Re: [Plastic-devs] spectrum load message

[Thomas B. <bo...@ne...>]

Hi Mark,

> 
> Four possible solutions:
> 
>    1.  Have an additional parameter which names the identity of the
>        standard which defines what the keys in the map are
>        (e.g. "SSAP1.0" (which means they'll be utypes as per the
>        SSAP v1 document) or "SSAP-pre1.0" (which means they'll be
>        UCDs as per the existing practice) or something).
>        Probably these IDs ought to be URIs really.
> 
>    2.  Have one map for UCDs and another one for Utypes.
> 
>    3.  Prefix UCD keys with "ucd:" and utype keys with "utype:",
>        and put them all in the same map.
> 
>    4.  Just stick all the UCDs and all the utypes, or both, or neither,
>        in the same metadata map, and figure that software can probably
>        guess which is which when it sees them.
> 
> (1) is the most rigorous, and tackles the case of utypes whose semantics
> change between different versions of the standard.  (2-4) ignore that
> concern.  Am kind of tempted to plump for (4) following the "bit scrappy
> but it'll probably do the trick" PLASTIC philosophy.  Anyone else?

I am in favour of solution (4). In a perfect world, I'd say (1) is the
best, but I'am afraid very few spectra message senders will do this
effort. 
Of course, (4) is not perfect, but in many cases, it will be enough.

Thomas