From patrick@durusau.net Wed Apr 4 05:30:14 2007 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Date: Wed, 04 Apr 2007 08:29:31 -0400 From: Patrick Durusau Subject: Processing DIS 29500 (OOXML) To: Frank Farance , Jon Bosak , "Price, Lynne" , Dave Welsh , Doug Mahugh , Rex Jaeschke , Steve Carton , Jerry Smith , Norm Walsh , Richard Barber , Robert Weir , "Levine, Leonard F CIV DISA GES-E" , Tim Schoechle , "Mason, James David (MXM)" , Ron Silletti Reply-to: patrick@durusau.net X-Accept-Language: en-us, en X-PMX-Version: 5.2.0.264296 X-ASG-Debug-ID: 1175689795-4f1000430002-F3fpwQ X-Barracuda-URL: http://10.10.100.8:8000/cgi-bin/mark.cgi X-Barracuda-Connect: unknown[66.110.197.207] X-Barracuda-Start-Time: 1175689795 X-ASG-Whitelist: Client X-ASG-Orig-Subj: Processing DIS 29500 (OOXML) X-Barracuda-Virus-Scanned: by Barracuda Spam Firewall at insimail.com Greetings! As I noted in my post yesterday, we have until June 17, 2007 to prepare the recommended position on DIS 29500. Having slept on it I have some more specific suggestions on how we should proceed. 1. Obviously we need a mail reflector for V1 members. I will talk to Frank Farance about this but I do have a question: Should we have a public archive of our discussions? My personal opinion is yes since the ISO standards process is supposed to be "transparent." I take that to mean that the discussions in that process should be available to anyone who wants to see them. 2. Do we need a public list for the submission of comments from members of the public? OASIS has such lists and I can attest that they have been helpful any number of times in finding bugs in standards. I am less certain that we need an email list in the traditional sense because feelings are running high enough on all sides to make an open list too much traffic to be useful. On the other hand, a widely publicized webpage for comments that forces choice of a part and section, so that the comments can be automatically sorted could be really useful. I don't have any illusions about our committee being able to review every nook and cranny of DIS 29500. The results from such a webpage should be public for the same reasons as the proposed discussion list for the committee. 3. Comments by V1 Members I have reviewed the membership list and at least at this point we all appear to have unique initials. My suggestion on comments is that we use the subject line to contain our initials, followed by a colon, followed by the part, colon and then the section number and heading of the portion of OOXML we are commenting on. Thus, pd:1:11.3.1 Alternative Format Import Part That will be very helpful in terms of marshalling all the comments and responses on a particular section for discussion. I don't have a definitive date on the OOXML topic map that my handlers are preparing under my direction and I don't want to wait until that is certain one way or the other to setup mechanisms for our discussions. If the software proves useful for the committee, we can always import any data we have generated by that point anyway. 4. Processing comments and developing the US recommended position I think we need a two-stage process for the development of the US recommended position. a. We need to process the comments and decide if we accept the comments, without deciding on what impact any particular comment has on the ultimate recommended position. That will enable us to develop a basis on which to formulate our ultimate position. b. After processing of our comments, then we use those comments as the basis for our recommendation on the US position. 5. Sharing V1 comments with other NBs. The formulation of the recommended US position may or may not include comments. However, I would like to suggest that as we develop our position on particular comments, I would like to share those with other NBs. Given the size and complexity of the proposal, being aware of our comments may cause other NBs to develop comments on areas that we have not had time to consider. 6. Evaluation and adoption of comments I really don't know how many comments we are going to generate as V1 members nor how many comments will appear from members of the public. There are several ways we can process the comments. Although I distrust wikis, it might not be a bad idea to post the comments to a wiki where only V1 members could vote and we can both comment as well as indicate our vote of yes or no on each issue. From what I understand of Drupal, it has the ability to control who votes and to show the results of the votes. In the absence of the soon to appear topic map software that might be a better processing model than what I have suggested above. Noting that in any event I will have to use the INCITS comment template to prepare whatever comments are accepted by the committee to be included with the ballot results reflecting our ultimate position. I am not opposed to having weekly teleconferences, say on Fridays, to discuss a given set of comments. 7. Recommendation (yes, you were looking for this part) I suspect that as we near the end of the process we are going to need a face to face meeting to go over the final set of comments accepted by the committee and to develop our recommendation. Not knowing how many comments we will accept or the nature of those comments, it is hard for me to say how long such a meeting would last. I do think that we need to have teleconferencing facilities so any members who cannot physically attend can be present for the meeting. Noting that the ballot is due on 17 June 2007, might we consider having a face to face starting on the 14th or 15th of June? By that point we should have a set of comments that have been agreed upon by V1 and I assume that we will want to refine those and develop our final recommendation. Thoughts? Comments? Hope everyone is having a great day! Patrick -- Patrick Durusau Patrick@Durusau.net Chair, V1 - Text Processing: Office and Publishing Systems Interface Co-Editor, ISO 13250, Topic Maps -- Reference Model Member, Text Encoding Initiative Board of Directors, 2003-2005 Topic Maps: Human, not artificial, intelligence at work!