[humanmarkup] March TC Meeting Minutes

Here are the TC Minutes, which I will link to this post Sunday, March 24, 2002 with the first formal Working Draft of HM.Requirements and some other updates to the TC website.

March 20, 2002

Teleconference meeting of the OASIS HumanMarkup Technical Committee.

USA Toll Free Number: 888-989-7535
USA Toll Number: +1-712-271-3822

Roll Call:
Voting Members:

Ranjeeth Kumar Thunga
Rex Brooks
Rob Nixon
Manos Batsis by Proxy

Non-members:
Len Bullard
Sylvia Candlearia de Ram

Minutes taken by TC Secretary Rex Brooks

Meeting convened12:10 p.m. Eastern Time

This meeting was a bit longer than usual.

This meeting was devoted almost entirely to discussion of our first formal Working Draft of the key document, HM.Requirements.

In a recorded conversation earlier in the day, Manos Batsis suggested that we use an IETF reference document for standard definitions of the operational terms MUST, MUST NOT, SHOULD, SHOULD NOT, etc. That reference url is:

http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2119.txt

It was decided to do this in the Working Draft and send a copy of the document to OASIS along with a request for a policy statement regarding this practice, a request for advice on whether this TC ought to include any mention IPR policy and several other questions which came up in the meeting and which will be noted in the course of these minutes.

A second suggestion preceded our item by item review of the latest discussion of the Requirements captured in the Straw Man Draft posted on the TC and public mailing list by Rex Brooks following our March 15 deadline for submissions. This suggestion was presented to the list by Dr. Sylvia Candelaria de Ram. Her message said the Primary Base Human Markup Language Schema should include Elements and Attributes to enable Cultural Schemata as a consistent principle "...in aid of fomenting accurate communication, for which CULTURAL characterizations will be included, at an abstract level in Primary and more concretely in Secondary Schemas. "

When requested for a distilled statement on this, Len Bullard suggested phrasing such as "(HumanML) shall include structures to describe cultural modules."

This was agreed. (Please note that the specific wording which needs to be consistent throughout the Requirements Document will be crafted to that purpose and, with the Document as a whole, requires full TC approval.)

We then moved on to an item-by-item review of the Requirements as currently collected in the Straw Man Draft.

(Note: Although it was not mentioned, the Secretary is making the assumption explicit here that all references temporizing the current status of the document as non-normative will be eliminated in the Working Draft. Also, if not specifically mentioned, section contents were not discussed and so will not be changed.)

The ABSTRACT section was note discussed.

The DOCUMENT STATUS section will, be default, become normative.

In the TERMINOLOGY section:

We discussed the differences between "Human" with an initial Capital 'H' and "human" with an inital lower case "h." (For the sake of consistency in use in HM.Requirements, the 'Human' version will be HUMAN, and the 'human' version will be "human" in the document.)

It is suggested that readers refer to the actual document for the current definitions, since a review of the the complete discussion would make these minutes somewhat excessive.

It was decided that the terms DEVELOPER, USER and AGENT would be added to the list of HM.Requirements-specific terms in HM.Requirements.

In the CLASSIFICATION section:

It was decided not to mention data layers or related concepts covered in the specifications on which HumanML is based.

In the EXISTING STANDARDS section:

It was decided to explictly state which languages and/or schemata upon which HumanML will be be based and/or with which HumanML will be compliant. These are XML and XML Schema for the former and RDF and RDF Schema for the latter.

It was decided not to state criteria for which languages and/or schemata HumanML will be compliant.

In the REQUIREMENTS section:

It was decided to ask OASIS if this TC needs or is allowed to make explicit statements about policy with regard to 'openness,' 'public v. publicly available,' etc. It was decided to include these questions in the letter accompanying the HM.Requirements Working Draft submitted to OASIS, while deleting mention of this in the Working Draft of HM.Requirements.

In the COMPATIBILITY section:

It was decided that the basic provision that HumanML conform to XML Syntax and Rules remains unchanged.

It was decided to include the minimum explanation for this Requirement, consisting of the statement that XML provides standard syntax [enabling (practical) universal acceptance and useability?--Secretary's addition.]

