Martin Hill wrote:
> What I would like to propose is a *mandatory* new element (<DATAPATH>?)
> as a child of the <FIELD> element, that has as value an XPath to the
> data elements (the column <TD> elements) that that FIELD element
> describes.
There is no way I'd agree to this as a mandatory element. Making astronomers learn XPath to write a simple VOTable makes the learning curve too high. If it all gets too complicated, astronomers won't use VOTable format internally for their data and VOTable will only be used by the community as something they convert _out of_ rather than something that contains goodness in itself (and much goodness such as UCD1+ could be lost as a result). This is pretty much unacceptable...
Simple interfaces for simple problems. VOTable is a perfectably workable standard, lets not overload it. Keeping it as lean as possible has to be our top priority at this point!
Al.
-- Dr. A. Allan, School of Physics, University of ExeterReceived on 2004-06-10Z02:05:26