OIC TC 2010-02-24 Meeting Minutes

["Dennis E. Hamilton" <dennis.hamilton@acm.org>]

OIC TC 2010-02-24 COORDINATION CALL

Date:  Wednesday 24 February 2010
Time:  14:30 - 15:30 UT

1. LOGISTICS
   ---------

The chat room: http://webconf.soaphub.org/conf/room/oic (doesn't count as attendance)

The call-in numbers: http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/oic/200903/msg00017.html 
Meeting agendas also provide the pass codes and the call-in numbers:
<http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/oic/201002/msg00051.html>

The action items (log-in required):
  http://www.oasis-open.org/apps/org/workgroup/oic/members/action_items.php

1.1 ROLL CALL AND QUORUM CHECK
The quorum consisted of 10 of the 12 Voting Members (7/12 required).

    MEMBERS IN ATTENDANCE

    * Bart Hanssens, Fedict (Chair)
    * Donald Harbison, IBM
    * Mingfei Jia, IBM
    * Robert Weir, IBM
    * Andreas Guelzow, Individual
    * Dennis Hamilton, Individual (Secretary)
    * Hideki Hiura, Just Systems
    * Alan Clark, Novell
    * Andrew Rist, Oracle
    = Svante Schubert, Sun Microsystems
    * Louis Suarez-Potts, Sun Microsystems

      [* = Voting Member at start of meeting (10)
       + = becoming Voting Member at conclusion of meeting (0)
       = = Persistent Non-Voting Member (1)]

    MEMBERS ABSENT

      Charles Schulz, Ars Aperta
      Xiaohong Dong, Beijing Redflag Chinese 2000 Software
      Shuran Hua, Beijing Redflag Chinese 2000 Software
      Alex Wang, Beijing Sursen International 
      Jeremy Allison, Google Inc.
      Peter Junge, Individual
      Thorsten Zachmann, Individual
      Cherie Ekholm, Microsoft
      Doug Mahugh, Microsoft
      Eric Patterson, Microsoft
      Tom Rabon, Red Hat
    = Michael Brauer, Sun Microsystems
    * Bernd Eilers, Sun Microsystems
    - Daniel Rentz, Sun Microsystems
      Jerry Smith, US Department of Defense

      [* = Voting Member at start and end of meeting (1)
       - = Voting Member becoming non-voting Member at end of meeting (1)
       = = Persistent Non-Voting Member (1)]

1.2 ACCEPTANCE OF PREVIOUS MEETING MINUTES

Minutes for the 2010-02-10 Meeting 
<http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/oic/201002/msg00032.html>: Approved without objection.


1.3 ACCEPTANCE OF TODAY'S AGENDA.
   <http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/oic/201002/msg00051.html>
   The agenda was accepted without objection.

2. STATUS OF ACTION ITEMS

#0015 Template Scenarios.  Still on hold.

#0026-0027.  No report.
Dennis said he communicates with Cherie Ekholm occasionally and will remind her about this.

#0033 Best Practices for Document Authors.  No change.

#0034 Interop Demo Videos.  No change.

#0039 ODF Plugfest Spain.  New.


3. STATE OF INTEROPERABILITY REPORT

Bart reported on an off-list back-and-forth on making the ODT and HTML files for CD04 PR01.  The files are now considered OK to send to Mary for posting and announcement of the Public Review.  Dennis asked about the tooling required to make these publishable forms in a reliable way and should it be set up so that it is reproducible by any member of the TC.  It was asserted that, apart from OASIS template problems, we should have stable versions of the State of Interoperability document and future versions should have no problems.
  Concerning the templates, Bart took the action to request that Mary produce a fresh, from-scratch template for the ODF form of OASIS specifications.

  There was further discussion of whether there should be specimen documents that illustrate the deviations mentioned as examples in the first State of Interoperability report.  Examples of these could be available at a Plugfest for assessing what the current state is.  It was suggested that these don't need to be the work of the OIC or bear any OASIS imprimatur.  That would take much more effort.

