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Good people,

For L3, we're thinking of removing the (L2) restriction on
<annotation> content, which is that content isn't allowed to
come from the SBML namespaces. (Sec. 3.2.4 in the L2v4
spec.) This would mean the following would be allowed:

<sbml xmlns="http://www.sbml.org/sbml/level3/version1" level="3" version="1">
<model>
<listOfCompartments>
<compartment id="Cell" size="1" spatialDimensions="3" constant="true">
<annotation>
<ELEMENTS xmlns="http://www.sbml.org/sbml/level3/version1" ...>
</annotation>
</compartment>
</listOfCompartments>
</model>
</sbml>

where ELEMENTS are any elements defined in the SBML
namespace. There is no particular use we have in mind for
this capability, but in looking at L3, the namespace
restrictions inside <annotation> struck as pointless because
we can't see how XML element content in <annotation> could
interfere with the rest of the model. Some preliminary
testing using XML Schema-aware validation tools (e.g.,
XMLSpy) show that sample files like this do validate.

Can anyone come up with a reason why this should not be
allowed? Would this break someone's software?

Note that it would mean some crazy-bizarro files could be
created, like

<sbml xmlns="http://www.sbml.org/sbml/level3/version1" level="3" version="1">
<model>
<listOfCompartments>
<compartment id="Cell" size="1" spatialDimensions="3" constant="true">
<annotation>
<compartment id="Cell" size="3" spatialDimensions="3" constant="true">
</annotation>
</compartment>
</listOfCompartments>
</model>
</sbml>

but in principle, this should not lead to misinterpretation
because the content is always inside <annotation> and thus
not located within the regular object hierarchy of the
model.

Anyway, we'd appreciate comments.

MH

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