Draft Minutes of July IETF ODA Working Group meeting

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  MINUTES OF THE 4TH IETF-ODA MEETING

 Office Document Architecture (ODA)
 
 CHARTER
 
 Chair:
 	Peter Kirstein, [e-mail]
 
 Mailing Lists:
 	General Discussion:  [e-mail]
 	To Subscribe:        [e-mail]
 	Archive:             [e-mail]
 
 
 Description of Working Group:
 
      The ODA working group will  develop  guidelines  for  the  use  of the
      Office Document  Architecture  for the exchange  of Compound documents
      including formattable  text,  bit-map graphics and geometric  graphics
      according  to  the ODA Standard.   It  will  consider  also  Intercept
      Standards for other document content types it considers  vital -  e.g.
      Spreadsheets.   The working group will define how to use both MIME and
      X.400  for  interchange of  ODA documents.   It  will   maintain close
      liaison with the SMTPEXT and osix400 Working Groups.
      
      This   working   group   will   review   the   availability   of   ODA
      implementations,  in  order to  mount a Pilot Testbed  for processable
      compound document interchange.   Finally,  it will set up and evaluate
      such a testbed.
 
 GOALS AND MILESTONES
 
 Done	          Inaugural meeting.
 Done           Produce paper stating current state of ODA Convertors
 July 1992      Provide first feedback on the ODA Pilot.
 Ongoing        Coordinate ODA Pilot.
 Ongoing        Review and propose additional enhancements of ODA.
 
 
 CURRENT MEETING REPORT   Reported by Peter Kirstein/UCL
 
 The Chair repeated that for  the   ODA WG,  some papers are available in an
 electronic form  on  the  UCL-CS  info-server:  "[e-mail]".
 Concern was expressed that a number of  people,  who had expressed previous
 interest,  might not be on the mailing list;   the Chair promised to ensure
 that those who had attended the IETF ODA WG would be on the mailing list.
 
 The documents in the info-server are accessed by standard  message systems,
 giving a message body of the form:
 
         request:ietf-osi-oda
         topic:xxxx
 
 where xxxx is the name of the document required.
 
 All the documents in the info-server are available in  text  form;  many of
 them are stored also in ODA/ODIF  format.   The list of documents currently
 in the collection is listed in a document called INDEX.
 
 The latest  document  defining  the current status  is  [1]  below.   It is
 available  on  the  info-server.    It  gives  details  about  the  current
 implementations producing Q112  ODA available  for  the  Pilot.   These are
 listed below:
 
 PRODUCT                  Supplier   Status   Product  Availability Source
 SLATE/ODA  V1.2          BBN/UCL    OK       SLATE-yes  Now        UCL
 Word-for-Windows/ODA v3  Bull       OK         Yes      Now        Bull
 DECWRITE/ODA             DEC        OK         Yes      Now        DEC
 Global View              Xerox      Testing    Yes      Now        Xerox
 MACODA                   Apple      Testing    Beta     ??         Apple
 WordPerfect              UPC        Dev        ??       Q4 92      UPC
  
 UCL started shipping  SLATE/ODA v1.2  in  February 1992;   this is based on
 SLATE v1.2.   Few have tested it.  BBN is planning to bring out V2 of SLATE
 during  Q4  92.   From a user viewpoint,  this has better graphics and font
 support,  supports  a  fuller  character  set,  and  should  be  easier  to
 configure;   nevertheless,  for reasons given below, we expect SLATE/ODA v2
 to be ready for shipping only during Q1  1993 at the earliest - and not for
 this stage of  the Pilot.   The  Bull  product has been  released;  UCL has
 tested it for conformity.   The DEC product is available now,  and has been
 tested for conformity;   no other site had tried   a recent version of that
 software.   The Apple and Xerox products have been delivered to  UCL.  They
 are still being tested for interoperability by UCL.   
 
 The  availability situation  of the WORDPERFECT/ODA  system from University
 Politechnic of Catalonia has kept changing.   There has been  a contractual
 problem in  getting that  version used  in  the Pilot,  because it included
 some software from ICL -  which UPC had  not had permission  to release for
 the Pilot.   UPC has now  stated that they intend to have software entirely
 of their own available for the September 1992 - this will be made available
 to UCL for in  September;   UCL hopes that it  will be usable  on the Pilot
 during Q4 1992.
 
 During an earlier discussion,  it became clear that there was a requirement
 to use a large number of National characters;  for instance support for the
 specific Nordic ones were requested by  one participant,  and of Greek ones
 by  another.   It was considered  desirable to use  character set switching
 according to ISO 8859/4 in the long term.  The SLATE V2 system now uses ISO
 8859/1;   it was not clear who else supported it.   The Bull implementation
 is expected to support a richer character set on the next version;   we are
 discussing the requirements with them.  No information was available on the
 Apple, DEC or Xerox ones.
 
 A number of small pilots were mentioned - a Nordic one, one based on Mitre,
 one organised by UCL in  Europe,  and a small one at NASA-Ames.   There was
 interest in broader pilots.  The Chair promised to set up a list of ODA and
 normal mailboxes.   This list will be available from ietf-osi-oda, and  the
 interested parties will be requested to provide their details to the Chair.
 
