New-work survey results to date

[Lofton Henderson <lofton@rockynet.com>]

WebCGM TC --

As you might recall, we opened a LinkedIn group and started some wider
discussions about new-development requirements around WebCGM:
http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=4352885&trk=myg_ugrp_ovr

For reasons that we can discuss at our next TC telecon, it is now timely
and appropriate to give a summary of results to date on the new-work
survey.  

Two new-work items have emerged so far:

1.) integrated drawing elements:  things like arrowheads, callouts,
and haloed lines that behave as a unit and hang together under
transformations, etc.

2.) XML encoding of WebCGM/CGM

#1, if undertaken, will need some refined requirements to be enumerated
as a next step.

#2 was proposed some years ago by some graphics experts and CGM users in
the Navy.  The proposers actually sent a simple straw man of such an
encoding.  When fully sorted out, this will be posted in the
webcgm-tc documents section.  It was discussed at group a meeting in
Pittsburgh.  For various reasons including development resource
priority, it was not pursued further at that time. 

More fundamentally, there were questions about the goals to be achieved
by such an encoding, the answers to which are needed to define the
structure and characteristics of the encoding.  Some brain storming
of ideas included:

    1.) Facilitate hand-coding of metafiles
    2.) Xml tools
        * machine processible
profiles
        * validation in XML
        * access to other common
XML/DOM tools
    3.) content integration

There are numerous other issues, and this one (XML encoding) will require
a fair amount of sorting out if the TC undertakes it.

All for now,
-Lofton.