TAP v1.1 - References Suggestion

[James.Dempsey at csiro.au]

Hi DAL,

I'm revisiting the TAP v1.1 spec and it struck me that the way it references other standards makes the document harder to read.

An example from 2.7.6 Upload is

"The UPLOAD parameter is described in (Dowler and Demleitner et al., 2017). Services should support the upload of temporary tables (in (Ochsenbein and Williams et al., 2013) format) via the...."

This is a standard citation format but in a document aimed at implementers, who may not be scientists themselves, it is unfamiliar. At best it requires them to switch context to realise that this is actually referring to DALI 1.1 and VOTable 1.3.

An alternative might be to use the hereafter citation format. So for example, way up in section 2 you could have

"As required by Dowler and Demleitner et al., 2017 (hereafter DALI1.1), ..."

And then the earlier example becomes

"The UPLOAD parameter is described in DALI1.1. Services should support the upload of temporary tables (in (Ochsenbein and Williams et al., 2013 (hereafter VOTable1.3)) format) via the.... "

It looks like this is a change in approach in recent specifications as the TAP 1.0 spec uses the "[1] DALI" approach, SODA uses an approach similar to my suggestion here but the DALI 1.1 spec uses the same format as TAP 1.1.

Should we wish to make this change, I am volunteering to make it.

Cheers,
James Dempsey
CSIRO Australia
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