CDF: Postings re survey/xml group

[Peter MATTHEWS]

Further to my earlier posting on 14 Dec announcing a new UIS group to help
establish a recommended transfer format for cave survey and mapping data,
here some more thoughts, spread over a few postings, while awaiting the
group's chairman, Andreas Neumann, to return. They are just a high-level
look at things without getting into any technical detail yet. No harm in
getting the discussions going now, then Andreas can then take over and pull
things together.

My own role, apart from taking part in the group's work as an interested
person, is only to ensure overall co-ordination within UISIC (the UIS
Informatics Commission).

To make discussion easier, I have separated the issues into separate
postings so that independent threads can develop where necessary. If you
can see any improvements (or problems) to these "one person's views",
please post them on this mailing list (as I know you will ! <g>)

And to help mailinglist subscribers manage the various threads which will
no doubt develop as we proceed, I suggest that we include an identifying
code string in the subject line of our postings. Subscribers can then, if
they wish, set up rules in their email system to handle each email (delete,
move to folder, etc). This string should always start with "CDF" (for the
Cave Data Format" topic), followed by qualifying letter(s) set per
discussion thread, e.g. a "tasks" thread might include the code "CDFT" at
the start of the subject line (after any subsequent "RE: " of course). The
person submitting the initial posting for a new thread should choose the
qualifier, but it should be different from any previous thread.

Peter Matthews