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Date: Mon, 7 Dec 92 15:42:08 EST

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Date: Mon, 7 Dec 92 13:41:55 MST
From: [email-masked] (Doug Tody)
To: [email-masked]
Subject: binary tables discussion
Sender: [email-masked]

Bill - I cannot answer your question on what our vote formally means.  My
expectation is that we are voting only on the proposals as they currently
stand.  In the case of the BT proposal, my understanding is that technically
the vote only refers to the main proposal, however the intention is to
include the current appendices in the final document.

Regarding your specific comments on arrays of strings - I think this should
be the subject of either a layered convention or an additional appendix.
It does not appear necessary to modify the core BT proposal to add support
for this type of data.

The important question is whether it is worth while holding up the proposal
until this issue is resolved.  If you do not feel that the proposal should
be approved until this issue has been resolved, probably you should vote no
on the proposal, or try to convince the committee to delay until the matter
is resolved.  If you feel that the matter can be dealt with as an addition
to the current proposal and there is insufficient reason to delay adoption
of the current proposal, then you should vote yes.  A possible compromise
might be to approve the proposal as it currently stands but with a note that
important questions remain regarding how to handle character data (as well
as array data).

Regarding your specific proposal for arrays of strings - I agree that the
current proposal does not provide much guidance regarding how to deal with
this type of data.  However, I cannot agree with the convention you
propose.  I do not like arrays of fixed length blank filled character
strings.  This should not be the only approach for representing such data
suggested by the BT proposal.  I could expand upon this but I don't think it
is appropriate to discuss the matter in detail here.  It is sufficient to
note that the matter is still controversial and we do not know yet how best
to represent either complex string data or multidimensional array data in
binary tables.

I could draft a layered convention for the representation of arrays of
strings combining, e.g., arrays of fixed length strings and sequences of
delimited substrings as alternate forms within the same convention, however
I think there might be complications with this and attemping to get it in
the current proposal would delay things.  Since it can be added later my
preference would be to proceed with this separately.  Multidimensional array
support is related and should be handled the same way.        - Doug