[DAS] DAS 1.6 draft

[Andy Jenkinson]

In 1.53, the method element's id attribute and CDATA were both optional. 
This meant the following was legal (but clearly wrong!):
<METHOD />

Now in 1.6, the id attribute is required but tag content is optional:
<METHOD id="foo" />
<METHOD id="foo">bar</METHOD>

Likewise the TYPE element follows the same principle. IMO this is the 
"correct" thing to do.

ProServer -currently- (i.e. 1.53) will copy the ID into the tag contents 
if not provided explicitly, so the tag contents is always present:
<METHOD id="foo">foo</METHOD>
Most implementations don't bother to provide a separate "pretty" name 
for the method, so look like this.

This is generally what clients would do anyway if they display the 
method - i.e. if the server doesn't provide a human readable method (tag 
content), the ID is used for display instead. But I have no qualms in 
changing ProServer to obey the spirit of the spec more closely, if that 
is seen as preferable.

Andy

Jonathan Warren wrote:
> looking through the das sources and the 1.6 spec it looks like 
> duplication in the features method and type attributes and element 
> contents happens a lot. Have we got some usage where the attribute and 
> element are not just duplicated? would be good if anyone has any 
> examples of these being used properly...
> 
> 
> 
> <FEATURE id="rs1042011" label="rs1042011">
>         <TYPE id="nsSNP">nsSNP</TYPE>
>         <METHOD id="dbSNP">dbSNP</METHOD>
> 
> 
> or in some cases completely ignored such as type:
> <TYPE id=""></TYPE><START>3756</START><END>3756</END><METHOD 
> id="ssahaSNP">ssahaSNP</METHOD>
> 
> 
> On 30 Mar 2009, at 14:47, Andy Jenkinson wrote:
> 
>> 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
>> _______________________________________________
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>> DAS at lists.open-bio.org
>> http://lists.open-bio.org/mailman/listinfo/das
> 
> 
>