"Jim Wing (J W)" <jwwing@vnet.ibm.com> Wed, 30 March 1994 18:22 UTC
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Date: Wed, 30 Mar 1994 11:02:40 -0600
From: "Jim Wing (J W)" <jwwing@vnet.ibm.com>
To: ietf-oda@cs.ucl.ac.uk, info-oda+@andrew.cmu.edu
Message-ID: <9403301322.aa03411@IETF.CNRI.Reston.VA.US>
The following report of the OIW MDDI SIG is submitted by Jim Wing and is not meant to be construed as official documentation of the SIG. The official minutes of the SIG will be posted when they are available. OIW MDDI SIG REPORT March 14-19, 1994 The OIW MDDI SIG met in Gaithersburg, MD March 14-19, 1994 in conjunction with the OSE Implementors' Workshop. Note: this is not to be construed as the official minutes of this meeting. DFR The OIW MDDI SIG received word that participants at the previous MDDI meeting on DFR could not achieve support from their companies to continue the work. A replacement for the editor of the OIW part of the DFR taxonomy has been found. ISPs Part 1 Availability of the published document is up to ISO. The workshop has decided to provide the last draft version in electronic form on its database. Jim Wing has been asked to provide the text. FOD36 1) A request was received asking that the ISPs be updated to reference the latest publication of ODA, ISO/IEC 8613 : 1993 to avoid problems with the inability to obtain published corrigenda for ISO 8613 : 1989. A subsequent EWOS liaison stated their position that the changes in ISO 8613 are too intrusive and may well go deeply into the design of the ISPs Part 1. EWOS has proposed an implementors guide document to provide the unpublished portions needed by the ISPs. AOW has also sent a liaison indicating that they were willing to make the suggested reference changes. The OIW MDDI SIG voted to support the EWOS position. Jim Wing will prepare the liaison to EWOS, AOW and ITU-T agreeing with the EWOS position. 2) Work on an ISR for FOD36 has begun in the form of an update to Part 27 which is to serve as the basis for the level 3 ISR. The updated Part 27 was approved as Working Agreements for the workshop. The next step is to obtain the proforma document for the ISR and begin the process of establishing the functional units for the ISR. 3) Defects found in the ISPs will be handled as part of the implementors guide. Jim Wing will prepare a liaison to EWOS, AOW, and ITU-T identifying several insignificant defects he discovered in ISP 11182-1 during his update of Part 27. Level 2 ISR The latest version of the ISR as approved by EWOS was not available to the SIG. A later version taking into account the OIW comments is expected prior to the June meeting. Level 2 ATS The ODA subgroup reviewed the proposed ISP part 3, ATS, document which is to be submitted as pDISP to SGFS. The MDDI SIG voted to accept the document as harmonized. Jim Wing will prepare the appropriate liaison statement to EWOS, AOW, and ITU-T. ISO 2022 At the Regional Workshop Coordinating committee (RWS-CC) meeting, it was decided to agree to not impede the creation of profiles for ISO 2022. The OIW position is that profiles of this nature are of little interest to us, but we will study the proposals and determine their usefulness to us when they are available. Jon Stewart, Chair, MDDI SIG will prepare the liaison to EWOS, AOW, and ITU-T to that effect. Multimedia Tutorial) Sybase and Aimtech provided demonstrations and insight relative to standards needed for multimedia. The products in general are object oriented development environments for customers who wish to create presentations and tutorials utilizing video, animations, sound, etc. It was significant that their approach to the subject was so similar, yet totally different. Sybase (Gain) uses an internal form (GEL) which they use to guarantee that aging data will be retrievable. Thus they get right in there, getting there hands dirty as it were. AimTech in their ICON Author offering takes the approach of hands off the content. They do not care what it is, nor do they want to care. Their text is limited to RTF, however, and they are not available on many platforms, basically Windows only. By contrast, Sybase is multi-platform, very flexible and their GEL format is being proposed as a multimedia standard. When asked, both groups identified video as an area in need of standardization. Video is a problem area that is causing great concern and consternation to both. 1) Jon Stewart presented a proposal for input to the X3V1 TG1 document on Multimedia and Hypermedia Reference Model. Fortunately, the editor and prime mover of this activity is Mike Rubenfeld of NIST. Unfortunately, he was ill and could not meet with us. Jon indicated that he plans to propose that the document being edited by Mike become a working document in the MDDI SIG and offer that OIW MDDI SIG provide input and effort toward the development of the document. SGML SGML experts had conflicting meetings so did not attend. We had hoped for more interest in this subject at the meeting. There were lengthy discussions about SGML and its applicability. Several of the users were interested in how SGML works. 1) Responses from EWOS to the proposal from Jon Stewart on DOD archival project (to provide a simple heirarchical set of DTDs for office document level of functionality) were submitted by Ian Campbell-Grant. These comments were not official since EWOS has not yet discussed them. 2) Ed Levinson, Accurate Information Systems, presented the proposal for using MIME to support SGML documents on Internet. His proposal addresses issues of functional standardization which are not being addressed in current products such as naming for system independence, protection against system commands, and awareness of processing instructions' potential for abuse. Ed is looking for potential implementors to provide the next step in creating Internet standard of this proposal. 3) Discussion of the usage of SGML with generic data and the problems involved in attempting to recast documents when not kept in a standard form. The OLE / OPENDOC mentality will lead to data that will be totally unretrievable when the process that created it is no longer available. This is seen as a major requirement for standardized description such as in SGML, DSSSL, Hytime, and SMSL. The use of generic content (in particular, common to SGML/ODA environments) is key to successfully handling aging data as well as interoperating between the various environments that may occur. CGM The RWS-CC received a liaison from EWOS identifying a work item for CGM profiling effort. A taxonomy was also proposed which did not include a level of functionality comparable to that of FOD26. The proposed taxonomy was approved in the RWS-CC, and the MDDI SIG agreed on the assumption that the level of geometric graphics seen in FOD26 is sufficiently restricted that new products likely to use CGM profiles will be beyond its capability when they appear on the market. Interoperability in ODA Jon Stewart presented the report of the interoperability work that he had completed with OSINET. The report identifies several levels of interoperability and shows that interoperability is possible even with todays level of products - though it is not without some difficulties. Current products limited availability, limited functionality forced the testors to go through RTF conversion to complete the test path which then becomes a test of the accuracy of the RTF converters. Image Frank Spielman presented a defect report on ISO 8613 to the effect that the ODA Raster DAP was using the logical object attributes, "spacing ratio" and "pel spacing" improperly in the presentation styles. After much discussion it was determined that those questioning the usage were not aware of the meanings of Formatted Processable Raster in a Formatted document in ODA terms. It was felt that although the usage was correct, it would be wise to submit a request for clarification of the ODA specification. submitted by JW Wing, IBM Software Solutions