In the EXTENSIBILITY section:

It was decided that the Primary Base Human Markup Language Schema will have a specific mechanism described in HM.Requirements for adding Elements and Attributes after the initial schema is produced and approved. This provision was decided on the basis that all HumanML work MUST be extensible.

It was decided that Secondary Human Markup Language Schemata MUST be extensible. It was decided not to add further conditions to this statement.

It was decided to delete the INTERNATIONALIZATION section.

It was decided to delete the MULTIPLE IMPLEMENTATIONS section.

(Note: A great deal of discussion is not mentioned in these minutes because the discussion can be summarized in most cases by saying that we decided to make our requirements as minimal as we can in order to allow usage to determine what needs to be added or deleted and what, if any additional stipulations need to be made. To a lesser extent, much discussion boiled down to deciding against including language that would inevitably lead to differing interpretations, the debate, discussion and disputation of which is inadvisable except where unavoidable at this stage of our work.)

The meeting was then adjourned, with the next meeting scheduled for April 17, 2002 at 12:00 Noon EST.

Following is the transcript of the chat between Manos Batsis and Rex Brooks:
rexbroo: Good Morning Manos--at least morning my time.
xcircuit: Hey Rex, goodmorning
xcircuit: it's afternoon here
rexbroo: How are you doing?
xcircuit: fine, fine, u?
rexbroo: ok, no news is good news, as they say.
rexbroo: How are things going in the rdf world?
xcircuit: yup i know what u mean...lol
xcircuit: i
xcircuit: m studying the requierments published by the W3C webont WG
rexbroo: Ahhhh, I remember Ontologies. Wrote about 169 pages' worth a while back. Exhausting Subject.
xcircuit: members of other WGs have shared the fact that there's just too much croud in webont
xcircuit: they are expected to provide a common ontology for web use
rexbroo: I came to the conclusion that the best publicly published one I could find was the DARPA DAML set.
rexbroo: But Requirements is the maic word today, for me for the next month.
xcircuit: thats their base; RDF(S) + DAML +OIL
xcircuit: BTW
xcircuit: i've been watching the req doc development
rexbroo: Makes sense to me, but then I always agree with people who agree with me
xcircuit: IMHO, we should derecate the section where we define keywords as
rexbroo: I was glad to see Sylvia pointing out the necessity for including cultural requirements.
xcircuit: must may should bla etc
xcircuit: with a plain reference to RFC 2119
xcircuit: ie http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2119.txt
xcircuit: it a common practice these days
rexbroo: Cool.
rexbroo: I will pass it along if you can't chime in on the meeting today.
xcircuit: what time is the meeting?
xcircuit: i'll be around but for 1.5 hour
rexbroo: 12 pm EST or 8 pm, I believe your time. Or is it 9 pm?
xcircuit: nope.
rexbroo: That's what I thought, so I will include this conversation as part of the minutes, if that is all right with you?
xcircuit: of course
xcircuit: also
xcircuit: about that "schema independent" thingy in the req
xcircuit: i meant shema language independent
rexbroo: Cool. You have alread simplified the Requirements greatly. I was not aware of the reference. It will make standardization consistent.

