Document operational variant short form style?

[mbaudis]

When discussing variant queries or even as part of of UI implementations frequently "short form" annotations are being used instead of parameter=value pairs; but there is no recommended style or parameter specification. One can usually see something like chr17, 123456 A>C the a bit nicer 17:123456:A>C etc.; and this seems fairly understandable (given that the genome edition is indicated somewhere), but:

• this only works as a private shorthand, not for reusable implementations
• the parameters are ambiguous since e.g. it is not defined if the base position is indicated in UI space (1 based) or Beacon API convention (0 based)
• there are ambiguous options when indicating e.g. INDELs - is it 17:123456:A>AA or 17:123457:>A; and 17:123456:AA>A or 17:123457:A>? (i.e. use of anchor bases - and other issues regarding normalization)
• ... and the questions then for more technical re-use of formats for ranges and brackets, variant types, whitespace, separators ... etc.

Question Should we (e.g. through variant scouts) develop a simple schema w/ recommendations of which formats etc. to use? Outside of the specification, but as part of an "ecosystem for recommendations".