Bug #596
closedProposal: make attribute optional in OtherEntityType.
0%
Description
While in the process of documenting eml-entity, I was struck by the fact that
attributeList is required for otherEntityType.
I would like to suggest that entityDescription is a more likely candidate for a
required element that simply importing EntityGroup unmodified.
If, in the absense of an eml=photograph, we are expecting users to use
otherEntity to document photographs, I think that attributeList should be made
optional for OtherEntityType.
On IRC I asked the question, what is the meaning of "attribute" in the context
of a photograph. One answer was, a list of RGB values. That might have utility
for advanced machine processing, but it is not something that a user is going to
fill out. For a non-georeferenced photographs which LTER information managers
have indicated that they consider to be data, a description of the photograph
under entity description makes sense. Saying that a photograph has a single
attribute and that the attribute is either RGB values or even a description of
the photograph itself seems to me to be an artificial imposition of unnessary
structure.
Since otherEntity is by definition a place holder for an entity that we have not
defined, it seems to me that trying to fit it into exactly the same structure as
defined entities is a mistake.
Updated by Matt Jones about 22 years ago
Agreed during conference call to move attribute out of EntityGroup and put it in
each of the Entity modules, and to make it required everywhere except
otherEntity, where it would be optional.
Updated by Matt Jones about 22 years ago
Completed. attributeList and constraint were moved out of EntityGroup and into
the individual entity type modules, where the decision about whether they are
mandatory or not can be made on a module by module basis. RESOLVED FIXED.