[cgmopen-members] product info assessment

[Lofton Henderson <lofton@rockynet.com>]

CGM Open members --

Attached is a piece aimed at progressing the CGM product info posting for 
the CGMO web site.  Bruce has pretty much gotten the information 
together.  The issue now is some reasonable handling of our Frankfurt idea, 
that any listed products ought to also include some objective assessment of 
their conformance to CGM/WebCGM.

The key word here is "reasonable".  If we're not careful, we could be 
setting up a project (unstaffed at that) of months or years duration.  I 
think we can achieve most of our goal much quicker.  In particular, I think 
that the needed pro-formas (assessment matrices) are probably not all that 
difficult -- after analyzing the product categories, I think there are 
about 4 basic components to make, and they should facilitate putting 
together all of the product pro-formas.

I'm also thinking of a 2-step progression on product info posting:

1.) allow initial posting, with pointers to blank pro-formas and advice to 
readers:  "ask the vendor to give you this information".

2.) after some reasonable period (e.g., 60 days?) require the information 
from the vendor, and link it from the product list.

Thoughts?  In particular, look at the section "Proposed Way Forward" and 
tell me what you think.

-Lofton.

Title: Website Vendor Info -- Issues

Website Vendor Info -- Issues

Draft: 10 August 2002
By: Lofton Henderson

Foreword

This is an initial step to try to get us (CGMO members) moving forward with the CGM product info project for our web site.

Introduction

At Frankfurt TC meeting, we made a decision about CGM products in for CGMO members. Here's what we said (according to minutes):

A table of vendor product information was complied by Bruce Garner. The committee concluded that we should include a matrix of supported functionality for each application. Each vendor would fill out a matrix of capabilities. Each category of product (viewer, editor, generator) would need different capabilities demonstrated in the matrix. To validate the information, the test suite needs to be broken down into groups that test each area. No actions were assigned, but each of these activities needs to be addressed.

Bruce has produced a refinement of the table, and basically we have the basic product information that we need. Except we have made no progress on the matrix of supported functionality -- what I'll call the Assessment Matrix.

If we wait until all of this is done -- all of the forms designed and all of the forms are filled out by vendors -- it will be many months. So let's look at the details and try to make an expedited solution, which still gets us where we want to be -- vendor member product information, but with some accountability.

Details

Summary of vendor-product list

Here are the product categories, along with the number of products in Bruce's table:

1. Analysis: 1 product from 1 vendor.
2. Content management: 1 product from 1 vendor.
3. Format conversion: 13 products from 5 [4*] vendors.
4. Generator library: 4 products from 2 vendors.
5. Graphics editor: 7 products from 5 [4*] vendors.
6. Interpreter library: 2 products from 1 vendor.
7. Parsing libraries: 1 product from 1 vendor.
8. Presentation graphics: 1 product from 1 [0*] vendor.
9. Printing software: 5 products from 2 vendors.
10. Services - consulting: 2 products from 2 [1*] vendors.
11. Services - customization: 1 product from 1 vendor.
12. Viewers: 7 products from 3 [2*] vendors. (See note 2.)
13. Viewer/redliner: 2 products from 2 [1*] vendors.

Note 1: The notation "5 [4*] vendors" means that only 4 of the 5 vendors currently qualify for posting, because of current CGMO membership status.

Note 2: I'm suspicious that some vendor(s) may be missing from this list.

Question. How does a parser differ from an interpreter library?

Question. What is "Presentation Graphics"? Is it functionally the same as "Graphics editor"?

Assessment matrix concept

(Reminder, the assessment matrix is for self-assessment by vendors.)

What is the purpose of the assessment matrix? It is sort of like an Implementation Conformance Statement pro-forma -- it says what has been implemented and what has not. For example, for viewers we could add an implementation column to the WebCGM PPF -- "yes", "no". Or we could make a table of each of the ~250 tests in the WebCGM test suite (TS).

