[DAS] DAS 1.6 draft

[Andy Jenkinson]

Hi all,

As many of you will know, we plan to update the ageing 1.53 version of 
the DAS specification currently available on the BioDAS website with one 
that hopefully better reflects current usage of DAS. Most changes are 
taken from the extensions defined in the extended 1.53E spec, but with 
some differences and further additions.

We aim to formally release 1.6 at the end of June, but I have made 
available the first draft:
http://www.ebi.ac.uk/~aj/1.6_draft1/documents/spec.html

The hope is that this will give software authors time to prepare, in 
order to minimise the impact of the transition. Updated versions of core 
client/server libraries (ProServer, Bio-Das-Lite, Dazzle, Dasobert) will 
be made available in due course.

I am happy to gather feedback and engage in discussion about the changes 
(I won't list them individually here). Especially helpful would be 
amendments for sections of the document that would improve clarity, 
examples etc. Note that this is still a draft however - in particular, 
the structure and alignment commands may be "tidied up" and the 
stylesheet glyphs section further fleshed out.

Cheers,
Andy