Harmony? Patrick Durusau, Jean Paoli and Brian Jones

Since my last blog entry a lot has happened. The big story of course is that DIS 29500 gathered enough votes to pass as an International Standard. Although the margin of votes in its favour was (surprisingly to me) reasonably comfortable, the overall mood of acceptance seems less of a "yip yip yahoo!" and perhaps more of a "well, alright". Everybody is now watching very carefully ...

Resolutions

Now however, the whole process moves forward into a much more significant stage. At the just-finished SC 34 meeting in Oslo a number of resolutions were passed relating to 29500. The most significant of these is resolution 4, "Creation of Ad Hoc Group 1 on ISO/IEC 29500 Maintenance", and it's worth looking at it in some detail. I will go through the complete resolution below with some explanation of my own ...


simply states the fact that JTC 1 have handed full responsibility for the standard over to SC 34. We then have some informative text setting out SC 34's current orientation:


So, SC 34 has a plan: it envisages taking control of OOXML, then setting up a maintance procedure for ODF, and then working on cross-standard initiatives. As the first part of effecting this plan it is setting up a temporary group (in ISO parlance an "ad hoc group") to investigate how OOXML can be maintained. The rest of the resolution sets out the terms of reference for this new investigative group.


The first of these terms of reference set out the task that the group is to perform:


There are several things of note here. First is that the group activities are limited to OOXML only, and that the group will be purely advisory. It will advise its convenor who will weigh up the advice and report back to SC 34 who will in turn make a decision that heeds (or ignores) that advice.

Perhaps the most interesting thing here is the list (items "a" to "e") in which SC 34 gives a "steer" to the group on how it should be thinking about OOXML maintenance. What we learn from this is that the group should try to come up with a process that ensures maintenance activities are fully staffed, as open as possible, that keep Ecma and ISO versions of the standard in sync, and which sticks to the full rigour of normal committee working without any Fast Track or PAS oddities.

The later clauses flesh out some important further details.


sets the duration of the work. It will take place over the next 6 months or so and report in time for SC 34 to consider its findings at the next plenary.


simply states that the usual people will be able to participate in the activity (SC 34 committee members, etc.)


says it is I who will be convening it - an honour indeed!


points out that our super-efficient SC 34 secretariat (of the Japanese NB) will be providing much needed assistance.


sets out some meeting details. The "main event" will be a two day meeting in London in summer.

and ... that's it. The resolution passed with unanimous support.

Bringing Ecma in

The above resolution says nothing of Ecma, since maintenance is now an SC 34 activity. Practically speaking, however, the Ecma TC 45 team are the guys who know more that anybody what is really going on with OOXML, so SC 34 issued a liaison statement (a fancy term for a "message") inviting these experts to participate:



This encourages inclusion of the TC 45 people -- but they will of course have no power of vote at any level in the process.

Short-term maintenance

While all this investigative work is going on to determine the long-term maintenance procedure for OOXML, there is a more pressing task: recording the defects that are currently known and being found in the OOXML spec. With this in mind, a second ad hoc group is being established for collections of comments.



The main thinking here is that knowledge about defects must not get lost. This group, under the expert leadership of Murata Makoto, will make sure that does not happen, and that defects are carefully collected so that they might be fed into the onward maintenance process.

A little local difficulty

While all this work was going on, the OOXML backstory continued. In Norway there is a fuss that the NB (Standard Norway) did not adopt the recommendation of a technical committee. The situation was well explained by the excellent Lars Marius Garshol in his blog entry preceding the Norwegian vote. I can understand the crossness - I certainly would be miffed if our standards body (BSI) did not heed the advice of its technical committee, though in the UK case of course the technical committee recommended that BSI approves DIS 29500 ... What I find less understandable is how what is essentially a local spat (with SN rather obviously acting within its powers) has been blown up into something bigger ...


Steve Pepper

The demonstration passed off reasonably enough ... 100 or so geeks decamped from the adjacent open source conference to stand in the rain and wave placards while Steve Pepper had fun making a speech and brandishing a hairdrier (perhaps risking quips about 'hot air' in the process). There was some half-hearted chanting ("what's that smell? OOXML!"). Meanwhile some on-looking SC 34 people felt insulted. One neutral XML expert, who I know for a fact took a very close technical look at DIS 29500 asked "what are they saying? that we are incompetent? that we do not have the right to decide for ourselves?". Well ... were they?


Disharmony? the anti-OOXML protest

Standards of behaviour

Perhaps the most extraordinary document issued by SC 34 during this Oslo meeting was an "open letter", which received many signatures.


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