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You are here: Home / 2008 / Archives for October 2008

Archives for October 2008

ODF Update

2008/10/31 By Rob Leave a Comment

Nothing of interplanetary significance to report, I’m glad to report steady progress on all fronts.

As many of you already know, standards maintenance consists of two main activities:

  1. Defect removal through the issuance of corrections to published standards (variously called “errata” or “corrigenda”, depending on your zodiacal sign)
  2. Revision, through the issuance of updated (and presumably improved) versions of the standard.

The OASIS ODF TC has been active in both maintenance activities, with some notable milestones in the past week or so on both fronts.

On the maintenance side, Wednesday 29 October saw the start of a 15-day public review for draft 3 of the ODF 1.0 Errata document. The official OASIS announcement has more information on the public review, including links to the errata document itself, as well as how the public may submit comments. JTC1/SC34, though their Secretariat, has also been invited to participate in this review.

Once the public review has concluded, and assuming that no new issues surface in the review, the ODF TC may approved and publish it as “OASIS Approved Errata” as well as transmit the text to JTC1/SC34 for application to ISO/IEC 26300.

On the revision front, the TC continues to work to complete ODF 1.2. But while finishing that revision, we decided that we also want to initiate a new activity related to the next version of ODF, the one after ODF 1.2. We did not have immediate agreement on what that version would be called (ODF 1.3? ODF 2.0?) so we started calling it “ODF-Next”. We voted to create a new Subcommittee of the ODF TC, called the ODF-Next Subcommittee to start preliminary background work on this next version, in parallel with the TC’s foreground task of completing ODF 1.2. The charter of the new subcommittee reads:

Statement of purpose
——————–
As the ODF TC completes its work on ODF 1.2, it is desirable to instantiate a parallel effort to gather requirements and define a vision for the next major revision of the standard.

It is the purpose of the ODF-Next Requirements Subcommittee to gather requirements, to categorize these requirements by theme, to prioritize these requirements, and to submit a report to the ODF TC on a recommended set of work items for the next major version of ODF, which will have the working name of “ODF-Next”.

Scope of work
————-
In accordance with the above Purpose, the ODF-Next Requirements SC would undertake the following activities:

To collect requirements for ODF-Next from TC members, from the OASIS ODF Adoption TC, from implementors, from users, from the public, and from other stakeholders;

To ensure that all requirements collected have been formally submitted as contributions to the ODF TC, either as TC member contributions or via the Feedback License;

To categorize these comments according theme;

To prioritize the themes and the requirements within the themes;

To produce and submit to the ODF TC a report on a recommended set of work items for ODF-Next

Bob Jolliffe, from the Department of Science and Technology, South Africa, has agreed to chair the Subcommittee. We had our first meeting last Tuesday.

I think this is going to be exciting. ODF 1.0 and ODF 1.1 was about mainly about encoding, in an open standard, the output of conventional productivity applications. If you are a conventional person, running a convention business, with conventional ideas looking for a conventional profit, then great, don’t let me wake you up. But I think we need to do more than that. Achieving mere conventional doesn’t get me out of bed in the morning. If I wanted to just replicate what others were doing, I’d join the Mono project.

ODF 1.2 starts to break away from that conventional view with its richer view of metadata. But with ODF-Next, we can pull significantly ahead and move into uncharted territory. As Thomas Paine wrote, “We have it in our power to begin the world over again.”

As you can tell, from reading the charter, our primary initial task will be to collect feedback for feature ideas for the next release of ODF. When we formally put out the call for comments, I expect a huge response. So our initial TC meeting was mainly spent discussing ways in which we can can handle a large volume of public comments, in terms of collection, categorizing and prioritizing. Once we agree on a tool to use, and set up some infrastructure to handle the load, expect to hear more on this blog, and elsewhere, about how you can submit your ideas, and help define the capabilities of the next version of ODF.

Next, I’d like to note that the OASIS ODF Interoperability and Conformance TC (OIC TC) met for the first time last week (and a second time again this week). We elected Bart Hanssens of Belgium as Chair of the technical committee. Bart works for Fedict, the Belgian federal ICT agency, one of the early adopters of ODF. Companies represented on the TC include IBM, Sun, Novell, Google, Oracle, Red Hat, Sursen, Ars Aperta, and the US Department of Defense. We also have a number of individual members.

The greatest difficulty in our initial call was determining a schedule for future meetings. With participants spread out from California to Boston, Paris, Hamburg and Beijing, there is no time which is going to be easy for all of us. The best we could come up with was to meet at 1430UTC, corresponding to 0930 EST, 1530 CET, 2230 China, but 0630 PST (ouch).