xcircuit: meaning you can do more or less the same with RELAX NG and XML Schema for example
rexbroo: Wow, that makes all the difference. I didn't understand that.
rexbroo: That, I have no objection against. I was getting freaked by vague references to "abstract data layers."
xcircuit: let me go through the text one time i might be able to spot anything where i can help
xcircuit: yeah terminology is a dangerous thing these days
rexbroo: I would appreciate it. Having two TCs doing this exercise at once is very instructive, but wearing me down.
xcircuit: there are two req documents?
rexbroo: It is pushing me toward writing an article on the process, which is very important but critically different between HumanMarkup which is huge in scope and WSIA which is narrowed down to web services for interactive applications.
rexbroo: Two TCs, Web Services for Interactive Applications, which I joined when it started in January and HumanMarkup, which you know about.
rexbroo: In WSIA, I am just another member, not an officer.
xcircuit: WSIA and HumanMarkup = information exchange and information model
xcircuit: two different parts of the same pazzle that is
rexbroo: I joined to be liaison so I could make sure our spec works in that environment and to gather requirements from those folks--all big application vendors, multinationals, France Telecom, IBM, H-P, Fujitsu etcs,
rexbroo: Yep.
rexbroo: It also gives me a builti-in audience for promoting HumanML for actual use.
xcircuit: yeah i know. is there any collaboration with the w3c WS WG?
rexbroo: Not yet. It hasn't been suggested and I won't until after the Requirements Doc. is finished at the next f2f mtgs in mid April.
xcircuit: i doupt it will ever will sugested.
xcircuit: sheesh.
rexbroo: I'm gonna write this article, in which I will suggest not just that, but a group composed of members from ISO, W3C, Web 3D and a few other Consortia, like HR-XML, to be liaison between these overlapping standards.
rexbroo: Might as well get as much mileage out of this Requirements stuff while I am at it.
xcircuit: you may be interested in NIST, latelly they appear to be very active on XML related specs and test suites.
rexbroo: Yeah, I'm particularly well-connected at NIST. In fact, they are the ones who provide for our conference calls. I plan to ask them to expand it for including the whole planet, not just US for the toll-free aspect.
xcircuit: that would be cool. of course, it's time for us to deliver as well...
rexbroo: Well, we are slowly getting there.
xcircuit: Rex you know my interests in the HumanMarkup domain are totally different than the current work; that's the reason i dont participate much
rexbroo: A collaborative workspace would help a lot. That is still on my agenda.
rexbroo: Yeah, I know. I'm hopoing that as we move on to writing Schemata, you'll find an avenue to do the work you want done.
rexbroo: hoping
rexbroo: The RDF Schema is always on my mind.
xcircuit: yeah RDFS is tottaly different... it's like OO modeling
rexbroo: But there's only one of me, and I can only do so much and with just you and me for this and me and Sudhakar for the Physical Description stuff, I get stretched.
xcircuit: participation is low... perhaps we need to push our interests outwards through synergy
rexbroo: For the moment my timeline is to get Requirements out of the way in the next couple of weeks, get started on the forma XML Schema, and then move my focus to RDF.
xcircuit: you for example seem to be doing just fine on this
rexbroo: I'm going to find someone else to do the basic Physical description stuff.
rexbroo: If you can find the right mix in amongst the Topic Maps mix, that would help, but that is such a large arena, narrowing down the focus and finding the right people can't be easy.
xcircuit: if you mean the schema work, i can help; it should be a piece of cake (although i hate the subject lol)
rexbroo: That would help. But to be honest you are more valuable doing what you do best--the rdfs.
xcircuit: at the moment i dont do anything at all...
rexbroo: And double checking the stuff that is done for the basic schema, of course.

