[humanmarkup] TC Meeting Minutes from Dec 19, 2001

December 19, 2001
Teleconference meeting of the OASIS HumanMarkup Technical Committee,
supplemented by a simultaneous Yahoo Instant Messaging Conference to include Henrik Brameus from The Netherlands and Emmanuil Batsis from Greece without requiring them to incur long duration, long-distance telephone charges.

The transcript of that session will be added to these minutes at the end of the summary based on the hand-written notes of the Secretary taken during the combined teleconference and IM session. The chair served as the interlocutor between the two simultaneous sessions passing information back and forth.

USA Toll-Free Call-In Number: 888-316-9411
USA Toll Call-In Number +1-773-756-4786

Roll Call:
Voting Members:

Emmanuil M. Batsis
Henrik Brameus
Rex Brooks
Kurt Cagle
Sudhakar Gorti
Rob Nixon
Joseph Norris
Ranjeeth Kumar Thunga

Minutes taken by TC Secretary Rex Brooks

Meeting convened12:10 p.m. Eastern Time

We reviewed the circumstances of our November activities.

Due to the fact that About.com has failed to return our request for information following up on our request to use their facilities to conduct a loggable, publicly accessible meeting by using their chat service, and factors of timing and individual schedules, we decided first to postpone our November TC meeting, and then to cancel it.

With no other reports pending, we took up our outstanding Old Business according to our posted agenda. I will designate action items with a bullet.

€ Without dissent we established The Human Physical Characteristics Description Markup Language Subcommittee, with Sudhakar Gorti as the chair. The statement of purpose, scope and some examples follows:

Purpose: Develop, design and provide specifications for Human Physical Characteristics Description Markup Language. Much as the Markup Languages has standardized the way in which information is presented on the Internet HPCDML will be designed to standardize description of physical characteristics of humans. HPCDML is a subset of HumanML and through markup language concepts provides a communication medium for end users and software community to exchange information. The primary objective is to provide a common medium specification for software to communicate physical characteristics. The goal here is enhance, unify, and provide a uniform common language for exchange of physical characteristics of humans, both visible and invisible, which help us identify them uniquely. HPCDML will specifically be designed to be interoperable with and as nearly as possible identical to existing, recognized standards for the description, identification and empirical documentation of the human body.

Scope: HPCDML shares the uniquely identified goals of HumanML and as a sub set of HumanML, these goals are almost identical with exception of the fact that HPCDML has as its primary focus the Physical Human Characteristics both visible and invisible, most especially those often missed or overlooked by the existing, recognized systems for the description of human physical characteristics adopted by the medical, public safety and law enforcement domains. The scope of HPCDML will include markup definitions for the ontology and taxonomy of human physical characteristics, specifications, and possibly the standardization of Application Programming Interfaces to implement them.

Examples: Some examples of HPCDML are color of hair and eyes, types of eyes, nature of forehead (low, narrow, high, broad), eyebrows (thin, thick, connected, broken, etc.), Cheekbones, mouth, facial form, chin etc. Each physically visible feature has types associated with each and each type has specific characteristics.

Ranjeeth asked Sudhakar if he had had the opportunity to contact the individual's Ranjeeth had met at the Universal Access Workshop at the NSF in October. Sudhakar said he had not yet, but would do so soon. This will renew our contact with scientists working on Biometrics at NIST.

Rex had sent some material to Sudhakar including the relevant material on Human Measurement standards with which HumanMarkup needs to be interoperable such as CAESAR (Civilian American and European Surface Anthropometry Resource), http://www.hec.afrl.af.mil/cardlab/caesar/, and the current prospective Humanoid Animation Specification http://H-Anim.org/. These two related notes are mentioned now as an indication that work is already underway in this Subcommittee.

€ In this context, Emmanuil "Manos" Batsis, made the comment that we ought to consider it a requirement for any Subcommittee to have at least three committed members before we establish it formally. This suggestion was accepted by all present without discussion or dissension, but it will be added to the items for a formal vote at the end of these minutes.

