[Standards] URGENT: namespace strings, vote on whether I can forward the proposal to the BoD

[Piotr Banski]

Dear all,

I have just been in a long web conference meeting of the DIN mirror of 
ISO TC37SC4, where the committee secretary made it very clear that due 
to several past delays in processing SC4 standards and due to the recent 
change of ISO procedures (shortened deadlines for the delivery of 
standards) and due to the most recent hiccup concerning the need to 
change the namespace strings in standards that are currently being 
submitted for publication, the need for potential clarin.eu-based 
namespace strings has become very urgent and the ISO process will 
automatically delete the standards in question (among them SynAF part 2, 
up till recently called "ISO Tiger" but now rebranded not to use the 
"ISO" in the name) if they don't go into publication. And they can't go 
into publication without a namespace string. It would be good for CLARIN 
to snatch at the opportunity to turn this into a general procedure and 
at the same time become present in the ISO universe.

In order to meet this narrowed deadline, I would like to suggest that we 
take an e-mail ballot over the suggestion formulated in

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1uFw8VSohE3H24LE-mkUTbsLayTWQr-NHkHVCvekVyG4/edit#


To recap, the aim is to provide the CSC with a space for defining 
namespaces, based on the string "http://clarin.eu/standards/". In the 
particular case of TC37SC4, the base for the namespace string would be 
extended to "http://clarin.eu/standards/tc37sc4/", with postfixes 
depending on the particular family of standards. The ballot is not meant 
to confirm this exact case, but rather to allow me to forward this 
proposal to the BoD as a committee proposal. If the BoD accepts, SC4 
would get green light and submit a concrete proposal to the CSC, which 
we could then discuss and approve or reject. Naturally SC4 counts on the 
former and on a quick decision, but let me stress that the urgency of 
this very message has nothing to do with the salesman strategy of making 
you buy quickly, because the product runs out in a minute, but rather to 
push faster through the bureaucracy, with the expectation that the 
concrete cases will be presented to us for the final yea or nay. We're 
not deciding the ISO case yet, we're opening a CSC facility for deciding 
such cases (and the ISO case was used above as an example of a concrete 
way to proceed).

Unless someone protests this, I would like to proceed in the *nix way, 
i.e. to treat silence as agreement. I would also like to propose 
Wednesday 20:00 CEST as the deadline for discussion and vetoes, after 
which I would hopefully forward the proposal to the BoD the same night.

Thanks in advance for your understanding and participation.

With best regards,

   Piotr


-- 
Piotr Bański, Ph.D.
Senior Researcher,
Institut für Deutsche Sprache,
R5 6-13
68-161 Mannheim, Germany