rexbroo: I thought you were exploring the topic maps arena, but since OASIS is taking its time to set up the Member's Section for that whole conglomeration, it doesn't make sense to push much. However, I monitor their mailing list and they are moving, too, though slowly like all of us.
xcircuit: although a much appealing technology, i wonder what the real target group behind it is.
xcircuit: around here for example, if I talk for XTM they wouldn't know what i'm talking about, nor dream about adopting the format for an app.
rexbroo: They have a checkered history, if you are aware of it, so there are some very well-developed interests, a lot of academics from the librarianship crowd, and knowledge/information base folks for god measure.
rexbroo: good measure sheesh!
xcircuit: plain TM yes... but using XML as a text representation is another story
rexbroo: They have a lot of built-in and historical conflicts, but they seem to have buried their hatchets for the most part.
rexbroo: Topic Maps and Ontologies are what will make the Semantic Web a reality, if it ever gets that far.
xcircuit: if.. lol
rexbroo: And we need to be connected from the start.
xcircuit: even if SW actually becomes mainstream tech in the next 2 years, most wont know what to do with it
xcircuit: or should i replace 2 with 10
rexbroo: I believe they will get it together, but to be honest I think they should unbury their hatchets and have an old fashioned barroom fight, get it over and done with and then take it from there.
xcircuit: yup. especially IBM, SUN and Microsoft...
rexbroo: Amn.
rexbroo: Amen.
rexbroo: With Oracle, too.
rexbroo: Sun is a real disappointment for me
xcircuit: as far as consortia goes, the oposites r w3c <> OASIS which actually is sun <> IBM
xcircuit: or thats what they tell me
xcircuit: microsoft doesn't care anyway
xcircuit: lol
rexbroo: IBM seems to have its head on straight, even if I don't agree with all of their decisions, but Sun and Microsoft just haven't finished bloodying each yet.
xcircuit: they both sit in fron of a TOBE major market
xcircuit: *front
rexbroo: Microsoft is sitting on the edge of a cliff and they just barely perceive it.
xcircuit: indeed.
xcircuit: it will probably end up as in the past with the baby bells
rexbroo: Their income model is totally broken, and their stupid insistence on trying to be a mnopoly on all computing is just too stupid. Everyone has wised up now and simply won't buy into it. But still they try to go and OWN Web Services like we are all so dumb we don't know what they are trying to do. Go figure.
xcircuit: can you believe they thought we where going to use passport?
rexbroo: Unfortunately one of those Baby Bells, SBC, is gbrowing up into another octopus setting out to strangle the telephony market and then spread out into wireless.
xcircuit: so? NTT Docomo will ensure there wont be a monopoly as far as the global status goes
rexbroo: Oh yeah, here you go Mincrosoft, sign me right up. And here's my first born.
rexbroo: Yeah, thanks be.
xcircuit: lets change the subject, it's ridiculus and irritating
xcircuit: i dont believe our civilisation made it into such lock in
rexbroo: SBC bought Pacific Bell, my local Baby Bell, and has driven it into the ground. I really hate em.
rexbroo: Yeah, I've been thinking about that a lot lately. I expect it was a momentary aberration. At least I'm hoping.
rexbroo: A lot of timing.
xcircuit: after almost 23 years of life, i have realised that the best thing i can do is end up with a house in the country where i'll be able to grow chickens and fish in the nearby river (if not poluted)
rexbroo: I think, hope, that in a few years we will all look back at this little era and realize that it was all just a shakeout as th human race discovered it didn't actually have to assume a world economy based on scarcity after all.
xcircuit: thats the best quality of life one can achieve today
xcircuit: sorry Rex, i doupt it. we're too absorbed in every day stuff and terms like cost, profit bla
xcircuit: hence, no real evolution
rexbroo: blah blah blah, yeah, I know.
rexbroo: But, I have to hope, otherwise I'd get more depressed, and then I'd forget to go hiking and notice what a beautiful world it can be.

xcircuit: yup it can
rexbroo: I happen to like chicken and eggs and fish, and olives, so maybe getting out into the country or somewhere more rural is the best I can hope for.
rexbroo: I've heard Greece is nice like that.
xcircuit: yup
rexbroo: I have a friend, who believe it or not, and I'd rather not, wants to retrace Alexander's journeys on foot and horseback in the Olympic year, and I've said I might help out, but I damn sure ain't going to Afghanistan with him.
rexbroo: But I might try to visit you.
xcircuit: hhahhahahahahahahaahahahahaha
xcircuit: on foot... wow
rexbroo: He's nuts, but my kind of nuts.
xcircuit: some people are so much different than others
rexbroo: He wants to write a book about it, and film it, and check on some theories about logistics in the Hellenic era.
rexbroo: Me, I want to see the Acropolis.
xcircuit: you'll like it
rexbroo: And Thermopylae.
xcircuit: never been there
rexbroo: THE turning point of history? Tsk Tsk.
xcircuit: lol... BUT, i grew in sparta, city of Leonidas and the rest of the 300 heroes
rexbroo: I grew up in the edges of an oil field in southern california, but spent a lot of time at the beaches when they were incredibly beautiful. Weird cross images, eh?
xcircuit: yeah i know what you mean. Although i appreciate a picture in it's beauty, i wonder how much our senses have trapped us in our perseption of the world.
xcircuit: dont mind my spelling.. i dont
rexbroo: Doesn't bother me. I have to go now. Work calls, and prep for the meeting. Talk to you soon.
xcircuit: see you around Rex.
rexbroo: Take Care.
xcircuit: u too.

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