Cave Surveys and XML

[martinl@talk21.com]

For a short period in early 2001 this list hosted an intense discussion on how XML might be applied to cave surveying. So intense was the discussion that it was felt it needed its own arena and this was created around a website at

 http://www.karto.ethz.ch/neumann/caving/cavexml/ 

The website, its associated email list and archives are well worth looking at and I would like to encourage all of you not already aware of it to visit it.
Work has progressed at varying paces, but has recently been replanned and a model of the entities involved in surveying caves has been published for discussion.
There are currently about 30 people on the CaveXML list and we would like to invite as many other cavers as possible to participate through at least overseeing and at best improving our work. With at least 25 countries represented on this list your contributions will give a valuable additional international perspective on the already polyglot, but largely anglophone, discussion. XML is inherently international and the first major project is to develop a specification for the interchange of survey data; however its outcome will surely be influential in the development of associated areas such as data archiving, data processing, and survey drawing.

Martin Laverty on behalf of CaveXML 
( http://www.karto.ethz.ch/neumann/caving/cavexml/ )

(A UIS initiative for a common Cave Data Exchange Format from the UIS Cave Informatics Group Cave Data Exchange Format Working Group)
   

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