This particular question preceded debate and discussion for a the motion to require a formal vote conducted on the private TC Committee mailing list. Because we recognize the need to make it possible for full participation for all members, but especially for those who live outside the United States of America and do not enjoy the privilege of free long-distance teleconferencing. There was some discussion, but no dissent, so this question will also be up for a formal decision at the end of these minutes.

€ The motion to adopt the practice of requiring a formal vote on all issues to be conducted through the private OASIS HumanMarkup TC mailing list was passed without dissent.

We next considered the motion to establish a milestone date for the subcommittees and TC members as well as any interested parties from the public comments list to collect and submit lists of element names and definitions, as well as values for datatypes, and attribute names and definitions, as well as values for datatypes, from the applications areas and related XML standards and specifications we have designated as being of particular relevance or importance for the Human Markup Language. This task is preliminary step before we undertake to establish a primary basic XML Schema for the Human Markup Language. This measured approach is deemed advisable in order to ensure that the Human Markup Language will be interoperable with both its related specifications and the recognized and established conventions and practices of the applications areas we aim to serve.

€ With some debate, it was tentatively decided to place the milestone date at March 15, 2002. This is also subject to the ratification of our formal vote.

€ The question was raised on the issue of creating a Subcommittee to conduct the work of creating the RDF Schema for the Human Markup Language. We had previously designated Manos Batsis as the head of this effort, and now it is deemed, again, without dissension that the issue needs to be investigated. However, what we decided was to put this question on the agenda for the next TC Meeting with the intent to establish the Subcommittee at that time, allowing Manos the time to work out a purpose, scope and examples statement detailing this effort more fully.

It was, however, determined that there were at least three volunteers prepared to commit their time and effort to this task.

It was noted also that the task of keeping abreast of the work being done in the Topic Maps Published Subject TC is more closely related to RDF than other areas of interest and it is hoped that someone with a keen interest in this area will step forward to take on this role.

In a related note, it should be mentioned that we have deferred the issue of forming a separate Subcommittee for conducting the main task of our committee, namely creating a basic XML Schema and setting the requirements necessary for successive, more specific, extension schemata in the modular approach we have adopted. Len Bullard is the Invited Expert whom we have asked to head this overall effort, and it appears that he is or was on vacation at the time of the TC Meeting, so we could not coordinate a decision about proceeding with this task at this time.

We discussed the end-user survey as a tool to gather requirements and asked Joe to update it with that in mind. Joe also indicated that work in his Subcommittee on HumanML_Write and HumanML_Report was proceeding. Rex said that he was willing to help in what ways he can.

There were a number of interesting discussions which did not resolve into motions, so need not be mentioned, except to say that it is always encouraging to take the opportunity to share information and ideas about how we can proceed with our work.

Rex asked for any requests and/or help in preparing a presentation in paper and on the web for the upcoming initial meeting of the OASIS Web Services Component Model TC which he will be attending Jan. 7-9, 2002 in Hawthorne, NY to represent the interrelationships between Human Markup and Web Services Component Model work respectively.

Ranjeeth specifically asked that the question of how some acknowledgement method might be developed so that parties engaged in the attempt to communicate can check to see if indeed messages are received in the way they are intended.

We discussed some of the ramifications of Rob Nixon's access to the information being developed by the company he is employed with in their use of a Full-Body-Suit Motion-Capture system. Tokenizing speech and gestures offer some intriguing opportunities which the AI-VR Subcommittee will explore.

X-From_: humanmarkup-errors@lists.oasis-open.org Wed Dec 19 13:45:10 2001
Date: Wed, 19 Dec 2001 16:49:25 -0500
From: Ranjeeth Kumar Thunga <rkthunga@humanmarkup.org>
Subject: [humanmarkup] Meeting transcript -- chat
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A thanks to everyone for attending the meeting, and helping us wrap up 2001.

