"Jim Wing (J W)" <jwwing@vnet.ibm.com> Wed, 30 March 1994 18:22 UTC

Received: from CNRI.RESTON.VA.US by IETF.CNRI.Reston.VA.US id aa03437; 30 Mar 94 13:22 EST
Received: from ietf.cnri.reston.va.us by CNRI.Reston.VA.US id aa10962; 30 Mar 94 13:22 EST
Received: from bells.cs.ucl.ac.uk by IETF.CNRI.Reston.VA.US id aa03411; 30 Mar 94 13:22 EST
Received: from vnet.ibm.com by bells.cs.ucl.ac.uk with Internet SMTP id <g.02870-0@bells.cs.ucl.ac.uk>; Wed, 30 Mar 1994 18:26:00 +0100
Received: from MSNVM1 by VNET.IBM.COM (IBM VM SMTP V2R2) with BSMTP id 1089; Wed, 30 Mar 94 12:02:53 EST
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   proposed an implementors guide document to provide the unpublished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
  •   Jim Wing (J W)