Last week I was in Paris for a stimulating week of meetings of ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 34 WGs, and as the year draws to a close it seems an opportune time to take the temperature of our XML standards space and look ahead to where we may be going next.
WG 1 (Schema languages)
WG 1 can be thought of as tending to the foundations upon which other SC 34 Standards are built - and of these foundations perhaps none is more important than RELAX NG, the schema language of many key XML technologies including ODF, DocBook and the forthcoming MathML 3.0 language. WG 1 discussed a number of potential enhancements to RELAX NG, settling on a modest but useful set which will enhance the language in response to user feedback.
A proposed new schema language for cross reference validation (including ID/IDREF checking) was also discussed; the question here is whether to have something simple and quick (that addresses the ID/IDREF validation if RELAX NG, say), or whether to develop a more fully-featured language capable of meeting challenges like cross-document cross-reference checking in an OOXML or ODF package. It seems as if WG 1 is strongly inclining towards the latter.
Other work centred on proposing changes for cleaning up the unreasonable licensing restrictions which apply to "freely-available" ISO/IEC standards made available by the ITTF: the click through license here is obviously out-of-date, and text is required to attach to schemas so that they can be used on more liberal, FOSS-friendly terms. (I mentioned this before in this blog entry).
WG 4 (OOXML)
WG 4 had a full agenda. One item of business requiring immediate attention was the resolution of comments accompanying the just-voted-on set of DCOR ballots. These had received wide support from the National Bodies though it was disappointing to see that the two NBs who had voted to disapprove had not sent delegates to the meeting. P-members are obliged both to vote on ballots and attend meetings in SCs and so these nations (Brazil and Malaysia are the countries in question) are not properly honouring their obligation as laid down in the JTC 1 Directives:
3.1.1 P-members of JTC 1 and its SCs have an obligation to take an active part in the work of JTC 1 or the SC and to attend meetings.
I note with approval the hard line taken by the ITTF, who have just forcibly demoted 18 JTC 1 P-members who had become inactive.
Nevertheless, all comments received were resolved and the set of corrigenda will now go forward to publication, making a significant start to cleaning up the OOXML standard.
S/T
The other big topic facing WG 4 was to the thorny problem of what has come to be called the issue of "Strict v Transitional". In other words, deciding on some strategy for dealing with these two variants of the 29500 Standard.
The UK has a clear consensus on the purpose of the two formats. Transitional (aka "T") is (in the UK view) a format for representing the existing legacy of documents in the field (and those which continue to be created by many systems today); no more, and no less. Strict (aka "S") is viewed as the proper place for future innovation around OOXML.
Progress on this topic is (for me) frustratingly slow – ah! the perils of the consensus forming process – but some pathways are beginning to become visible in the swirling mists. In particular it seems there is a mood to issue a statement that the core schemas of T are to be frozen, and that any dangerous features (such as the date representation option blogged about by WG 4 experts Gareth Horton and Jesper Lund Stocholm) are removed from T.
This will go some way to clarify for users what to expect when dealing with a 29500-conformant document. However, I foresee needed work ahead to clarify this still further since within the two variants (Strict and Transitional) there are many sub-variants which users will need to know about. In particular the extensibility mechanism of OOXML (MCE) allows for additional structures to be introduced into documents. And so, is a "Transitional" (or "Strict") document:
- Unextended ?
- Extended, but with only standardized extensions ?
- Extended, but with proprietary extensions ?
- Extended in a backwards-compatible way relative to the core Standard ?
- Extended in a backwards-incompatible way ?
I expect WG 4 will need to work on conformance classes and content labelling mechanisms (a logo programme?) to enable implementers to convey with precision what kind of OOXML documents they can consume and emit, and for procurers to specify with precision what they want to procure.
WG 5 (Document interop)
WG 5 continues its work with TR 29166, Open Document Format (ISO/IEC 26300) / Office Open XML (ISO/IEC 29500) Translation Guidelines, setting out the high-level differences between the ISO versions of the OOXML and ODF formats. I attended to hear about a Korean idea for a new work item focussed on the use of the clipboard as an interchange mechanism.
This is interesting because the clipboard presents some particular challenges for implementers. What happens (for example) when a user selects content for copying which does not correspond to well-formed XML (from the middle of one paragraph to the middle of another)? I am interested in seeing exactly what work the Koreans will propose in this space ...
WG 6 (ODF)
Although I had registered for the WG 6 meeting, I had to take the Eurostar home on Thursday and so attempted to participate in Friday's WG 6 meeting by Skype (as much as rather intermittent wi-fi connectivity would allow).
From what I heard of it, the meeting was constructive and business-like, sorting out various items of administrivia and turning attention to the ongoing work of maintaining ISO/IEC 26300 (the International Standard version of ODF).
To this end, it is heartening to see the wheels finally creak into motion:
- The first ever set of corrigenda to ISO/IEC 26300 has now gone to ballot
- A second set is on the way, once a mechanism has been agreed how to re-word those bits of the Standard which are unimplementable
- A new defect report from the UK was considered (many of these comments have already been addressed within OASIS, and so fixes are known)
Most significant of all is the work to align the ISO version of ODF with the current OASIS standard so that ISO/IEC 26300 and ODF 1.1 are technically equivalent. The National Bodies present reiterated a consensus that this was desirable (better, by far, than withdrawing ISO/IEC 26300 as a defunct standard) and are looking forward to the amendment project. The world will, then, have an ISO/IEC version of ODF which is relevant to the marketplace while waiting for a possible ISO/IEC version of ODF 1.2 – as even with a fair wind this is still around two years away from being published as an International Standard.
Records
I'll update this entry with links to documents as they become available. To start with, here are some informal records: :-)