Issues for Human -usable Textual Notation Finalization Task Force

List of issues (green=resolved, yellow=pending Board vote, red=unresolved)

List options: All ; Open Issues only; or Closed Issues only

Issue 5808: Issue : Section 6.5
Issue 5809: Issue : Section 6.3
Issue 5810: Section 6.5: Need to improve readability when referencing instances
Issue 5813: Excessive indentation due to the blocks used to delimit the package content
Issue 5814: The identification mechanism need to be more flexible
Issue 5815: Update the list of persons in the acknowledgments paragraph
Issue 5816: Section 1.3 : Add text regarding the France Telecom implementation of HUTN
Issue 5876: classifier level attributes
Issue 5997: page 3-1, in section 3.2, "Input Stream Conformance
Issue 6701: On page 6-13, production rule [31]

Issue 5808: Issue : Section 6.5 (hutn-ftf)

Issue : Section 6.5 : Missing where to put the full representation of a non inlined contained instance. 
According to the specification, a contained instance maybe represented by a full representation 
of the instance or by a reference to the instance. However, in the latter case, the specification does 
noy say nothing about where to place the full representation of the contained instances that are not 
inlined. 
Suggestion for resolution: 
   In the second paragraph, after "or by a reference to the instance.", add the following sentence: 
   "In the latter case the full representation of the contained instance must appear as a top level 
    definition in the content of the current package. 
    In addition, in order to distinguish between these "forwarded" definitions and the other 
    "top-level" definitions we should consider introducing a prefix keyword (such as "forward", 
    to be added in the ClassHeader).

Issue : Section 6.3 : Ambiguous meaning when omitting opening and closing brackets 
In 6.3 in the first paragraph  it's said that opening and closing brackets should be optionnaly omitted 
if the instance has no contents. This is error prone and ambiguous since one cannot distinguish between 
a definition without contents from a contained instance whose definition (full representation) is forwarded. 
Suggestion for resolution: remove the sentence (open and close brackets are not allowed to be omitted). 

Issue Section 6.5: Need to improve readability when referencing  instances. 
Inside the class contents, due to the multiple short-hands, it's not always clear whether an instance is 
being defined (fully represented) or is being referenced . 
To avoid any possible confusion and improve readability, a "ref" prefix keyword could be added. 
Suggestion for resolution: Add the "ref" keyword in ClassInstanceRef 
    [23] ClassInstanceRef :=  ('ref'  (<ClasName>? 14:ClassRefString) ) | ExternalObjRef 
   Need discussion : should the "ref" keyword be optional or mandatory? 

Issue : Excessive indentation due to the blocks used to delimit the package contents. 
According to the current draft, the top-level definitions of a package instance need to be put inside 
a block delimited by open and close brackets. This is not very user-friendly in the sense that it 
introduces excessive indentation that could be avoided. 
Suggestion for resolution: Use a one-line delimiter convention (such as 'package "xxxxxx";') meaning 
that all the above definitions until the next delimiter are part of the package content. Note that the same 
kind of notation is found in the Java language to declare packages. 
This delimiter convention may be optional or mandatory (to be discussed).

Issue : The identification mechanism need to be more flexible to make easier the automatic production 
of HUTN renderings from modeling tools. 
The proposed identification mechanism is too rigid and very difficult to manage appropriately when 
HUTN renderings are produced automatically from use case tools. 

Issue : Preface : Update the list of persons in the acknowledgments paragraph 
In the current submission only two persons are mentioned (Kerry Raymond and Keith Duddy). Other 
persons such as Jim Steel and Mariano Belaunde should appear.

Resolution: In the final paragraph of the "Acknowledgements" section of the Preface, replace the words "Kerry Raymond and Keith Duddy of   
DSTC" with the following: "Jim Steel, Kerry Raymond and Keith Duddy of DSTC and Mariano Belaunde of France Telecom"

Below the proposed text: 
France Telecom has developped since 1997 a MOF based model repository tool [Belaunde99] and has 
implemented since 1999 facilities to import and export textual human usable specifications that use a 
Java-like syntax (the notation was originnally named JMI) and a hierarchical identification system. The 
implementation uses a generic parser that is connected at run time to the API's generated from the MOF 
compliant metamodel definitions (No intermediate BNF parser generation is then used). France Telecom has 
provided feedback to the submitters based on its original implementation.

The document does not address how classifier level attributes are
represented by HUTN

on page 3-1, in section 3.2, "Input Stream Conformance":
 - "For a given combination of MOF model and HUTN Configuration" should
be replaced with "For all given combinations of MOF models and HUTN
Configurations".

: On page 6-13, production rule [31] states:
         [31] AssocInstance   := 32:AssocInstance | 35:InfixAssocLink
       This should be 32:AssocBlock, not 32:AssocInstance
Proposed Resolution: On page 6-13, in section 6.7, replace
          "[31] AssocInstance   := 32:AssocInstance | 35:InfixAssocLink"
           with
          "[31] AssocInstance   := 32:AssocBlock | 35:InfixAssocLink"