# ADL 1.5 draft 4 now available

**Category:** [Technical (archive)](https://discourse.openehr.org/c/technical-archive/156)
**Created:** 2008-10-02 13:18 UTC
**Views:** 2
**Replies:** 0
**URL:** https://discourse.openehr.org/t/adl-1-5-draft-4-now-available/16093

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## Post #1 by @thomas.beale

Dear all,

I have been hard at work on the ADL 1.5 specification, which will underpin the forthcoming openEHR template specification. A new draft of this specification is now available on the page
[http://www.openehr.org/wiki/display/spec/openEHR+Templates+and+Specialised+Archetypes](http://www.openehr.org/wiki/display/spec/openEHR+Templates+and+Specialised+Archetypes) . The exact URL for the PDF is [http://www.openehr.org/wiki/download/attachments/196633/adl_1.5.pdf?version=1](http://www.openehr.org/wiki/download/attachments/196633/adl_1.5.pdf?version=1) .

This draft has a lot of improvements:

- improved explanations
- many validity conditions
- syntax specfications moved to an appendix
- most of the semantics of specialisation has been determined now.
In addition, the validity rules are all encoded into the current specialisation branch version of the ADL Workbench. All error text in this tool is now in dADL form and can be translated into other languages. I will put a binary up in the next few days. Anyone who builds the specialisation branch of the ref_impl_eiffel project can see these improvements.

We are not far off having an extremely solid specification for archetype validity, specialisation and templating. I expect that by the end of 2008, most of the specification and initial implementation and testing will be complete.

How you can help:

- read the draft ADL 1.5 specification and provide feedback - even just on parts will be helpful

- read the draft ADL 1.5 specification, and construct test archetypes to exercise the validity rules. There are already a few at [http://www.openehr.org/svn/knowledge/archetypes/dev/adl/test/specialisation/](http://www.openehr.org/svn/knowledge/archetypes/dev/adl/test/specialisation/) , and of course we use the hundreds of existing non-test archetypes for testing as well, but the addition of dedicated test archetypes would be very useful. These generally need to be hand-written in ADL, but can usually be small and are easy enough to create from existing test archetypes (directory [http://www.openehr.org/svn/knowledge/archetypes/dev/adl/test/](http://www.openehr.org/svn/knowledge/archetypes/dev/adl/test/)). To get some inspiration, see the validation test archetype directory - [http://www.openehr.org/svn/knowledge/archetypes/dev/adl/test/validation/](http://www.openehr.org/svn/knowledge/archetypes/dev/adl/test/validation/)

- if you are a builder of tools for ADL, it is probably time to start considering how to handle .adls source files as well as .adl files (or the XML equivalents), and also the coming ADL 1.5 syntax changes (quite small) and validation requirements (larger ;-)

- thomas beale

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**Canonical:** https://discourse.openehr.org/t/adl-1-5-draft-4-now-available/16093
**Original content:** https://discourse.openehr.org/t/adl-1-5-draft-4-now-available/16093