Singer Azusa Miyagi from the Okinawan pop duo Tink Tink

Day 5 found us all attending a joint session of the working groups to sort out more administrative details and share the recommendations made by WG 5. Anybody interested in seeing the state of play in WG 4’s work can consult the WG 4 web site, where progress on defect correction can be tracked.

Overall this has been I think a successful meeting: the two new working groups are up and running and their work is well underway. There was perhaps the occasional trace of residual angst overhanging from last year: NBs are keen to assert their sovereignty in the decision making process, and the Ecma delegates are keen to be assured the JTC 1 processes can deliver the mechanisms and timeliness needed to keep IS29500 in shape. In general however, there has been a decided “unclenching” as delegates warmed to the (let’s face it) sometime drudgery of maintaining XML document formats. This was all helped by the exceptional hospitality shown by JISC and ITSCJ in hosting the meetings, and in particular by the efforts of WG 4 convenor Murata Makoto. Whenever one wanted to know where to eat, what to drink, or where the prettiest singers could be found, Murata-san was your man!

It was great also to work with Jesper Lund Stocholm, who has also been covering these meetings on his blog. It would be better still if more countries followed Denmark, and more companies followed the shining example of CIBER, in supplying experts for assisting in this important work.

It was something of a shock coming from the 23°C sunshine of Okinawa to freezing snow-bound Britain. And also a shock to review the amount of standards work piling up to be done before the next SC 34 meetings in Prague: defects to be filed, maintenance agreements to be hammered out, agendas to write, ballots to vote on and proposals to draft. I am expecting the Prague meeting to be particularly vibrant, not least since it is preceded by XML Prague 2009. I have not been to an XML Prague before, but have heard only good things about it. Certainly, the programme looks fascinating (though I make no claims for my own presentation). It certainly seems that Prague is going to be the centre of the world for XML-heads everywhere in late March …

A soup of sea snake, pig's trotter and seaweed

Another day of work in the hotel: which is a shame since the weather outside has been even warmer and very sunny. This morning was mostly given over to a meeting (via Skype™) with OASIS people to discuss how the future maintenance of ODF might be handled. This was a very constructive exchange, and while there are many details to work out over the coming weeks, my personal impressions was that all parties felt confident a good solution was in reach, and that the era of megaphone diplomacy on this topic was behind us all.

The afternoon was given over to drafting meeting notes, further readings of the JTC 1 Directives, and preparations for the WG meetings tomorrow. The coming-together of a number of people interested in both OOXML and ODF has led to some interesting lobby discussions over future directions for these standards. The groovy (but as yet unimplemented) new feature of RDF in ODF for metadata capture has certainly caught the imagination: might an NB propose that this feature is added to OOXML via an amendment? Conversely, the fact that a whole bunch of spreadsheet functions have been standardised in ISO/IEC 29500 (OOXML) potentially saves ODF a lot of work/pages. Certainly any new International Standard version of ODF would need a cast-iron reason to eschew borrowing any of these existing function definitions. Harmonious times may lie ahead …

In the evening Murata Makoto (who seems determined to test our Western sensibilities) took us for a meal of sea snake: a rare Okinawan delicacy. The charming old lady proprietor of the restaurant had been cooking our snake all day (we had had to place our orders yesterday). She explained that traditionally the sea snake was the food of kings, not because of rarity but because of the difficulty of preparation. Once the snake is caught it is smoked, turning it black. The snake is then boiled for one or two days (before domestic ovens this was a real chore) and at some point the many tiny bones in it have to be removed by hand.

And the taste? Well, it was certainly not like chicken. Quite chewy (so much muscle!), and a little like a gamier version of smoked mackerel. Yumsk.

The Ruins at Nakagusuku

Today (apart from visiting the Ruins of Nakagusuku Castle), was mostly given over to a discussion of JTC 1 Procedure. The JTC 1 Directives collectively make an ever-surprising document — just when you think you've got your head around some point, a new paragraph is discovered which calls it all into question. When combined with jet lag, this can be heavy work.

I have been following the tweets of some fellow SC 34 people as they make their ways from various corners of the globe to join the Okinawa meetings. I expect tomorrow will see the influx of even more standards wonks into the hotel. Already there is a certain amount of "geeking out" going on. Over the breakfast table the hot topic of discussion concerned marking-up pagination decisions in documents from systems which flowed footnotes over multiple pages. And at lunch there was much debate over whether editors should prefer using "shall" to "has to" in standards documents (consensus: non-native english speakers find "shall" easier to understand).

It is nice to get away from the freezing drizzle of the UK,
to the milder climes and bright sunshine of Okinawa.

I am in Okinawa for a week of ISO/IEC JTC 1 SC 34 meetings. To be precise, these are not meetings of SC 34 itself (there will be no plenary), rather the week will be taken up with two activities by parts of SC 34:

• On Monday and Tuesday, a team picked by our Chairman will meet to discuss the maintenance procedures for ODF among themselves, and with OASIS representatives.
  
• On Wednesday, Thursday and Friday SC 34’s two new working groups, WG 4 and WG 5, will meet.

These in turn will generate plenty of input for SC 34’s full Prague meeting in March.

ODF Maintenance

I have already written about the background to this activity, both the issues caused by the current lack of agreement on how maintenance should proceed, and JTC 1’s instruction to SC 34 from Nara that SC 34 and OASIS should develop a document specifying “detailed operation of joint maintenance procedures”.

At this stage the negotiations are completely informal, and expected simply to offer an opportunity for all parties to have an open discussion aimed at increasing the level of mutual understanding to a point where they are ready to start working together in earnest on drafting the agreement text. For SC 34, this text will need to be presented to members in time for consideration in Prague, at which meeting it will seek SC 34’s blessing to be passed up to JTC 1 for further consideration.

WG 4 & WG 5

Okinawa will see the first two meetings of our two new working groups, WG 4 (dedicated to maintenance of ISO/IEC 29500, aka OOXML), and WG 5 (dedicated to document file format interoperability). Both groups are expected to meet face-to-face more frequently than the rest of SC 34, and to make heavy use of the newfangled teleconferencing technology that JTC 1 has recently embraced.

WG4’s business in the short term will be largely taken up with correcting defects in the 29500 text (in JTC 1 parlance, producing corrigenda) in response to reported defects. A number of these have been submitted already, by Japan, the UK and Ecma themselves. The UK has a large number on additional ones brewing and is likely to submit a second batch in February.

WG 5’s short-term work is to concentrate on the Technical Report (a more informal document that an International Standard) being drafted which sets out some of the considerations when mapping between ISO/IEC 26300 (ODF 1.0) and ISO/IEC 29500 (OOXML). I’m wondering too whether there will be any moves in this WG to garner support for new work in this area. Now that the dust has settled over document formats themselves, even non XML experts are beginning to grok that by themselves these standards don’t actually give us that much, but are a useful foundation on which to work. “Interoperability” in particular requires so much more than simply having standardised document formats. I await developments in this space with interested anticipation …