Fwd: eDocs requirements for the UBL Forms Presentation Subcommittee

["G. Ken Holman" <gkholman@CraneSoftwrights.com>]

Fellow members, an action item for me was to write to the eDocs group to 
invite their participation.  Below is the message that I sent last week.

.................. Ken

Date: Sun, 20 Apr 2003 22:23:33 -0400
To: Markus.Pikart@unece.org
From: "G. Ken Holman" <gkholman@CraneSoftwrights.com>
Subject: eDocs requirements for the UBL Forms Presentation Subcommittee

Good day, Markus, my name is Ken and I'm chairing the UBL Forms 
Presentation Subcommittee (FPSC) at OASIS.  I'm writing to you and the 
eDocs committee today on behalf of our subcommittee:

   http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/ubl/fpsc
   (our charter can be found under the document links until a problem
    is fixed that is preventing the "charter" link from working)

We are at the fledgling stages of this new subcommittee and we were hoping 
to have the input from you and your committee regarding your requirements 
for printing instances of UBL documents according to the UN Layout 
Key.  Before we progress very far we want to ensure that the work we do can 
be of use towards your objectives and contribute to the success of your 
project.

Our work grew out of some prototype stylesheet efforts to render instances 
of UBL XML document models in the 0p70 review release of UBL produced at 
the end of January 2003.  The prototype XSLT stylesheets rendered HTML 
instances for web browsers and XSL-FO instances for paper page rendering:

   http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/ubl/lcsc/0p70/fs

These efforts revealed the necessity not to create XSLT stylesheets, but to 
have formal formatting specifications governing the presentation of the 
information found in a UBL instance.  In the spirit of openness being 
fostered by the UBL project, it is only our objective to formalize the 
specification of what information in an instance of a UBL document is to be 
formatted and how it is to appear on a printed page, without consideration 
or bias towards any particular transformation or rendering technology.

Our UBL FPSC subcommittee is undertaking to develop these 
technology-agnostic specifications to meet the requirements of the UBL 
Library Content Subcommittee (LCSC) and their next release of the UBL 
document models.  We are confident the lessons learned form our prototype 
results will lead us to produce useful and accessible work products for 
implementers of formatting technologies to service both users and industry 
in the rendering of instances of UBL document models to the web and to paper.

As part of our prototyping we considered the UN layout key by including 
four of the UN numbered documents and three mockups of UN-like 
documents.  Jean McInerney is one of our members and she helped me with the 
mockups and prototypes.  To move to the next stage of UBL development we 
need to progress these prototype specifications into production-quality 
specifications of the mappings of UBL instances to the UN layout key.

Here are pointers to the sample work we did during our short prototyping 
stage, where you will find links to PDF files showing the results we 
created using XSLT and XSL-FO to meet the draft rudimentary formatting 
specifications for UN Layouts:

http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/ubl/lcsc/0p70/fs/UN220Order.html
http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/ubl/lcsc/0p70/fs/UN320OrderResponse.html
http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/ubl/lcsc/0p70/fs/UNX01OrderResponseSimple.html
http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/ubl/lcsc/0p70/fs/UNX02OrderCancellation.html
http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/ubl/lcsc/0p70/fs/UN351DespatchAdvice.html
http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/ubl/lcsc/0p70/fs/UNX03ReceiptAdvice.html
http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/ubl/lcsc/0p70/fs/UN380Invoice.html

To complete this effort, however, we need to ensure our subcommittee's work 
is consistent with and of use in the eDocs context, given your demonstrated 
expertise with the UN Layout key.  Having input from Jean and other members 
of your eDocs committee will leverage our efforts to help, together, 
towards any of your objectives regarding working with UBL instances.

As I said, our chartered group is fledgling and at the point of 
establishing our deliverables and timelines to contribute our next effort 
to the UBL release, building on our prototypes and publishing the formal 
technology-agnostic formatting specifications as quickly as possible to 
foster demonstrable implementations in time for the next release of 
UBL.  We are confident our focus on the UBL document models being developed 
by the LCSC and the independence of what we do from any particular 
formatting technology will ensure wide acceptance of the work products from 
our subcommittee.

We hope you and your group find that our work is worthy of your 
consideration and that other members of your group will decide to 
participate in FPSC along with Joan.  We would welcome your expertise and 
contribution to help us help you in your goals by working together.

Please let me know if you have any questions.

Thank you!

..................... Ken

--
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-                            Europe (XSL-FO):        May 16, 2003
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G. Ken Holman                mailto:gkholman@CraneSoftwrights.com
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