Re: [EXTERNAL] Re: [jats-list] Lists with a single item are valid, will they always be?

["G. Ken Holman g.ken.holman@xxxxxxxxx" <jats-list-service@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 17/12/2025 14:05 +0000, Randall, Laura (NIH/NLM/NCBI) [E] laura.randall@xxxxxxx wrote:
>IF it was to ever happen, it would have to be (as Pieter said) in a non-backward-compatible release.
>...
>From: Pieter Lamers pieter.lamers@xxxxxxxxxxxx <jats-list-service@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> 
>Sent: Wednesday, December 17, 2025 7:51 AM
>I don't think anyone is going to forbid this, as it would be a major breaking change. I guess the standard case of a list is to contain multiple items.

I am unclear how changing a list from two-or-more items to one-or-more items is a breaking change from a data perspective.

If the edict comes down, any existing list of two-or-more items satisfies the new specification of one-or-more items.

Or do you mean breaking from an application's perspective of expecting two or more and being presented with only one and not being able to handle such?

Is backwards compatibility in JATS measured by the applications, by the data, or by both?

In our Universal Business Language (UBL) modeling, we've only been measuring backward compatibility of the data and not of the applications. For example, every theoretical valid instance of, say, UBL 2.3, is guaranteed to be a valid instance of UBL 2.4 and all subsequent releases of new schemas in the 2.x branch. We say nothing of the applications that process UBL.

. . . . . . Ken


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