 So far,  most use of the systems have using X.400  for transport;  interest
 has been  expressed in  working with  the Multi-media  Mail  format (MIME).
 This is  in  accordance  with the Charter,  since this is  a Draft Internet
 Standard.   The Chair mentioned that ODA  was a recognised  Content Type in
 MIME,  and   stated that at least the BBN/UCL SLATE now supports  MIME.  He
 promised to investigate when  there   could be more general  integration of
 MIME  with some of  the ODA products,  and report this  to the Distribution
 List.
 
 It had been   expected that there would be substantial experience  with the
 Pilot prior to the July IETF meeting in Boston.  In practice there has been
 little such experience by  IETF members.
 
 
 FUTURE EXTENSIONS
 
 The current Profile used in all the ODA document activities  described here
 is the Q112  Profile.   A  new Profile called  FOD26  is in  the process of
 ratification.   The new profile  has  some  advantages,  but  that  is less
 important than that a number of large manufacturers have  agreed to support
 it for products (e.g.  Bull,  DEC,  IBM, ICL, Siemens-Nixdorf and UNISYS as
 part of the ODA Consortium).   In the last few months,  it has become clear
 that the manufacturers are going to provide most of their  further products
 only  according  to the FOD26  version.   Pending the  ratification  of the
 Standard,  and the availability  of  Toolkits like those being  produced by
 ODAC above,  no  additional  new ODA products  that  can be  expected;  all
 enhancements will come in the  FOD26  form.
 
 In view of the above,  it would seem advisable to continue  pilots based on
 the products  mentioned above,  but not to  envisage new  products prior to
 Spring 1993.   As far as the SLATE/ODA activity,  it does not seem sensible
 to provide anything other than SLATE/ODA v2 - based on SLATE v2 and FOD 26.
 
 
 Security Extensions
 
 The Chair mentioned that UCL had prepared a subsystem  that implemented the
 ODA extensions specified in the Addendum to  the Standard -  subject to the
 vital restriction that the extensions apply to whole documents, not also to
 the  separate  ODA  portions  in  the  document.   The  extension  had been
 integrated  into  one version of  their SLATE  1.2  systems,  and  could be
 adapted to the Bull and UPC ones (and possibly  others);   it would be used
 in the PASSWORD Pilot in  Europe,  which was piloting a number  of security
 services   (including  confidentiality,   integrity  and  authenticity  for
 document interchange).  While it was considered an interesting development,
 it  was agreed  that this system  would not be  used in the IETF  ODA Pilot
 during the remainder of 1992 for two reasons:  
 
 1.	It  was considered  undesirable to  duplicate  the  functionality of
     Privacy Enhanced Mail (PEM), before PEM had been properly piloted;
 
 2.	It was considered unnecessary to introduce yet further functionality
     until the present Pilots were more advanced.
 
 
 Future Meetings
 
 While the attendance at this IETF ODA WG    meeting was better than that at
 the previous  one,  we propose  not to have   meeting in November -  but to
 postpone  a further full  meeting until the March 1993  IETF.   It is hoped
 that by this time there would be extensive  Pilots,  and that the timing of
 FOD26 products would be clearer.
 
 
 REFERENCE
 
 1.  D. Sadok et al:  The ODA Document Convertors, UCL Internal Report No 2,
 	 Version 4, July 1992.
 
 
 ATTENDANCE  AT THE MEETING
 
      Harald   Alvestrand          [e-mail]
      Jisoo    Geiter              [e-mail]
      David    Ketinsky            [e-mail]
      Peter    Kirstein            [e-mail]
      Jim      Knowles             [e-mail]
      Thomas   Lenggenhager        [e-mail]
      Sam      Nicholson           [e-mail]
      Walt     Lazear              [e-mail]
      Steve    Linnett             [e-mail]
      Mark     Needleman           [e-mail]
      Robert   Reschly             [e-mail]
      Jim      Romoguera           [e-mail]
      Vincent  Sgro                [e-mail]
      Sandro   Wallach             [e-mail]  (x)
      Peter    Williams            [e-mail]
      
      
 PEOPLE SO FAR RECEIVING SLATE/ODA FROM UCL
      
      FIRST NAME SURNAME    ORGANISATION    CITY             COUNTRY  
      Velu       Sinhu      OKIDATA        Framingham, Mass  USA      
      Jim        Knowles    NASA-AMES      Mountain View, CA USA      
      Mark       Stansfield Paisley Coll   Paisley           Scotland 
      Mark       Savela     Telecom Res    Otakaari          Finland  
      Erik       Lillevold  NTRA           Kjeller           Norway   
      Encarna    Pastor     U. Pol. Madrid Madrid            Spain    
      Knut       Holm       SINTEF         Trondheim         Norway   
      Trevor     Hales      CSIRO          Carlton, Vic      Australia
      Naresh     Kumar      Touch Com      Campbell, CA      USA      
      Andrew     Macpherson BNR-Europe     Harlow, Essex     UK       
      Paul       Kennedy    DEC            Galway            Ireland