OIC TC 2009-11-18 Meeting Minutes

["Dennis E. Hamilton" <dennis.hamilton@acm.org>]

OIC TC 2009-11-18 COORDINATION CALL
[NOTE: These are belated minutes for 11-18, not the just completed 12-02 meeting.]

Date:  Wednesday, 18 November 2009
Time:  14:30 - 15:30 UT

1. LOGISTICS
   ---------

The chat room: http://webconf.soaphub.org/conf/room/oic (doesn't count as attendance)

The call-in numbers: http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/oic/200903/msg00017.html 
Meeting agendas also provide the pass codes and the call-in numbers:
<http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/oic/200911/msg00015.html>

The action items (log-in required):
  http://www.oasis-open.org/apps/org/workgroup/oic/members/action_items.php

1.1 ROLL CALL AND QUORUM CHECK
The quorum consisted of 10 of the 11 Voting Members (6/11 required).

    MEMBERS IN ATTENDANCE

    * Bart Hanssens, Fedict (Chair)
    * Donald Harbison, IBM
    * Mingfei Jia, IBM
    * Robert Weir, IBM
    * Andreas Guelzow, Individual
    * Dennis Hamilton, Individual (Secretary)
    * Andrew Rist, Oracle
    * Bernd Eilers, Sun Microsystems
    * Daniel Rentz, Sun Microsystems
    * Svante Schubert, Sun Microsystems

      [* = Voting Member at start of meeting (9)
       + = becoming Voting Member at conclusion of meeting (0)]

    MEMBERS ABSENT

      Charles Schulz, Ars Aperta
      Xiaohong Dong, Beijing Redflag Chinese 2000 Software
      Shuran Hua, Beijing Redflag Chinese 2000 Software
      Peter Junge, Beijing Redflag Chinese 2000 Software
      Alex Wang, Beijing Sursen International 
      Jeremy Allison, Google Inc.
      Peter Junge, Individual
      Thorsten Zachmann, Individual
      Doug Mahugh, Microsoft
      Eric Patterson, Microsoft
      Alan Clark, Novell
      Tom Rabon, Red Hat
      Mathias Bauer, Sun Microsystems
      Michael Brauer, Sun Microsystems
    * Louis Suarez-Potts, Sun Microsystems
      Jerry Smith, US Department of Defense

      [* = Voting Member at start and end of meeting (1)
       - = Voting Member becoming non-voting Member at end of meeting (0)]

1.2 ACCEPTANCE OF PREVIOUS MEETING MINUTES
<http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/oic/200911/msg00005.html>
The minutes of the 2009-10-21 meeting were approved without objection. (There was no 2009-11-04 meeting.)


1.3 ACCEPTANCE OF TODAY'S AGENDA.
<http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/oic/200911/msg00015.html>
Rob added reporting on ODF 1.2 work as ODF TC liaison (new item 2).
The agenda, with addition, was accepted without objection.



2. STATUS OF ACTION ITEMS

#0001 OpenDocument Fellowship/Intel Contact.  Rob Weir reported.  The Intel group apparently doesn't exist anymore, but a contact at Intel is checking.

#0015 Template Scenarios.  Dennis Hamilton reported.  This work is still backed-up behind #0032.

#0026-0027.  No report.  Patrick Strader is no longer on the OIC TC.  These items will need to be re-assigned.

#0032 Repair of Wiki Update Breakage.  Dennis Hamilton reported.  The repair work is not complete.  Dennis says he will complete it this week.

#0033 Best Practices for Document Authors.  Rob Weir reported.  This was presented at Orvieto.  There is little material on the wiki.  The next step is a short paper.   Rob's presentation took two angles: individual author and software producers.  Best practices involve what individual authors can do, and an additional set of best practices is what producers can do to help an author produce interoperable documents.  A link to the presentation is needed on the wiki, along with the idea of splitting for two audiences.  Rob welcomes additional ideas and review.

#0034 Interoperability Demos and Videos. No report.

#0035 Interop Fest at FOSDEM 2010.  Bart Hanssens reported.  Bart has requested a room for ODF developer work at the event, to be used for drill-down, hacking, and presenting.  We will know by the end of November whether we get a room.  This won't be a regular plugfest because FOSDEM is restricted to open-source products only.  The space could be for working with toolkits, libraries with APIs, and similar items that are open source.