In any case, the OIC TC discussions are flowing well, as we start to discuss how we engineer test cases, what data to collect for them, how to encode test metadata, etc. You can follow the discussion in the public archives of the TC’s mailing list, or even better, consider joining OASIS ($300 for an individual membership) and participate in this or any other OASIS Technical Committee.

Finally, the ODF Adoption TC has been busily preparing to host a panel discussion and workshop related to ODF interoperability at the OpenOffice.org Conference in Beijing next week. In fact, I should now stop procrastinating and get back to completing by presentations!

If you add it all up: the three ODF-related TC’s (ODF TC, ODF Adoption TC, ODF Interop and Compliance TC), we have a combined 79 members, of which 68 represent 25 different OASIS corporate or organizational entities, and the remaining 11 are individual members.

-Rob

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Don’t shoot until you see their eyes

2008/10/21 By Rob 3 Comments

September 18th, 2008
Great Spangled Fritillary (Speyeria cybele)
Pentax K10D with 100mm macro, 1/350 at f/5.6

When I was a child, I did as children do, and chased butterflies in the fields. Forty years later the fascination, if not the boundless energy, still remains.

Is there any logic to the flight of a butterfly? It certainly is not a straight line. Are they following a physically determined path of least action, surfing unseen micro eddies or vortices in the air to conserve their energy? Or are they showing their overflowing exuberance, feasting in a field of flowers, unable to make (and adhere to) a single choice? I know, as child, I was disposed to the latter, perhaps explaining my fondness for butterfly chasing.

In any case I’m older and wiser today. I don’t chase butterflies. I photograph them. Indeed, chasing and photographing are at cross purposes and nearly incompatible. Photographing butterflies is a patient, quiet task. The technique is straightforward and consists of three easy steps:

  1. Go sit among the flowers.
  2. Don’t move.
  3. Wait.

Let the butterflies come to you. As Ptolemy crumbled before the Copernican revolution, this critical change in perspective makes all the difference. Give it a try!

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ODF @ OOoCon 2008

2008/10/12 By Rob 2 Comments

Ah,the relief. I can miss the silly season this year. I can turn off the TV, turn off the talk radio, turn the newspaper straight to the sports page, and altogether ignore the last month of the campaign.

Why? Because I’m attending the OpenOffice.org 2008 Conference in Beijing, November 5th-7th. Since I’ll miss election day, I’m submitting an absentee ballot, and in fact I’ve just filled it out. I predict a great increase in personal productivity from being able to sit out the remainder of the minute-by-minute saturation campaign coverage.

This will be my third OOoCon. After Barcelona last year and Lyon in 2006, the organizers this year have a tough act to follow. But from what I can see, this year is shaping up to be the “best ever”, with open ceremonies at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse (former residence of Madame Mao) and a conference sessions at Peking University.

Although the focus of the conference is OpenOffice.org, the program, the developers, the translators, promoters and users, there is also a natural overlapping interest in OpenDocument Format (ODF). Because of this, OOoCon typically is also the largest ODF conference of the year, at least based on number of ODF-related sessions.

In particular I’ll draw your attention to the following ODF-related sessions:

  • Interoperability — expectations, promises, problems and solutions (Florian Reuter)
  • OpenOffice.org and the ODF Ecosystem (Dieter Loeschky)
  • Panel Discussion — ODF Interoperability Perspectives (with representatives from IBM, Sun, Google, Novell, FEDICT, moderated by Aslam Rafee of DST)
  • ODF@WWW — An ODF Wiki (Kay Ramme)
  • OOo and ODF Accessibility (Malte Timermann)
  • The New ODF 1.2 Metadata Framework and its Support in OpenOffice.org 3 (Svante Schubert)
  • ODFDOM -the new open sourced multi-tiered API for ISO OpenDocument Format (Svante Schubert)
  • ODF Accessibility: Perspectives Past & Future (Don Harbison)
  • Introduction to SMIL and Implementation in Lotus Symphony (Yan Peng Guo /IBM)
  • Transforming and OWL Ontology to an OpenOffice Document Template (Massoud Toussi)
  • Improving ODF Applications by sharing ODF tests (Svante Schubert)
  • Enabling ODF for Social Collaboration with Composite Applications and Mashups (Santosh Kumar)
  • ODFDOM Workshop — using the new opensourced multi-tiered API for ODF (Svante Schubert)
  • Digital Signatures: A Global Challenge (Joachim Linger)

Full details are in the conference program. My pride in seeing so many good ODF-related sessions is slightly offset by the the sadness that interest in ODF has grown so much that I can not possibly attend all of these sessions.

