Draft minutes for 25 May (from Dave)

[Jason Harrop <jharrop@speedlegal.com>]

Folks,

Here is a draft of the notes for 25 May '04. As always please let me
know if you have any comments or feedback. And apologies for being so
belated with them.

Best,

Dave Marvit
Fujitsu Labs of America
Fujitsu

--------------------------------
Draft Meeting notes
25 May, 2004

Charles Gillam,
Dan Greenwood,
John McClure,
Dr. Leff,
Dave Marvit
Peter Meyer
Rolly Chambers

Dan: The Key order of business today was to review a draft of the
latest version of the requirements doc. Rolly and Zoran have been on
the hook for this.

As for administrative tasks, I'd proposed to accept the outstanding
minutes as a group. – noting the suggested changes to the May 11th
minutes.

[Charles moves to accept the minutes.
John Seconds
Dan invites discussion
No discussion
Minutes accepted unanimously.]

Dan: So, the only key substantive thing we had to discuss today was
the requirements doc. Zoran was going to help Rolly out on that.

Rolly: The doc is NOT ready. Zoran did email me about helping out with
the next draft. I haven't closed the loop with Zoran, but that offer
is
most welcome.  Apoloies.  I was more buried than I expected.

Dan: No problem. When do you think it would be reasonable to expect
something for the TC to take action on?

Rolly: I guess that depends to some extent on what happened in the
last meeting. As I understand it there was some consensus that we
would not be addressing the semantic markup of things. If that is
something that is
NOT to be addressed in a revised document, then there is les to revise.

Dan: I think you are right to focus more on what we need to do for the
structural, and not to worry so much about the semantic. The
subcommittee told us that having consensus on the goals would help a
lot.

On the other side, it would help to get more work on the use cases.
Peter spoke about what that might look like. Peter, would you be
willing to repeat some of that.

Rolly: Peter sent me a very helpful email. I am assuming that what you
sent me reflects what you discussed.

Peter: Yes.

Rolly: It is more about pulling in what makes XML a better solution
than maintaining the status quo. I was thinking that I would like to
take a crack at that in the next version of the doc by working on the
sections that you alluded to.

Peter: I think that would be a good idea. I'd be happy to help out
offline if you'd like.

Rolly: That'd be great. There is one piece that I could use some help
on. That's digital signatures. None of the scenarios dealt with that.
It is technical enough that I don't feel comfortable developing the
requirements for that piece.

Peter: I think that when we look through the rest of the requirements
that will identify the role of digital signatures. There are solutions
already out there and it will become clear as we move forward. I
wouldn't stress about that.

Rolly: OK

Peter: As a clarification, I wanted to say that in the requirements
gathering process I don't think we should be making too much a
distinction between semantic and structural. I think that there is a
danger of preempting the requirements process.

Dan: Yes, and I think we can still emphasize the structural side as appropriate.

Dr. Leff: Yes.. But I wanted to note that I am pleased with what is
there. I don't feel that anything needs to be added or removed. I know
other people feel differently, and that's why we are discussing a
revision.

Dan: OK. So Rolly, is there anything else we can do to help you while
we are in session?

Rolly: Peter, how would you feel about taking a crack at revising
sections 3.2 and perhaps another section.?

Peter: I'd be happy to. It'd probably be the end of next week before I
could start.

Rolly; I have collected all of the scenarios into a single HTML file.
I haven't re-written anything. That piece ought to be done in a week
or two.

Dan: That would be just in time for the next meeting. Going.. Going…

Peter: Since I can't read it by the weekend, then that wouldn't give
Rolly much time.

Rolly: That's OK with me. We can still just send it out.

Dan: OK, then. We'll have to come back and meet again in 2 weeks.

There are a couple of other things that we may want to discuss. One is
that Zoran is putting together an e-contracts workshop. I am on the
program committee for that. I'd like to encourage people to spread the
word. I'd also like to suggest that we consider a face-to-face then.
If we could have a structural document, or if we could be ready to do
some outreach that might be good.  All of those aims could be met at
that meeting.

The other thing is that we should perhaps consider getting an update
on the structural committee's work.

I would like to put out there for consideration by the TC: It may make
sense for us to break up the specification making process into more
granular slices than we thought. We were considering having a 1.0
version that included structural, semantic, and envelope layers. It
may make more sense to do those three separately. Especially if it
turns out that based upon the architecture that we seem to be pursuing
that the layers could be implemented separately, That will let people
actually start using one layer before the others are ready.

So I would like to have people consider that. We don't need to discuss
that now, but it would be good for people to consider it.

Peter: I do think that would be a good idea. It would be good to get
something out into the marketplace and start engaging people.

John: It does seem like a good idea. One of the documents should
provide a roadmap, an architecture, or something that indicates that
other pieces of the architecture are coming. That way the reader is
not waiting and wondering of other pieces are coming.

Peter: Yes, and I think this will be easier when we have the requirements doc.

Dan: Anything anybody would like to add before we adjourn?

[Nothing]

We will pick up in two weeks and then we will discuss the next draft
of the requirements doc.