RE: [huml-comment] RE: Human Markup Language 1.0 considered harmfulREvisited - Size of committee

[Rex Brooks <rexb@starbourne.com>]

At 2:54 PM -0800 11/29/02, Dennis E. Hamilton wrote:
>Hmm, I really meant self-selected, not self-appointed.
>
>My experience matches yours considering the 7-10 (if you're lucky) who do
>the work. I also have the sense that standards committees these days are
>having difficulty constituting themselves.  I don't know if this is your
>experience or not.
>
>When I said that, beside taking a cheap shot, I was concerned that one of
>two things can happen - it is a choir preaching to itself, something I have
>been party to way too many times, or that there is not a true consensus but
>a work product that allows 7 different agendas to be pursued under it.  It
>is something I watch out for.  I am more concerned for the latter, based on
>my reading and discussion so far.

We've done a pretty good job of transitioning from the initial larger 
and more amorphous and multi-directional group that came together on 
YahooGroups to the more disciplined and consensus-oriented group that 
moved the language-writing effort under OASIS in fall last year.

It took us a few months to sort out the order of our work, that is to 
decide to start with a primary base set of terms in XML Schema, and, 
hopefully, with an RDF parallel. We haven't gotten very far with that 
because our main member for that effort is a greek student/web 
developer whose OASIS membership has temporarily, (we hope) lapsed.

We had a straw-man schema from the Yahoo days, done by our invited 
expert mentor, Len Bullard, which we decided to use as the model from 
which to build this first spec.

We decided to set March 31 as the target date for completing the 
first working draft of our formal requirements document, and came in 
just under the wire for that.

Then we proceeded through an item-by-item discussion of every 
component of the strawman from April through September, adding the 
few new complexTypes and attributeGroups that this focused discussion 
prompted. Along the way we decided that one of the first, and most 
important, sample implementations should be a semiotic processor, 
which we are still working on. Semiotics/Semiosis is the guiding 
model for communication which we adopted, but we decided not to 
choose either of the major camps/models within that body of thought.

We set October 31 as our target date for completing and voting on the 
current spec, and got it out November 11-12.

I was largely resonsible for editing that document as I had led that 
effort. Our founder, Ranjeeth Kumar Thunga is slated to take over for 
the next effort, deriving the secondary base schema/spec which we 
expect will be a more ambitious and probably less focused effort as 
the subcommittees, VR-AI with Rob Nixon heading, Physical 
Characteristics Description with me heading, and Diplomatic 
Communications with Ranjeeth heading, will each focus on the 
derivations necessary for those application areas. Len Bullard, 
Sylvia Candelaria de Ram and others will continue working on the 
Semiotic Processor offline, as will I in my proposed real-time 3D 
animated human head expression/gesture-enhanced chat application. We 
also will  have samples from tokenized motion-capture studies related 
to the work of James Landrum at North Dakota State University on 
diabetes awareness project among native Americans using native dance 
as a vehicle--called "Native Dancer."

So, as you can see, from here we will be diversifying in several 
directions to derive the Secondary Base Schema/Specification while 
developing the three independent sample implementations required by 
OASIS for considering a spec for organization-wide approval as a 
standard.

And now you know why I ducked this issue yesterday evening.

We have also set up a Non-Profit 501(c)(3) Corporation to fill the 
need for a support organization since we lack corporate participation 
at present. It is called Humanmarkup.org, Inc and can be found at:

http://www.humanmarkup.org

It has yet to receive funding, but it has been conditionally approved 
by the IRS for the cited provision which allows grants and donations 
to be tax deductible. It needs a lot of work, and I hope to have more 
time for that soon, too. We hope that this venue can accommodate more 
participation among an audience that is not appropriate for OASIS 
standards work.

>But you know, if you could construct an use case about your preferred use of
>this, and others who have a definite application in mind did likewise, it
>might be powerful in determining whether HML is over-constrained or too
>abstracted to satisfy the main chartered goal.

