| TITLE: | Annual Report of the Convenor of WG8 |
| SOURCE: | James D. Mason, Convenor |
| PROJECT: | All WG8 Projects |
| PROJECT EDITOR: | All WG8 Editors |
| STATUS: | Convenor's report |
| ACTION: | For information of SC18 |
| DATE: | 4 April 1997 (Prepared before the SC18 Plenary and the first 1997 meeting of WG8) |
| SUMMARY: | WG8 project status, target dates, assignments, meeting schedule |
| DISTRIBUTION: | WG8 and Liaisons |
| REFER TO: | WG8 N1887, Programme of Work; N1889, Recommendations of the Boston Meeting |
| SUPERCEDES: | WG8 N1834 |
| REPLY TO: | Dr. James David Mason
(ISO/IEC JTC1/SC18/WG8 Convenor) Lockheed Martin Energy Systems Information Management Services 1060 Commerce Park, M.S. 6480 Oak Ridge, TN 37831-6480 U.S.A. Telephone: +1 423 574-6973 Facsimile: +1 423 574-0004 Network: masonjd@ornl.gov http://www.ornl.gov/sgml/wg8/wg8home.htm ftp://ftp.ornl.gov/pub/sgml/wg8/ |
Document Description and Processing Languages
Convenor: Dr. James David Mason
To produce standards for languages and resources for the description and processing of compound and hypermedia documents, including:
Rapporteur: Ms. Sharon Adler
Rapporteur: Mr. Alan Griffee
Rapporteur: Dr. Charles F. Goldfarb
Rapporteur: Dr. Steve Strasen
Rapporteur: Mr. Steve Zilles
Rapporteur: Dr. Charles F. Goldfarb
Since the 1996 plenary of SC18 held at Helsinki, WG8 has held one regular meeting. Participation has remained at an average of 21 experts in attendance, representing six national bodies (Canada, France, Japan, Norway, United Kingdom, and United States), three external liaison bodies (SGML Users' Group, Association for Font Information Interchange [AFII], and CERN). WG8 also established liaison with a Working Group of the W3C to develop an ISO Stanadard based on HTML.
In the past year, WG8 has prepared a Technical Corrigendum to HyTime and another to SGML. In addition to our completed ISO standards and technical reports, we have one project at DIS status, and two that are out for CD ballot, and new projects under development.
For this high level of activity, WG8 can continue to give several reasons. Aside from the general interest of WG8's projects to the publishing and technical documentation community, we have continued to benefit from the many organizational adoptions of applications of our work, including an increasing number of governmental and private bodies. We are particularly pleased at the increased presence of SGML on the Internet, notably through the World-Wide Web (WWW).
WG8 continues moving towards fully electronic distribution of its documents. The WG8 Convenor maintains both an FTP server (ftp://ftp.ornl.gov/pub/sgml/wg8/) and a WWW server (http://www.ornl.gov/sgml/wg8/wg8home.htm) to provide access to WG8 documents. WWW browsers are available that allow viewing of SGML documents tagged with user-defined SGML applications, in addition to the well-known HTML application. With this in mind, WG8 has developed a DTD for its internal papers and will be distributing them over the Web.
We expect that the next year will maintain the current momentum, sustaining the rapid development of our projects. Our continuing high level of participation this year has been gratifying.
| Regular meetings | |
| Boston, Massachusetts | 11--15 November 1996 |
WG8 presently has its original two primary projects, JTC1.18.15, Computer Languages for Processing Text, and JTC1.18.27, Description and Identification of Glyph Fonts. These are divided into subprojects, which are listed in detail in the attached Programmeof Work. WG8 has also been assigned several later projects, also described below and listed in the Programme.
SGML is a completed standard for which an amendment has been published. It was reaffirmed by JTC1 balloting at its five-year review in 1991. A comprehensive internal review to determine what revisions or enhancements are desired as a result of evolving user requirements during SGML's years of use is continuing. The process of finalizing DSSSL and developing a technical corrigendum for HyTime has resulted in additional information that can contribute to a potential revision. The work item for a binary representation of SGML documents (Project JTC1.18.40) is being held for further development in conjunction with the revision of the primary standard.
One Technical Corrigendum on Extended Naming Rules has been adopted and published in the next year. WG8 expects further corrigenda to be forthcoming, particularly in support of us of SGML on the World-Wide Web.
Only one project remains under this item, Project JTC1.18.15.5.1, Guidelines for SGML Syntax-Directed Editors (ISO TR 10037), which was published as ISO/IEC TR 10037.
Both projects in this group have resulted in ISO standards
DSSSL was published in April 1996.A Technical Corrigendum is under consideration.
SPDL was published in December 1995.
The first and third parts of this project, SDIF (ISO 9069) and Registration (ISO/IEC 9070), have been published. An amendment to ISO/IEC 9070 was approved that provides for equivalencies of structured names in SGML and ASN.1 representations of documents and makes ISO 9070 a generalized naming standard that is aligned with ISO 8824. A second edition of ISO/IEC 9070 has been published, and another amendment is planned that will change its title and scope to reflect its expanded functions.
Techniques for Using SGML (ISO TR 9573) is being revised to add some new parts and to merge informative material that has been carried as parts of other projects. The part on public entities for mathematical and scientific publishing (including material that was in the annexes to ISO 8879) has already been published as Part 13. The part that documents the SGML-based system used by ISO Central Secretariat to produce texts of standards has also been published as Part 11(a technical corrigendum has been proposed for this part). Another part on public entities for non-Latin alphabets has been balloted as Part 15 and ballot responses are being considered. A part on Using SGML for Computer to Computer Interchange (Notation Declarations for Data Encoding Standards) is being developed as Part 9 and has been sent for PDTR processing. Parts 1--6, tutorials on the SGML language and basic techniques, await completion of the revision process for ISO 8879:1986.
ISO/IEC 9541, Parts 1, Architecture, 2, Interchange Format, and 3, Glyph Shape Representation, and ISO/IEC 10036, Glyph and Glyph Collection Registration Procedures, have been published. A text for Part 4 of 9541, Application-Specific Requirements, has been balloted as a CD; a disposition of comments and new text are being prepared. These standards continue under maintenance
The Font Services project (JTC1.18.33) has a new editor. A text of Part 1 has been circulated for ballot.
This project, developed within the U.S. National Body (though with international consultation), has been moved into JTC1. Final text has been prepared and will be delivered for publication.
A DIS text for DIS 10743 has been balloted, and results are being analyzed.
ISO/IEC 10744 is a published standard. A technical corrigendum was balloted in 1995, and a final text has been approved by WG8. WG8 expects that the TC will result in republication of the standard.
As no new text has been developed in the past year, WG8 expects this project to be withdrawn.
A new project for Topic Navigation Maps has been approved, and a CD text is out for ballot.
A new project for an ISO version of HTML has been approved, and a CD text (based on HTML 3.2) is out for ballot.
WG8 documents N1887Programme of Work, Calendar, Liaisons and N1889 Recommendations of the Boston Meeting, available ofrom the WG8 servers.
Because WG8 is meeting the week after the SC18 Plenary, no results from the first meeting of 1997 are available.