[CAP] Toward CAP 2.0

[Art Botterell]

Friends -

Now that we have a bit of actual experience with CAP... and now that  
CAP has been adopted as a core technology for broadcast and cellular  
alerting in the U.S... it's may be time to start talking about what  
we've learned that might make the next version of the CAP standard  
even better.

One of the factors to which I attribute the success of CAP is that so  
much of its design was accomplished in an open, informal and very  
international context prior to subjecting it to the constraints and  
rigors of a formal standards process.  That's no criticism of the  
need for formalities and structure, just a suggestion that the best  
results may come neither from pure freedom nor from pure structure,  
but from a thoughtful balance of the two.

Which is why I'd like to suggest that we on this list... the folks  
who got the ball rolling in the first place... should take a first  
stab at some recommendations for the next revision of the OASIS/ITU  
CAP specification.

We did pretty well using email the last time around, but not everyone  
prefers email for online collaboration.  So I've taken the liberty of  
adding a new topic to the online CAP Forum at:

	<http://www.incident.com/capforum/viewforum.php?f=8>

(It'll be interesting to see how that works compared to the  
traditional email approach.  I don't see any reason we can't use  
either or both as each of us prefers, at least until it becomes clear  
that one way is significantly better.)

Anyway, I've gone ahead and launched a handful of topics on the Forum  
based on some ideas I've jotted down recently:

	* responseType: New values needed?

	* area: How to describe motion?

	* area: Harmonizing the geometries

	* info: Need for unique identifiers?

	* Mandatory and optional elements

	* U.S. SAME Compatibility

(I hesitated a bit even to list them here for fear we might drift  
into "massively parallel" exchanges of emails that each try to span  
several threads; that's one reason I thought the Forum might benefit  
us.  Please, if you want to address these or any other ideas in this  
list, help us all maintain our sanity by engaging separate topics in  
separate emails!  If threads do start getting confused I may ask your  
cooperation in unpacking them.)

Please feel free to debate these topics and to propose your own.   
I'll do my best to keep the dialog civil and productive, and to hold  
the spammers at bay.  Obviously all opinions expressed will be the  
writers' own, and I'll be taking neither responsibility nor  
ownership... in the argot of the venerable online community The WELL:  
"You own your own words."

Thanks, and good luck to us all!

- Art