I'm having trouble finding the text file for the newsprogram so I am 
directing you to some resources I could find.

The following two uses are developed in UML while I had a trial 
license for Rational Rose. This first one is later, after I learned 
more about how to use it. It follows a use-case based on Child 
Protective Services and how home visits and Court Reports could be 
enhanced by HumanML.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/humanmarkup/files/Conceptual/UML/HumanML.Behavioral.Model.UML/humanML-SS-CPS-UseCases.jpg

The use-case following was related to a proposed sublanguage: a Genre 
Language and shows a very basic use-case. The missing newsprogram 
use-case would have followed up on this as another use of the Genre 
Language in the context of standard local television news broadcast 
formatting. Genre was conceived as being related to the OZ Project at 
Carnegie Mellon University. This specific use-case involves 
translating culture-specific bodily gestures. Genre was hypothesized 
as being capable of being a pan-media production scripting language 
able to combine story, dialog and choreography.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/humanmarkup/files/Conceptual/UML/Fundamental.UML.in.HumanML/humanMLUseCaseDiagram.jpg

>I reread section 3, and I applaud you.  I also think the basic charge is
>difficult enough to measure the fulfillment of: enhance the fidelity of
>human communication.
>
>I would expect to see a clear statement of how one could determine that to
>have been done (especially with regard to the idea of fidelity) and some
>reflection on every element and description with regard to a simple
>question: "How does the presence and application of this element enhance the
>fidelity of human communication?"
>
>-- Dennis

We set our measurement for success on adoption, not on a set of value 
judgments about how well it is used. This choice, like starting with 
the small Primary Base Schema, is dicated by pragmatism. We have felt 
that it is better to set our sights on clearly achievable and 
measureable results rather than on value judgments which can be 
vague. The fairly standard RFC process seems to be about the best we 
can hope for in terms of having a public mechanism to aid us with 
feedback, such as yours.

However, as we get further along, it may well be that we can settle 
on a verifiable measurement of how well we accomplish the aim of 
improving communication. To be honest, for me, if we can get the 
issue in front of people in a way that gives them pause to consider 
that perhaps they need to pay more attention to whether their 
messages are actually being received as intended we will have 
accomplished much, and then we would need to keep the issue in front 
of people. Once folks, especially everyday lay folks, see that 
communication can't be taken for granted, and they start double 
checking to make sure they understand what is said to them and that 
what they say is understood, a great deal of change is likely to 
occur. (This is the part of taking nothing for granted for which we 
also must maintain vigilance.)

Ciao,
Rex

>-----Original Message-----
>From: Rex Brooks [mailto:rexb@starbourne.com]
>Sent: Wednesday, November 27, 2002 07:25
>To: Rex Brooks; rkthunga@humanmarkup.org; dennis.hamilton@acm.org;
>humanmarkup-comment@lists.oasis-open.org
>Cc: 'William Anderson'
>Subject: [huml-comment] RE: Human Markup Language 1.0 considered harmful
>REvisited
>
>
>Hi Again,
>
>Some short further thoughts.
>
>On the small group of self-appointed standards writers:
>
>[ ... ]
>
>I hope we hear from some other folks on this collection of withering
>criticisms.
>
>I have refrained from going into particulars of my own pet project
>for HumanML:  Multi-User, Interactive, Real-Time, 3D-Virtual-Reality
>Environments with standard VRML/X3D/H-Anim representations of humans
>(avatars) capable of standards-based emotions and gestures in
>addition to the other basic human behaviors of walking, running, etc.
>
>[ ... ]
>
>Have a Happy Thanksgiving, all,
>Rex
>--
>Rex Brooks
>Starbourne Communications Design
>1361-A Addison, Berkeley, CA 94702 *510-849-2309
>http://www.starbourne.com * rexb@starbourne.com
>
>
>
>
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-- 
Rex Brooks
Starbourne Communications Design
1361-A Addison, Berkeley, CA 94702 *510-849-2309
http://www.starbourne.com * rexb@starbourne.com