Groups - OASIS UIML TC Monthly Meetng modified

[jhelms@harmonia.com]

OASIS UIML TC Monthly Meetng has been modified by James Helms (jhelms@harmonia.com).

Date:  Monday, 26 July 2004
Time:  12:00pm - 01:00pm Eastern Time

Event Description:
Toll/international phone number:  1-719-457-6439
Toll-free phone number:           1-800-955-9014
Participant Passcode: to be emailed the morning of the conference.

Agenda:
1. Continue discussion of model-based UI design.  Discuss XIML.  Reference (please read before meeting):  Angel Puerta and Jacob Eisenstein, "XML: A Multiple User Interface Representation Framework for Industry," Multiple User Interfaces, (ed.) A. Seffah and H. Javahery, Wiley, 2004. 

2. Update on status of on-going activities:  
- UIML & USIXML comparison, 
- update to UIML 3.1 Open Issues document
- update to the document "The Relationship of the UIML 3.0 Spec. to Other Standards/Working Groups" based on Italy Workshop in May

Minutes:
OASIS 
User Interface Markup Language (UIML)
Technical Committee (TC)

Minutes 

Logistics 
Meeting Date	July 26, 2004
Meeting Time	12:00 PM EST
Location	Meeting held via Teleconference hosted by Harmonia, Inc.
Duration	1 Hour
Chair	Marc Abrams
Recording Secretary	Jim Helms

Attending
Name	Organization
Dr. Marc Abrams	Virginia Tech
Jim Helms	Harmonia, Inc.
Gurudev Karanth	Lozoic, Inc.
Kris Luyten	Limburgs Universitair Centrum
Robbie Schaefer	Visual Interactive Systems

Business In Order

	Discussion of the Open Issues Document and the Comparison of UIML to Other Existing Standards
	Mr. J. Helms prepared and uploaded two documents for consideration by the committee.  The first document was a list of the issues still remaining unresolved in the UIML 3.1 specification.  Many of the issues in the document are limited in scope and affect small aspects of the language.  Other issues are more far reaching and apply to the language design as a whole.  Mr. Helms called for volunteers from the committee to investigate the issues in detail and develop possible solutions.  Kris Luyten agreed to work with Mr. Helms.  As an early implementor of UIML, Mr. Luyten has experience with many of the issues to be investigated.

	The second document that was uploaded to the TC site was an update to the comparison of UIML to other existing standards and UI technologies.  The update consisted of the addition of several technologies including UsiXML, AUI, and a catalog of the languages presented at the Workshop on XML user interface definition languages at the AVI’04 conference.

	Mr. Luyten pointed out an initiative to be included in the comparison and which may offer some insights into the broader issues left to be resolved in UIML 3.1.  This initiative, called OpenXAML, is an Open Source implementation of the XAML language for interface definition.  The TC will review the OpenXAML effort for the next meeting.

Discussion of Model-based Design Tools
	In preparation for this meeting, the TC reviewed several tools created to support model-based user interface design.  These tools were TERESA, GraffiXML, Mobi-D, UIML-CAD, and the UIML Development Tool (UDT).  The TC discussed TERESA in depth.  TERESA is a tool for modeling user tasks in Fabio Paterno’s CTT notation.  Once the task model has been entered, the user of TERESA can generate Presentation Task Sets (PTS) from the model.  The generation of PTS is based on first establishing Enabled Task Sets (ETS), yet the ETS are not represented in any obvious way within the tool.  ETS are evolved into PTS using a combination of criteria.  Some such criteria are the platforms on which specific tasks will be performed and heuristics applied to the task model.  PTS are then used to generate an Abstract User Interface (AUI) in XML that is finally mapped to a concrete user interface in XHTML.  While TERESA appears powerful and provides a nice visual means for defining task models, the basis of transformation between representations is unclear.  For example, transforming the PTS to a UI design occurs automatically and the mechanics are not obvious as to how this mapping is established.

	Also, TERESA allows the user to assign “task properties” such as “objects” to specific tasks, however the usage of these properties still needs to be understood by the committee.  Mr. Luyten believes that the properties help to define the Domain model for the interface, but since the definition of Domain model is not consistent across the model based field the connection is hard to ascertain.

	Others in the modeling community have taken similar approaches.  For example, Dr. J. Vanderdonckt used a tree-based approach to task model design and transformation in 2001.  Also, Mr. Luyten has proposed connecting “UI Building Blocks” to tasks within the model and then branching the task tree so that certain branches of the task model only apply to certain deployment platforms.  He also suggested that using a dialog model as an intermediary between the task model and the presentation model would make the process more clear.

Action Items
	·	Jim Helms will update the document recording the relationship of UIML to other languages/ working groups to include XAML
        ·	The TC will review the GraffiXML software in preparation to discuss it at the next meeting.
 	
Adjournment
 	The meeting ended at 1:10 PM EST to reconvene on August 16th, 2004.


View event details:
http://www.oasis-open.org/apps/org/workgroup/uiml/event.php?event_id=5479

PLEASE NOTE:  If the above link does not work for you, your email
application may be breaking the link into two pieces.  You may be able to
copy and paste the entire link address into the address field of your web
browser.