Here's a foreward of the Yahoo Conference chat, in which our international
members (Henrik and Manos) participated in the teleconference, proxy myself.

Loggable meetings is a big benefit of chat, which is why I propose future
sessions primarily on chat, and teleconference by proxy instead, if others
feel comfortable with this (the smiley's however, didn't appear in this text
based transcript...too bad :().

There were a couple of questions Manos had about the relation of markup in
relation to your work Rob, which I didn't get to bring up -- feel free to
address them via the Discussion List.

--------
Ranjeeth Kumar Thunga

-------------------------------------------------------------------
Yahoo! Messenger: You are now logged into voice conference - rexbroo-9311.
rexbroo: hi rkt
rkthunga: hey rex...could you send me the agenda to my yahoo account (i
don't
have it available)
rkthunga: manos is here...xcircuit
Yahoo! Messenger: xcircuit has joined the conference.
xcircuit: hi folks
rkthunga: hey manos!
xcircuit:
xcircuit: how is everyone?
rexbroo: Hi guys, It is going to be tough for me since I don't have
handsfree
equipment yet. but I will do my best.
rkthunga: doing pretty good...how are you manos?
xcircuit: fine fine...
xcircuit: who else is on?
rkthunga: good we could finally figure out a way for you to meet
rexbroo: just me and ranjeeth
rexbroo: The stateside phone number is 1-888-316-9411
rexbroo: passcode 51383
rexbroo: that was for ranjeeth.
rkthunga: i got that...thanks
rkthunga: ok manos...i will be passing what's happening on teleconference to
you
xcircuit: ok, thnx
rkthunga: agree with HPCML subcommittee?
rkthunga: sudhakar is still interested in creating this
xcircuit: i agree but i would like to see more emphasis in good organization
of efforts

xcircuit: 3 persons needed for committee IMHO as stated before
xcircuit: clear roles would be great too
rkthunga: i mentioned this, and rob, sudhakar, and rex are interested
xcircuit: excellent
rkthunga: sudhakar will be following up by January 15th
rkthunga: regarding interoperability comments...if you have feedback, please
post them as well
xcircuit: are we going to have a mission statement/roles/blabla on the list
or is this a final vote?
xcircuit: meaning, as a place for conversation and further reformation or
whatever
rkthunga: yeah, that has been established and posted i believe on the board
rkthunga: henrik is on as well
xcircuit: ok, the more the better
rkthunga: manos, the topic is now rdf subcommittee...do you have comments
about this?
xcircuit: rex needs some load off...
xcircuit: yes, it is very hard to find suportive members...
xcircuit: seems noone on the list is interested on the approach?
rkthunga: henrik is interested (he is having trouble joining the conference
here however)
rkthunga: we had some technical difficultites...
xcircuit: ok
rkthunga: kurt may be interested, and rex if you needed someone
rkthunga: but you have someone in mind, that would be great...rex knows
david
dodds, who actually used some of humanml in his orlando presentation
rkthunga: from xmlobjects
xcircuit: i'd love to have kurt along and rex is very good and connected by
now
rkthunga: did you know someone else that would be interested in
participating
in RDF
rkthunga: outside the TC?
Yahoo! Messenger: rexbroo has left the conference.
xcircuit: i can confirm interest from members of alicebot committees
xcircuit: they have background in application design and logic patterns
Yahoo! Messenger: hbrameus has joined the conference.
xcircuit: plus huge experience with natural language query/responce
xcircuit: hi henrik
hbrameus: Hello there. Finally on!
xcircuit: did i spelled that right?
hbrameus: Yes, that's perfect
xcircuit: ok
rkthunga: henrik, are you formally participating in the RDF subcommittee
with
Manos
xcircuit: i was wondering if you r interested in participating on the RDF
committee, once you review some related documents
xcircuit: i would like to keep things slow with this committee, so
everything
can be solid
xcircuit: no rush, ideas, research, pseudo implementation and analysis
hbrameus: Yes, I'm interested. I will hopefully have some more time now that
the holiday
xcircuit: excellent
rkthunga: manos: would you have a brief mission statement we can post?
xcircuit: i would like to ask of interested members to each prepare a
document with points that they think we should aim for...
xcircuit: i would like to form the mission statement after that proccess
xcircuit: in general, i want everything to go through discussion, i will be
responcible for organizing posts into semi-docs
rkthunga: kurt, henrik + whoever else from alicebot would be the initial
members
xcircuit: great
rkthunga: if we can publish a formal mission statement with the 3, 4 of you,
we can officially start the subcommittee
xcircuit: ok, but let us take some time on that...
hbrameus: Will we do that on the closed email list, or do we have a separate
forum for those discussions?
xcircuit: we can use a yahoo list?
hbrameus: That's fine.
xcircuit: Ranjeeth?
rkthunga: it would all have to be part of the OASIS list, but it could spin
it off into a separate OASIS list
rkthunga: after it is established
xcircuit: we need a focused space
xcircuit: i wouldnt subscribe to a list where 2 out of 10 posts are of
interest to me
rkthunga: manos and henrik: we are discussing when the requirements would be
ready for all the subcommittee---we are discussing a milestone of 3/15/01
rkthunga: 3/15/02
rkthunga: do you guys agree?
xcircuit: fully.
hbrameus: Yes
rkthunga: ok, that's official.
xcircuit: about the list now...
xcircuit: we have tried again to mix different interests in one list and
failed.
rkthunga: i mentioned the 'spin-off' idea to the others...there are some
other views
hbrameus: I think that once we have established the sub commitee we should
have our own list. Until then we sould probably do discussions on Yahoo! or