  Dennis observed that many OASIS TCs publish specification sets in Zip files and a Committee Draft or Committee Specification about some test documents and their use in various assessments could be bundled in a Zip with the artifacts for production as a bundle.

  There was further discussion about how to have documents describe and be their own tests and even have the test cases be executable.  Svante has many thoughts on this and is looking at RDF(a) metadata for annotation, or more expediently using special styles and XSLT transforms to extract the material.  Svante would like to recruit other implementers to work on cases in such an approach.  One could even incorporate additional material inside the Package of a test document if a processor wouldn't be expected to preserve it.


4. ODF 1.1 INTEROP PROFILE - OPEN ISSUES

Bart listed a set of open JIRA issues in the agenda: 
<http://tools.oasis-open.org/issues/browse/OIC/component/10102>.

There is feedback from Mary about numbering in the Conformance section, use of hyperlinks, etc.  Bart is still working on that so that CD02 PR01 can go forward to Public Review.

Bart also mentioned working open issues that apply against the draft (CD01-rev4) and may also apply to CD02 PR01 post-Public Review.  No one raised any new issues.

5. ROUNDTABLE

5.1 Next ODF Plugfest in Granada Spain, April 15-17
<http://plugfest.opendocsociety.org/doku.php?id=plugfests:201004_granada:info>
This is the next in a progression sponsored by the OpenDocSociety and various agencies.  It is open to all vendors and other experts.
   Bart suggested it would be nice if the OIC TC members could provide scenarios that can be tested there, and we could start with a list of functions that we would like to assess.  There was mention of spreadsheet exercises being repeated and expanded to see how convergence is happening.  Rob pointed out that in many cases, the divergence is over edge conditions and not the main results.
   On the suggestion that it would be valuable to provide an assessment of how the OpenFormula specification fits with existing implementations, since it will likely be in Public Review or at least Committee Draft at this point.  Rob thought of an exercise where teams work on interesting functions in OpenFormula (such as YEARFRAC-related ones) and come up with little reference implementations to illustrate that the specification is precise enough for reliable implementation.  This is a kind of codefest that could be useful and engage implementer interest.

5.2 ODF Features and Testing
<http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/oic/201002/msg00005.html>
  Bart wanted to bring our attention back to the effort that Svante proposed for identification of features and a suitable granularity of feature-level testing.  Svante is developing more that he will be presenting in Stockholm [?] and at the Granada Plugfest.  

  We wandered into a question about using the OpenFormula Test Cases, especially whether those cases are to be preserved and can be used or adapted as OIC test cases.  Svante is very keen to have that happen.  Dennis reported his understanding about how the test cases are (1) missnamed-name, in his opinion, and (2) will not appear in any form in the ODF 1.2 Part 2 OpenFormula specification.  Rob commented that the origin of cases arose in an assessment of existing implementations and they were not constructed directly as such.  In discussing transfer to the OIC TC for takeover here, we ran into the IP issue and the contributors on the ODF TC not providing any explicit contribution to the OIC TC.  

Dennis and Rob made suggestions that add up to it being easier to just lift the formulas without the claimed results and derive new cases base on them.  He also said these cases are not good for principled assessment where deviations tell you something and where providing results that agree also tell you something understandable.  We ended this discussion with many unanswered and yet-unasked questions.
 
6. FUTURE MEETING PLANNING

The next meeting is March 10, 2010, on the current times (14:30-15:30 UT).

On March 14, 2010, North America will begin Daylight Savings time (one hour closer to UT in each North American time zone).  Europe will shift later in March.  By the next meeting we must agree on how we adjust including whether we maintain the same local times in North America (that is, shift to 13:30-14:30 UT starting with the March 24 call).

7. ADJOURNMENT

There was no further business and the meeting adjourned shortly after 15:30Z.

Respectfully submitted,

 - Dennis

Dennis E. Hamilton
------------------
NuovoDoc: Design for Document System Interoperability 
mailto:Dennis.Hamilton@acm.org | gsm:+1-206.779.9430 
http://NuovoDoc.com http://ODMA.info/dev/ http://nfoWorks.org