25 May 2023 19:57:31 +0000
Roger L Costello <costello@mitre.org> wrote:

> Dear Specification Writer,
> 
> Please stop writing specifications that cannot be parsed/processed by
> software. Please stop formatting your specifications as Word and PDF.
> Instead, use a format that is amenable to machine processing. The XML format
> is ideal. We want to analyze your specifications. We don't want to spend
> dozens of hours screen-scraping your Word/PDF documents.
> 

I'm reminded of my
https://www.shlomifish.org/philosophy/computers/web/choice-of-docs-formats/ and
https://www.shlomifish.org/meta/FAQ/#why_xml .

> If you simply must persist in writing Word/PDF documents, then please write
> in a consistent way so that we can screen-scrape without having to write
> special case code. To illustrate, in one of your specifications you provide a
> bunch of tables with data; each table has many rows. In some tables you
> reference a note. Here's a row with a note reference:
> 
> 119 Approach Route (1) Note 1 5.7
> 
> Here's another row with a note reference:
> 
> 52 SID Ident (1) (Note 1) 5.78
> 
> Why did you embed Note 1 within parentheses in the second case but not the
> first? That's an example of not being consistent. Such inconsistencies make
> it difficult to do screen-scraping. Please be consistent. If at all possible,
> write a parser to parse the data that you embed in your specification. This
> will immediately inform you of any inconsistencies.
> 
> Thank you,
> From the people who must read, understand, and analyze your specifications
> 
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-- 

Shlomi Fish       https://www.shlomifish.org/
https://www.shlomifish.org/lecture/C-and-CPP/bad-elements/

It’s kinda, sort-of… pretty much… quite… awesome I tell you - awesome!
Got it? It’s kinda awesome!

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• References:
  • Please stop writing specifications that cannot be parsed/processed bysoftware
    • From: Roger L Costello <costello@mitre.org>