something, and keep it open for others to read.
xcircuit: i agree with henrik
rkthunga: oasis is pretty clear that wouldn't work
xcircuit: then let them give us some space
hbrameus: So could you set up a separate email list for a sub comittee
straight away then?
rkthunga: kurt mentioned we should hold off, since there is not enough
traffic on this list
xcircuit: i insist that mixing totally different work in one list is a very
bad idea
xcircuit: that has caused lots of nothing during earlier months
xcircuit: cant oasis give us a list?
xcircuit: we're not asking for a deticated server or something...
rkthunga: oasis will be able to host it, most likely...i think there isn't
an
issue with that...if there is enough interest, we could establish the
subcommittee in principle as soon as there is a purpose statement.
rkthunga: then, we could ask OASIS to host a separate discussion list.

xcircuit: excellent, thanks
rkthunga: kurt proposed a 'schema' subcommittee, as opposed to a rdf and xml
subcommittee...i don't agree, rex doesn't agree
xcircuit: i dont agree
xcircuit: shemata should be produced from the committees of each methodology
rkthunga: because len wouldn't want to think about rdf (len isn't here, but
we are assuming this)
rkthunga: rex: they should...different requirements for each
rkthunga: they should be separate
hbrameus: And we don't want the different discussions to confuse each other
xcircuit: agreed
rkthunga: ok, end of discussion...different subcommittees
xcircuit: i may end up mixing schemata but that's another story
xcircuit: types types...
rkthunga: i propose 60% independent work at least, and 3 people, is a good
rule of thumb
rkthunga: for any subcommittee to be a good idea
xcircuit: we need more than that in the long runIMHO
xcircuit: instead of just forming a tc, or rather, having the 'tc viewpoint'
we should analyse our own aims and requierments first
rkthunga: rex: can we assume that we agree (if we disagree, we simply let
each other know), or do we want to vote individually on each issue
xcircuit: i for example cannot just go and make an rdf subcommittee, thats
why i want the discussion
xcircuit: all i want to say is, we shouldn't build committees for the
committees but for actual needs
xcircuit: individually on each issue please
rkthunga: basically, the final vote is on the TC list (not during the
meetings)...so everything is in writing
rkthunga: that is very true manos...each subcommittee will have individual
requirements
xcircuit: great, that simplifies things and everyone can document his
decisions as well
rkthunga: (general comments: oasis is changing their policy, and is more
lenient to international policy, so that is why they are letting us try
these
chats)
hbrameus: OK, so if we do the voting on the list we don't really need this
meeting, or alternatively we could have the agenda listing all the decisions
made, and then just have it as a FYI. That way we could shorten the meeting
to less than 30 minutes
xcircuit: yup
xcircuit: Henrik, can i expect input from you on the following two weeks?
hbrameus: Yes
rkthunga: Henrik and Manos: would you want to include XTM in your RDF
subcomittee work...something to think about
xcircuit: or, we could start with building an agenda for discussion
xcircuit: do you think this is better? and take it to the list from there?
xcircuit: XTM can certainly be a similar parallel implementation, with their
valuable support
xcircuit: meaning the XTM TC?
rkthunga: brb...i have to be off chat for a min
hbrameus: XTM and RDF has a lot in common, but differ on the initial
approach
(top-down vs bottom-up), so I think there could be synergies, but not so
much
that they are that easy to combine.
xcircuit: maybe we can learn from XTM though
xcircuit: after all, we will be building semantics
hbrameus: hence the synergies
xcircuit: but their support is needed for that.. i've never used or studied
XTM
hbrameus: I know Steve Pepper a bit, so I think we could get the support we
need from there
rkthunga: rex was interested in xtm, but had some disagreements with their
approach...if any of you want to formally interface with their published