I hope to see many old and new friends in Beijing. This is a great opportunity to continue spreading the message of open source and open standards around the globe.

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Where’s Rob?

2008/10/07 By Rob 14 Comments

Alex Brown is saddened that I did not attend the JTC1/SC34 Plenary in Korea last week. You can view his photo essay and lament on my absence here.

[A] question being asked along the committee corridors by perplexed NB members is whether IBM has withdrawn its staff from participation SC 34. I have no idea, but IBM people are certainly conspicuous here by their total absence.

Well, I’m truly touched, and by way of reciprocation maybe I can help Alex and any other similarly perplexed attendees understand the situation better.

First, it will help if we start by taking a look at recent SC34 meetings and what the attendance record (publicly accessible) says:

Date Location Total Attendance Size of US Delegation # of IBM/OASIS Participants # of Microsoft/ECMA Participants
Nov 2004 Plenary Washington DC 25

6

0 0
May 2005 Plenary Amsterdam 28 4 0 0
Nov 2005 Plenary Atlanta 22 4 1 0
May 2006 Plenary Seoul 30 4 2 2
Mar 2007 Plenary Oslo 37 6 0 5
Dec 2007 Plenary Kyoto 52 3 2 12
Apr 2008 Plenary Oslo 37 3 1 8
July 2008 Ad Hoc 1 London 20 1 1 10
Oct 2008 Plenary Jeju Island 35 est. 2 est. 0 est. 12 est.

(estimates from Alex Brown, since no official attendance has been published)

To put it in perspective, the US SC34 shadow committee currently has around 20 members. Before Microsoft stuffed it we had around 7. Regardless, the US SC34 mirror committee typically sends a delegation of 2 or 3 people to international meetings. IBM attendance at these meetings has varied from 0 to 2. It really depends on where the meeting is being held. If it is being hosted by an NB where an IBM employee is a member, then he will typically attend. If something is on the agenda that I find interesting, then I’ll typically attend regardless of location.

Now what is really interesting is how Microsoft has increased its attendance over the years, something Alex does not mention and presumably does not find fault with. I remember introducing myself to the first Microsoft attendee at a SC34 Plenary back in 2006. He was an attorney, from Microsoft’s anti anti-trust department. An odd person to send to a technical standards committee meeting, don’t you think?

Since then, Microsoft’s representation has swelled so it now comprises 20-50% of any given meeting. And that does not count those additional “independent” companies and contractors that are employed by Microsoft to create OOXML convertors or to consult with on OOXML matters. I’m only counting those people who explicitly list “Microsoft” or “Ecma” as their corporate affiliations.

I think you’ll find no other case in SC34 attendance records of a single company sending more than a single representative. Everyone else in the world sends one person. IBM once sent two people. Microsoft sends ten or a dozen.

Despite Microsoft’s successful attempt to stuff SC34, as they did NB’s around the world, participation from IBM remains in the range of 0 to 2 participants. I’d be hard pressed to justify the expense of any greater attendance. The real work on ODF goes on in OASIS. That’s where we put our people, where they can be most effective on the technical topics related to ODF.

Alex, of course, misses all this. Sitting in a room full of non-technical Microsoft employees, the only unusual thing worth mentioning is my unclaimed badge. Good job as always, Inspector Clouseau!

In any case, the greatest concern should be given to that last row in the table, giving the attendance of the recent Jeju Island Plenary. Although the resolutions of this meeting have been posted and discussed, they lack any record of the actual attendance of this meeting. It has been the constant practice of JTC1/SC34, for many years, to record the attendance of their meetings and to post this document to the SC34 document repository and to make it publicly accessible. But in this case, the attendance record is missing entirely. It isn’t even available to SC34 members.

What are they afraid to reveal? Exactly how many Microsoft employees were at this meeting? The trend certainly has been upward. But this information is not available. Is Alex, the Convenor of WG1, only going to publicize my absence, but then fail to report who actually attended his own WG meeting? Is Alex going to express pleasure in saying “In the event this went extremely smoothly: all resolutions passed with unanimous consensus” without mentioning who exactly was there to vote for these resolutions?

I hope this is not yet a further sign that JTC1/SC34 has taken a decent into vendor domination and reduced transparency.

Oh, and where was I? I was on vacation. (Yes, I am allowed vacation). I was in Colorado, spending some time above the timberline and among the rocks.

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Filed Under: OOXML, Standards

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