Orcmid's Lair

status
privacy

about
contact

Welcome to Orcmid's Lair, the playground for family
connections, pastimes, and scholarly vocation -- the collected
professional and recreational work of Dennis E. Hamilton

Archives

Atom Feed

Associated Blogs

Edge City

Numbering Peano

Orcmid's Live
Hideout

Praxis101

Prof. von Clueless in the
Blunder Dome

Recent Items

Unburdening
Overwhelm: Covey and Peace of Conscien...

Dreaming
in Code: The Long Tail to My Little Ecco

The
Unbearable Overwhelm of Technical Debt

Public
Availability of Standards

On the Giving
Away

Interoperability
Principles, I: IE8 Rising

Document
Interchange: OOXML without Macros

To Sir, with
Respect

Some
Legacies Are More Legacy than Others

Interoperability
by Design

2008-04-11

OOXML+ODF: ISO Steps In

Technorati
Tags: OOXML, ODF-OOXML Harmonization, ODF, Oasis, Ecma, ISO/IEC JTC1,
SC34, Alex Brown, Rick
Jelliffe

Clippings from the nfoWorks Diary on recent
events of possible wider interest to standards geeks and armchair torch
followers:

2008-04-09
ISO/IEC SC34 Takes Over OOXML

ISO/IEC Joint Technical Committee 1 (JTC1) Subcommittee 34 (SC34)
held a plenary meeting in Oslo, Norway on April 5-9.  Alex Brown
provides a comprehensive
report.
SC34 proposes to create ongoing activities
to carry out its
responsibilities:
1. IS
29500 (OOXML) maintenance

2. IS 26300 (ODF) maintenance (pending OASIS
agreement)
3.
Harmonization (with a proposed work-item expected from the DIN NIA
activity)
To start things off, two ad hoc working
groups have been created.
The first ad hoc
working group will propose how IS 29500 maintenance should proceed,
producing a proposal by 2008-09-01, one month prior to the next SC34
meeting.  This ad hoc group is chaired by Alex Brown who
will lead a two-day meeting in London this July.  Participation is
from SC34 member bodies and I take it that ECMA TC45 members are invited
to chime in.
The second ad hoc working group is
being created to capture technical comments on IS 29500 and make sure
existing analysis is not lost.  Within 90 days (by July 2) there
will be a mechanism in operation "to compile a list of comments on
ISO/IEC 29500 received from NBs, liaisons, and the general public" and
then to "publish the on-going list as an open document on the SC 34
website."
In the resolutions from
the meeting, I note that the final text of DIS 29500 has already
been created.  SC 34 requests distribution to its members no later
than May 1.  I don't know what the delay will be before publication
as IS 29500:2008 happens, and I'll beg a copy of the final DIS 29500
before that just to make sure I don't step into some element of
harmonization that is impacted by BRM-approved changes (especially the
various conformance statements that are new in the final text).
Also, to make any contributions to identification of defects, it is
important to reference the most-authoritative available documents.

Here's what it looks like for intercepting DIS/IS 29500
activity:
1. Usable final
text available in May for provisional use (if it can be obtained) until
official IS 29500 editions are
issued
2. Mechanism for
receiving defects and related comments on IS 29500 operating in
July.
3. In September,
2008, SC 34 meets in Korea and takes next steps, with meetings every six
months (figure March 2009 in Prague, September 2009 in U.S., then 2010
meetings in Sweden, then South Africa).
Working groups
that will be doing the technical work are yet to be set up and they will
have their own meetings, conference calls, and mailing lists as well as
ones synchronized with SC34.
(I have a current passport
with lots of room for visa stamps.  Now I just need a sponsor for
expenses/subsistence and a national body to nominate me to a
committee.  Hint, hint.) -- dh

2008-04-10
Rick Jelliffe Perspective on SC34 Activity

Rick Jelliffe has a great perspective on the just-concluded SC34
plenary meeting.  Because he wasn't there, he offers it in a "Fake
blog from SC34 meeting in Norway."  Jelliffe offers up some
important items to hold onto
here:
1. The main SC34 web site (hosted in
Japan by the SC34
Secretariat)
2. The page
for accessing public SC34
documents (rewards
exploration)
3. A reminder
that TrueType is connected with the ISO/IEC Open Type standard,
maintained in SC34 (and relevant for nfoWorks) with a
hidden reminder that getting Asian scripts right is probably one of the
best demonstrations of harmonization
going.
4. An useful sketch
of SC34's interests and
responsibilities
5.
Another reminder of my own armchair critic status, something I am
working to alter
6. A
discussion of the criticality of accessibility considerations and the
resources that apply in the work of SC34 -- a topic that it will be
essential to address with regard to
harmonization
7. An
injunction to become involved and where to do that (OASIS, W3C, Ecma
TC45, the national mirror of SC34 in your neighborhood,
etc.)
8. Links to the DIN
NIA-34 update on the harmonization investigation (PDF file),
great work that nfoWorks should align
with
9. An interesting
side comment about the use of topic maps to present ODF-OOXML mappings
(although DIN is focused on translations, not mappings, because of a
number of issues that translation surfaces, including round-trip
degradation in collaboration
scenarios)
10. Another
side comment on how the concern for synchronizing ECMA versions and SC34
versions of OOXML might be extended to the case of OASIS and ODF as
well.

I do know how to become engaged in this work (and my passport is indeed
current), especially with regard to the prospects for document
interoperability through harmonization.   In the United States,
the mirror activity would be in a working group of INCITS Technical
Committee V1.  (There might even be a liaison function with an
association such as AIIM, because of the impact on content
management.)  The subsistence and sponsorship part is more difficult
because my retirement can't cover it.  Consistent with giving it
away and not wanting to account to a commercial interest, I need to
come up with some sort of neutral but generous affiliation.  I could
also reconcile myself to just collecting and building tools and
collaboration via e-mail and distribution list.  Others can pick up
on that or not, in an open-source development spirit.  Ponder,
ponder, ponder, ...

I was rather proud of myself in creating the nfoWorks Diary and using
it to reflect progress in that area on a daily basis.  It is easy to
write there because I am busy in my web-site editor already.  But it
is not very participative.  There is no feed, even though it is a
form of web log, and there is no provision for commentary.  Slight
consolation: you can comment here, and I will always receive notice of
it.  I'll also see de.licio.us for:orcmid.  It would be great to
have an nfoWare wiki though.  That is somewhere down the road to
someday.

posted by orcmid at 4/11/2008
08:50:00 AM

Comments: Post
a Comment

You are
navigating Orcmid's Lair.

template
created 2002-10-28-07:25 -0800 (pst) by orcmid
$$Author: Orcmid $
$$Date: 07-12-26 16:37
$
$$Revision: 27
$