Specifications under development

A list of specifications which are currently under development

Introduction to the specification process

Specification drafts can be proposed by anyone, and have no official status. We use git to allow for distributed tracking of specifications - the idea is that people can fork their code-base from an existing specification, and make changes. We are using DocBook to mark up our specifications - but this can be rendered to HTML and pushed to the members area of the site for easier viewing.

This page is a collection of links and summary paragraphs of work that is going on through a distributed process, to allow others see what is happening with the CellML specifications more easily.

Andrew Miller's CellML specifications git repository can be viewed at: http://repo.or.cz/w/cellml-draft-miller.git/. It has a number of different branches, for different changes to the specification.

  • The normative branch is used as the baseline for the next version of CellML, and the rendered output is up at http://www.cellml.org/Members/miller/draft-normative-spec/toplevel.xhtml. This specification primarily consists of a formalisation of CellML 1.1 into more precise language.
  • The encapsulation-only branch is derived from the normative branch, and changes the specification to replace the generic group element with a specific encapsulation element - with the view that other grouping information should be moved to RDF metadata. The rendered output is up at http://www.cellml.org/Members/miller/draft-normative-spec-encapsulation-only/toplevel.xhtml.
  • The simplify-connections branch is derived from the normative branch, and changes the specification to remove the need for extraneous elements like map_components, instead moving the component specification to attributes on the connection for simplicity. The rendered output is up at http://www.cellml.org/Members/miller/draft-normative-spec-simplify-connections/toplevel.xhtml.
  • The allow-secondary branch is derived from the normative branch, and changes the specification to allow 'secondary specifications' which don't contradict the CellML specification, but impose additional restrictions to narrow CellML down to a subset which can be feasibly implemented in its entirety, therefore improving interoperability. This draft is not yet finished and has not yet been put on the site as XHTML.

If you have a draft specification that you would like to be included in this index, please e-mail a link to the draft to cellml-discussion@cellml.org. We prefer it if you make changes to the DocBook drafts and push them to a public git repository, although plain English descriptions of suggested changes are also welcomed.