3. STATUS OF ODF 1.2 WORK

Rob reports as ODF TC liaison.  ODF 1.2 Part 3 is now out in a Public Review Draft, as of Friday 2009-11-13.  The review is for 60 days.  Use the office-comment list if you are not on the ODF TC.  If you are on the ODF TC (as a non-observer), use the ODF TC List.

The next part for Public Review will likely be Part 1, ideally by the end of the year.  Part 2, Open Formula, should appear early in 2010.


4. STATE OF INTEROP REPORT

4.1 Ballot Results
   <http://www.oasis-open.org/apps/org/workgroup/oic/ballot.php?id=1789>
   The ballot approved CD02.  

4.2 CD02 Revision 1 and Next Steps

   There were Errors in the outline numbering and a CDO2 revision one is produced.  This can be approved as a CD.  Then we can approve for Public Review.

We will have a ballot to approve CD02 rev01 as CD03.

5. FEEDBACK FROM ODF PLUGFEST and OOoCON IN ORVIETO

Bart reports on the plugfest.  There were reports from vendors and presentations about mapping OOXML, DocBook, and also a demonstration of digital signatures.

Internet connection problems got in the way of testing.  There was good interaction an interest in working more closely together (e.g., toolkit and KOffice folks).

Don Harbison remarked that there was a nice program on ODF at OOoCon2009 also.  

Rob says there are a number of tools that operate on documents without presenting them.  The ODF Toolkit goal appears to be producing a reusable ODF editor component at a very low level, sort of like webkit.  That could become a widespread renderer that could be the basis for multiple editors.

There is a French consortium doing a Python library for ODF.  A Ruby version is also planned, according to Bart.   They have Python, Ruby, and C++ targets, in that order.

There is also now an AODL project for C#.

NEXT PLUGFEST: Brussels in July or June is considered a good choice.  If it is no later than the second half of June, there can also be some participation in a KDE Academy meeting in Finland the first week of July.  

This led to the possibility of looking at mobile devices in Finland and the KOffice work on mobile solutions.  Rob thought the KDE Academy would be a good occasion to look at a mobile profile for ODF, especially if RIM (Blackberry) is also involved.  There is a Blackberry ODF viewer project in Spain, and talk of Android, iPhone, OLPC, and other cases.  There may also be mobile profiles for SVG and SMIL that will arise in this context.

There is a question whether there might be space for a plugfest in the April timeframe also.


6. ODF 1.1 INTEROP PROFILE: NEXT STEPS
   <http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/document.php?document_id=34864&wg_abbrev=oic>

There have been suggestions from Bernd and Bart asks if there are other suggestions.

There was discussion that ODF 1.2 does not have a normative description.  Dennis pointed out that there was only a non-normative appendix on what was seen as "typical" feature support by different document type (spreadsheet, text, presentation).  This had no specification value and it is not a reflection of limitations in the schema.  (For example, the ODF 1.0 and IS 26300 schemas provide for tables in presentations.)

With regard to setting a floor profile, if we did a survey we might find a reaonable floor: Find out what the floor is today and define that formally as the floor, if it works.

There was discussion around what are the common useful features, what are useful, and what are necessary.

We talked about the practical difficulty of the granularity at which we characterize feature support.

Svante talked about how this came up at OOoCon2009 and said that the ODF Toolkit would come up with a DOM (Document Object Model) that works at a more common model view, using that API as a way to map sets of elements-attributes to features.  That might provide a way to set the feature granularity level.

Rob observed that the same feature may be supported differently in different document types.  Svante thinks there is a level of view of a document that is not necessarily XML-dependent.  If Svante gets to the December SC34 Working Group meetings, he will see how images work as a feature.  There was wondering about test documents that would calibrate (image supporting) features.

We then talked about having tools that could be used to analyze documents and provide summaries of feature occurrence in actual documents.

Svante is going to look at the ODF DOM and also look at what features of a package should be testable for interoperable ODF applications.  It was suggested to look at the ODF Part 3 cd01 that is in Public Review for identification of features and seeing how they could be tested for.


7. ROUNDTABLE - none

  
8. FUTURE MEETING PLANNING

   The next meeting is December 2, then December 16.  

   It is suggested that we might want to cancel the December 30 meeting.




Respectfully submitted,

 Dennis E. Hamilton