subjects discussion, that would be great
xcircuit: i am familiar with some consepts... maybe i can hope to go through
their documents in a week or so?
xcircuit: i know what a topic is so it's a start...
rkthunga: sure...it would likely be an official liasion (and as you
mentioned
Henrik, probably not combined with RDF)
hbrameus: I'v also done some basic work on TM in the past as well
xcircuit: ok sounds fine to me
rkthunga: whenever any of us feels ready (that's the general telecon opinion
right now) to be a TC member of XTM published subjects, that would be great
rkthunga: we are talking about how to get more participation
rkthunga: 1) it is the end of the year, which is why it is low
rkthunga: 2) we don't have a schema we can debate about much...len's exist,
but we haven't really tried using it
rkthunga: 3) we haven't been defining any applications, and carrying them
forward...
xcircuit: i think the last one pretty sums it up
rkthunga: 4) ideas flushed out of HM.applications document (kurt is working
on XSL transformation) which would put applications on a tree, which would
showcase all sorts of ideas
xcircuit: xsl to render the document?
xcircuit: or xsl as an operation over humanml data?
xcircuit: sorry i am really dizzy 2day...
rkthunga: xsl to present our applications ideas it in a tree hierarchy
xcircuit: is SVG possible? showing relating nodes would be great
xcircuit: i wouldn't want to push him too much though!
xcircuit: i can do a version of his work to SVG once he is finished...
xcircuit: i just like the idea
hbrameus: Quick unrelated question here. I have another appointment and need
to rush. Are there any other important things we need to deal with here and
now? I have a rranged with Manos to have contact about the sub-comittee this
week, and all the voting is on the list. If you need my input right
now, "speak up or forever hold your peace".
rkthunga: regarding svg: no promises, but yes
xcircuit: ok
rkthunga: ok henrik, we'll log the rest of the meeting, and transcript...and
any other comments, you can post on the discussion list
xcircuit: about our work on schemas... we have no markup that attempts to do
what humanml was about in the first place
rkthunga: we are now talking about Rex's presentation at IBM in NY
hbrameus: OK, then I'm checking out. Good luck with the rest, and you'll see
me a bit more on the list now.
Yahoo! Messenger: hbrameus has left the conference.
rkthunga: anything you want to add to the presentation?
rkthunga: I talked about adding an 'acknowledgement' systems within web
services, to ensure human synchronicity in communications
xcircuit: not at this time, no
xcircuit: these exist and an approach will probably be standardised by the
WS
TC
xcircuit: web services systems always had a shoot and forget approach...
rkthunga: Kurt and Rex were thinking of an interacting ananova type
deal...for a march presentation
xcircuit: you all know my views... i have no direct interest in
presentation_descriptional_render_related markup as far as humanml goes...
xcircuit: but, i can help you find rescources on the subject, +sourcecode
rkthunga: is there anything related to messaging that you were interested
in?
xcircuit: nope
xcircuit: everything is ready, soap and xml rpc are widelly accepted
technologies
xcircuit: we r only interested in what is inside the envelope
xcircuit: if you r talking about WS messaging that is...
rkthunga: the one protocol messaging doesn't have specs is for interactive
information
rkthunga: and additionally, as you said, what's inside the envelope
xcircuit: that is because messaging is not always idea for interactivity
xcircuit: messaging does not keep connections... just shoots and drops
rkthunga: (rex is talking about messaging using non HTTP communications, for
instant communication...that's what has been ignored so far
xcircuit: i think we are widening our thoughts to technologies that will
evolve the same way with or without us
xcircuit: let's keep it to the content, let others build the means for
sending/receiving and all that similar operations
xcircuit: we're not here to conquer the world

