opened
keighrim
username_0
In lapps, tools can handle different type of data formats (LIF, gate, UIMA, ...), so we needed to have a `discriminator` at the very beginning of the I/O to indicate in which format is current input. 
I wonder if that's still the case for the MMIF and CLAMS. 
If the CLAMS needs to be 100% compatible with all the lapps tools (including those handle non-LIF inputs, for instance UIMA-XML), we can still encode a LIF (with XML encoded) as a whole inside the MMIF - of course it would be ugly though.
Any idea is welcome.
`discriminator` in MMIF
issue
created
keighrim
username_0
I think at the moment, we decided not to use `discriminator` in MMIF and therefore wrapping native LIF json string inside MMIF as a whole is not an option any more. So next questions will be the way LIF string/objects are wrapped and represented in MMIF. Are we all agree on this?
comment
created
marcverhagen
username_1
That would be ugly indeed but why would we want to do that? Isn't MMIF already set up to deal with LIF? Sure, there are some differences in that there is no `text` property but instead text as one or more of the media, and views are as usual except that they refer to a media element.

The bigger question is how we incorporate LAPPS tools. There is some prose on this [here](https://github.com/clamsproject/mmif/tree/specification/specifications/draft#compatibility-with-lapps-tools), but that indeed needs more thought.
comment
created
keighrim
username_0
Yes, I agree that we decided to handle only LIF json strings - maybe after I left the first comment. So ignore that outdated part you quoted.  

---
LAPPS services that produce LIF as output should indicate that in their metadata, so we can rely on that for integration (although the metadata might not be very reliable - that's a different story). Actual integration needs a lot more thoughts and careful design, as well as consideration of other new approaches we take in designing MMIF, such as #8.
comment
created
keighrim
username_0
So we don't have `discriminator` field at the top; that will limit our lapps integration in that only tools that output `LIF`-formatted json can be considered for integration. I'll leave this open for future reference, until we actually start lapps integration.
comment
created
marcverhagen
username_1
Yeah, that is a worry. But we will indeed be better able to figure this out once the first LAPPS tools is being integrated.
comment