We decided at Frankfurt that we don't want to be this detailed in our assessment matrices, but want to summarize at a higher level. For example, for a viewer assessment pro-forma, we could take the ~250 tests of the WebCGM TS, and lump them into 20 or so bigger categories, and put those in the assessment matrix with columns for "yes", "no", "comments". (Each category/table-row would link to a list of those TS tests that it subsumes.) Examples:

• Full support of line elements and line attributes (this one ought to be self-explanatory).
• "Full support of basic text attributes" might include all of the stuff like alignment, required font support, rotation. I would probably break out "Character sets" (e.g., UTF-8 and UTF-16) as a separate category.
• "Full support of WebCGM hyperlinks" might consolidate a dozen or more of the dynamic TS tests. "yes" means that you pass them all. "No" means some non-pass, and then "comments" could link to your (optional) explanation.
• Or, we could partition finer -- basic hyperlinks and full behaviors -- but we need to be careful not to create too many categories.

Is this concept clear and agreed?

Product categories needing assessment

Here are some thoughts on the product categories and their assessment matrix considerations:

1. Analysis: YES
   • probably similar to viewer (conditionally: if it has a visual interface via a displayed CGM)
   • Plus: is error checking supported? how complete? what profiles or variants?
2. Content management: NO
3. Format conversion: YES
   • will be difficult to design assessment -- much variety!
   • two flavors: to-CGM; from-CGM
   • To: similar to generator what elements output? what profiles? preserve high-level graphics primitives?
   • From: similar to viewer (complete CGM support?).
4. Generator library: YES
   • simple? "List anything that you can't generate:"
5. Graphics editor: YES
   • viewer assessment criteria
   • + generator assessment criteria
   • + round-tripping, "preservation of primitives"
     • this could be a copy of viewer matrix (20-25 categories summarizing WebCGM TS)
6. Interpreter library: YES
   • same as parsing libary pro-forma?
   • or is there a "functional equivalent" variant to the parser's "literal" philosophy?
7. Parsing libraries: YES
   • simple? "List anything that you can't parse and handoff to calling application"
   • or variant on viewer?
     • 20-25 questions/categories spanning 250 tests of WebCGM TS.
     • different question: "can you parse..." instead of "can you display..."
8. Presentation graphics: YES
   • is this the same as graphics editor?
9. Printing software: YES
   • same as viewer
   • except any dynamic functionality questions are "N/A"
10. Services - consulting: NO.
11. Services - customization: NO.
12. Viewers: YES
    • See proposed viewer pro-forma example
13. Viewer/redliner: YES
    • same as editor?

From this, it appears that:

• of the 13 product categories, 10 will need assessment pro-forma (matrix), 3 are "not applicable".
• it looks like the 10 can be built from a smaller number of building blocks -- some commonality

Pro-forma building blocks

Exploiting the commonality, it looks like we need to design and come up with a small number of distinct pieces, which we could then put together with some customizing "glue" for the different products. The simpler pieces (pro-formas) also are components in the more complicated ones.

1. Generator library pro-forma. Used by:
   • generator library
   • Editor pro-forma
2. Parser & Interpreter library pro-forma.
   • parser & interpreter library
   • Viewer pro-forma
3. Viewer pro-forma. Used by
   • viewer
   • printer
   • Editor pro-forma
   • analysis
4. Editor pro-forma. Used by
   • Graphics Editor
   • Presentation Graphics
   • Viewer/redliner

Proposed way forward

1. Endorse this concept and this approach, or develop and endorse an alternative. Agreed? Or, alternative?
2. Get volunteers to design and review the pro-forma components. (Bruce has volunteered. Others?)
3. Finish the 10 needed pro-formas ASAP.

Then, I would like to propose a pragmatic 2-step approach to expediting the posting of the product information:

• Step-1. Put the product info (for qualified members) onto the Web site as soon as #3 above is finished, with a pointer to a blank pro-forma, and suggestion to the reader that they ask the product vendor for the information, and discuss it.
• Step-2. Each vendor has some period of time (is 30 days too short? other?) to complete the pro-forma, and then the blank ones are replaced with the completed ones

References

1. Cleveland minutes DOM definition (available at http://www.cgmopen.org/meetings/cgmo_tech_cleveland_01.html)
2. Orlando minutes (availabe at http://www.cgmopen.org/meetings/cgmo_tech_orlando_02.html#review)
3. Frankfurt minutes (available at http://www.cgmopen.org/meetings/cgmo_tech_frankfurt_02.html)