xcircuit: lol
xcircuit: i'm getting too far aren't i?
rkthunga: the channels will need to evolve to communicate human needs, since
certain infrastructures are not in place...i'll share your thoughts to the
group as well
xcircuit: really now, can someone in the list just list the things humanml
is
supposed to care about?
xcircuit: i think we just jump from technology talk to technology talk,
thinking of humanml as everything and nothing
rkthunga: rex and kurt followed things through pretty far...they'll stop now
rkthunga: end of formal discussion:
rkthunga: now free discussion
xcircuit: anyone talking?
xcircuit: lol
rkthunga: Rob is talking about his motion detector his company is doing
xcircuit: very interesting indeed, but form a markup design point of view
this is trivial
xcircuit: what about the markup itself?
rkthunga: instead of representing data in binary form, it would be on human
readable data
xcircuit: has anyone explored reusability of custom types from XSD or
something?
xcircuit: thats the stuff i wanna hear...
rkthunga: by using human readable data, animations can be customized based
on
reality
xcircuit: animations
xcircuit: Ranjeeth i am really sorry, but i really cannot understand how
anmation, emotions and rendering relate with misscomunication
xcircuit: neither web services to tell you the truth
rkthunga: regarding your question: no one's really explored it yet
xcircuit: i c
rkthunga: kurt is not talking measurements and data types...we were
discussing these
rkthunga: sorry, kurt IS talking measurements and data types---(I miswrote
the last sentence)
xcircuit: excellent
rkthunga: meeting has to wrap up soon...so we are going through final issues
xcircuit: think API folks... and run time abstract datatype creation
(meaning
classes)
xcircuit: that should be abstract classes, sorry
rkthunga: you mean complex types?
xcircuit: nope
rkthunga: topic is now HPCML...(we have to move fast...)
xcircuit: ok, i guess we have to work individually on a number of tasks...
xcircuit: if anyone would like to ask me a question, it would be a good time
to do so
xcircuit: i'm leaving in a while
rkthunga: no questions at this point, but there will be questions on the
board
xcircuit: meaning the list no?
rkthunga: yeah , the discussion list
xcircuit: ok i split, I hope we will all report some progress during the
next
2-3 weeks
xcircuit: "Bye bye all"
rkthunga: looking forward to your rdf work, for sure! Thanks manos for
joining....
xcircuit: See you Ranjeeth, thanks for helping me to join the conversation
xcircuit: damn i hate those IM smileys

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