The weather was mostly grey, and the days busy, limiting photo taking time …

I have just returned from a week of meetings of ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 34 in Stockholm, Sweden. Here's an update on what happened ...

WG 1

WG 1 met on the Monday (as usual, we "blaze the trail", working out how the public transport works, locating nearby bars, etc).

Our main project over the last 8 years has been the DSDL project, a multi-part standard for XML schema languages. The final parts of this jigsaw are falling into place: at this meeting we agreed to ballot DSDL Part 11, a specification being co-developed with W3C for Schema Association. Jirka Kosek – a project editor – is the driving force behind this work in WG 1. Rick Jelliffe has also completed a draft of a revision to DSDL Part 3 (more commonly known as Schematron), which will now be sent to ballot to collect National Body feedback.

ISO Zip

The need for an "ISO Zip" standard has long been recognized; I remember this topic first being raised in SC 34 during four years ago at our Seoul meeting. No progress has been made since then, but there have been some problems caused by the lack of a standard — not least the sudden disappearance of a document that ODF relies on!

As the number of XML-in-Zip formats mushrooms, WG 1 has now decided to grasp this nettle and propose a project for "Document Packaging" which will aim to deliver a minimal (yet compatible) file format specification particularly suitable for XML-in-Zip document formats. If successful the new standard will be usable as a drop-in replacement for the currently non-standard references to an over-featured (for their purposes) ZIP specification used by such formats as OOXML, ODF and EPUB.

The New Work Item Proposal was presented to the SC 34 plenary where it was agreed (without dissent) that it should be balloted. National Bodies will comment over the next three months and their responses considered at the Tokyo meetings in September.

An unpleasant surprise

Over the last few years I have been editing a project for Extensible Datatypes (ISO/IEC 19757-5, currently a FCD). As is usual with experts in SC 34, the text is prepared using schema-governed XML and processed into XSL-FO for rendering to PDF according to ISO's layout specification — we have a specification, TR 9573-11 AMD, specifically for that purpose.

This work on my text is nearly done, so imagine my surprise to learn that, all of a sudden, ITTF is now only accepting work that is in "Word format" (on inquiry, this means Microsoft® Word™ 2007). The decision has caused dismay among many SC 34 experts and reeks more of the short-term commercial interests of NBs' commercial publishing wings, than of any concern for document quality, adaptability or long-term preservation. It is a shame that ownership of Windows and MS Office is now apparently a prerequisite for being an JTC 1 Project Editor, and I can imagine more than a few eyebrows being raised if any future International Standard version of ODF needs to prepared using Microsoft Word!

WG 4

WG 4 (OOXML - ISO/IEC 29500 - maintenance) met for two and a half days. There are so many strands of activity here deserving of comment that I will write a separate blog post on this later this week. Stand by!

WG 6

WG 6 (ODF - ISO/IEC 26300 - maintenance) met on Thursday afternoon and Friday morning and was well-attended. The main work of this group is production of an International Standard version of ODF 1.1 that rolls in errata to date, and excellent progress is being made on this. Special praise must go to Dennis Hamilton for pulling an all-nighter (remotely participating from Seattle) and addressing some of the gnarlier problems of text production!

In general, it is good to see the suspicions of the past years now firmly set aside and all participants pulling together in the right direction for the good of ODF. It is also especially good to see the process now working better (if not perfectly) and admitting an International dimension to ODF maintenance; this success is due in no small part to the diligence and diplomacy of the WG 6 Convenor, Francis Cave who, it was jokingly suggested at the Plenary, should be appointed for a term of 30 years as convenor, rather than the normal three!

Francis Cave, WG 6 convenor

The CJK lobby

As is usual at these meetings, various kinds of lobbying for various kinds of thing were taking place. Perhaps the prize for most effective operators must go to the CJK (China, Japan, Korea) participants who are working hard to raise awareness of their requirements for page layout and typography. Japan is promoting a project for specifying support for KIHONHANMEN in OOXML and ODF extensions, and plans are being made for a 'Workshop on CJK Issues related to OOXML and ODF extensions' in May (details will appear on the SC 34 web site when available). I wish them well ...

Experts from China, Japan and Korea in discussion