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Bruce,
That's sounds perfectly reasonable. I think one of the descriptions
will be some sort of 'sboTerms required'. But I do hate getting attacked
for suggesting that some developers won't be reading the MathML (like
myself) ... hence the SBML Police (which is a better word, yes). That
doesn't mean the SBML file won't contain MathML expressions ... it's
straightforward to write out a valid MathML expression for other
programs to use by reading only the sboTerms. So the SBML file is still
readable by MathML-only programs.


-Howard Salis

Bruce E Shapiro, PhD wrote:

> Howard,
>
> Nobody is "required" to be SBML compliant. You only have to implement
> this if you want to, and you can advertise to the world that your
> software reads and writes SBML. You only need to do this if you want
> to advertise with the specific term "SBML Complaint" and use the
> trademarked SBML icon on your web page, and this is not even allowed
> for anybody now, because the requirements for using this trademark
> have not been decided.
>
> In any case, I would also like to point out that if we equate "SBML
> Compliant" with "does everything in the SBML spec correctly" (without
> getting into details about what that means), then nobody has written
> any SBML Compliant software yet (possibly excluding libSBML, which
> isn't actually a program) because nobody has yet implemented
> everything in the spec.
>
> Most likely there will be different levels of SBML compliance, such
> as "everything that is implemented is implemented correctly, and the
> parts of SBML that are not implemented are clearly documented."
>
> As of yet there are no SBML Police (more PC). And probably never will
> be.
>
> Bruce
>
> On Dec 22, 2005, at 11:18 AM, Howard Salis wrote:
>
>> Pedro,
>> So what you're proposing is for me to spend extra time making my
>> program slower because the community demands compliance? Wow. No
>> offense, but that doesn't sound like a good plan. I'd rather have a
>> common file format that is so easy to use that there is no need to
>> 'ensure compliance'. I will continue my intransigent position until
>> SBML is usable For The Rest of Us.
>>
>> (Can I be the first to coin the phrase 'SBML Nazi'? Akin to Fashion/
>> Grammar. Or is that too politically incorrect?)
>>
>> -Howard Salis
>>
>>
>> Pedro Mendes wrote:
>>
>>> On Thursday 22 December 2005 12:22, Howard Salis wrote:
>>>
>>>> And if the standard
>>>> says the MathML is authoritative...sure, why not. But my program
>>>> won't
>>>> read in the SBML model without the sboTerms because it's impractical
>>>> otherwise. O well.
>>>>
>>>
>>> Not exactly the spirit that all the other SBML participants usually
>>> have...
>>> SBML has been successful exactly because tool makers have been
>>> committed to using a common file format that all could understand.
>>> This has made several of us to end up programming things into our
>>> software that was not originally in our plans - but we gained
>>> compatibility and our users gained even more. If everyone would
>>> take the intransigent position you seem to be taking then there
>>> would be no SBML. O well.
>>>
>>>
>>