Internet Info 1993/Internet Info CD-ROM (Walnut Creek) (1993).iso/inet/ietf/oda/oda-minutes-92jul.txt

Text File | 1993-02-17 | 8.9 KB | 208 lines

Editor's Note: Minutes received 7/27

CURRENT_MEETING_REPORT_



Reported by Peter Kirstein/UCL

Minutes of the Office Document Architecture Working Group (ODA)

The Chair repeated that for the ODA Working Group, some papers are
available in an electronic form on the UCL-CS info-server:
``[e-mail]''.  Concern was expressed that a number of
people, who had expressed previous interest, might not be on the mailing
list; the Chair promised to ensure that those who had attended the IETF
ODA Working Group would be on the mailing list.

The documents in the info-server are accessed by standard message
systems, giving a message body of the form:

request:ietf-osi-oda
topic:xxxx

where xxxx is the name of the document required.

All the documents in the info-server are available in text form; many of
them are stored also in ODA/ODIF format.  The list of documents
currently in the collection is listed in a document called INDEX.

The latest document defining the current status is [1] below.  It is
available on the info-server.  It gives details about the current
implementations producing Q112 ODA available for the Pilot.  These are
listed below:


PRODUCT                  Supplier   Status   Product  Availability Source
SLATE/ODA  V1.2          BBN/UCL    OK       SLATE-yes  Now        UCL
Word-for-Windows/ODA v3  Bull       OK         Yes      Now        Bull
DECWRITE/ODA             DEC        OK         Yes      Now        DEC
Global View              Xerox      Testing    Yes      Now        Xerox
MACODA                   Apple      Testing    Beta     ??         Apple
WordPerfect              UPC        Dev        ??       Q4 92      UPC

UCL started shipping SLATE/ODA v1.2 in February 1992; this is based on
SLATE v1.2.  Few have tested it.  BBN is planning to bring out V2 of
SLATE during Q4 92.  From a user viewpoint, this has better graphics and
font support, supports a fuller character set, and should be easier to
configure; nevertheless, for reasons given below, we expect SLATE/ODA v2
to be ready for shipping only during Q1 1993 at the earliest - and not
for this stage of the Pilot.  The Bull product has been released; UCL
has tested it for conformity.  The DEC product is available now, and has
been tested for conformity; no other site had tried a recent version of
that software.  The Apple and Xerox products have been delivered to UCL.
They are still being tested for interoperability by UCL.

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The availability situation of the WORDPERFECT/ODA system from University
Politechnic of Catalonia has kept changing.  There has been a
contractual problem in getting that version used in the Pilot, because
it included some software from ICL - which UPC had not had permission to
release for the Pilot.  UPC has now stated that they intend to have
software entirely of their own available for the September 1992 - this
will be made available to UCL for in September; UCL hopes that it will
be usable on the Pilot during Q4 1992.

During an earlier discussion, it became clear that there was a
requirement to use a large number of National characters; for instance
support for the specific Nordic ones were requested by one participant,
and of Greek ones by another.  It was considered desirable to use
character set switching according to ISO 8859/4 in the long term.  The
SLATE V2 system now uses ISO 8859/1; it was not clear who else supported
it.  The Bull implementation is expected to support a richer character
set on the next version; we are discussing the requirements with them.
No information was available on the Apple, DEC or Xerox ones.

A number of small pilots were mentioned - a Nordic one, one based on
Mitre, one organised by UCL in Europe, and a small one at NASA-Ames.
There was interest in broader pilots.  The Chair promised to set up a
list of ODA and normal mailboxes.  This list will be available from
ietf-osi-oda, and the interested parties will be requested to provide
their details to the Chair.

So far, most use of the systems have been using X.400 for transport;
interest has been expressed in working with the Multi-media Mail format
(MIME). This is in accordance with the Charter, since this is a Draft
Internet Standard.  The Chair mentioned that ODA was a recognised
Content Type in MIME, and stated that at least the BBN/UCL SLATE now
supports MIME. He promised to investigate when there could be more
general integration of MIME with some of the ODA products, and report
this to the Distribution List.

It had been expected that there would be substantial experience with the
Pilot prior to the July IETF meeting in Boston.  In practice there has
been little such experience by IETF members.

Future Extensions

The current Profile used in all the ODA document activities described
here is the Q112 Profile.  A new Profile called FOD26 is in the process
of ratification.  The new profile has some advantages, but that is less
important than that a number of large manufacturers have agreed to
support it for products (e.g., Bull, DEC, IBM, ICL, Siemens-Nixdorf and
UNISYS as part of the ODA Consortium).  In the last few months, it has
become clear that the manufacturers are going to provide most of their
further products only according to the FOD26 version.  Pending the
ratification of the Standard, and the availability of Toolkits like
those being produced by ODAC above, no additional new ODA products that
can be expected; all enhancements will come in the FOD26 form.


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In view of the above, it would seem advisable to continue pilots based
on the products mentioned above, but not to envisage new products prior
to Spring 1993.  As far as the SLATE/ODA activity, it does not seem
sensible to provide anything other than SLATE/ODA v2 - based on SLATE v2
and FOD 26.

Security Extensions

The Chair mentioned that UCL had prepared a subsystem that implemented
the ODA extensions specified in the Addendum to the Standard - subject
to the vital restriction that the extensions apply to whole documents,
not also to the separate ODA portions in the document.  The extension
had been integrated into one version of their SLATE 1.2 systems, and
could be adapted to the Bull and UPC ones (and possibly others); it
would be used in the PASSWORD Pilot in Europe, which was piloting a
number of security services (including confidentiality, integrity and
authenticity for document interchange).  While it was considered an
interesting development, it was agreed that this system would not be
used in the IETF ODA Pilot during the remainder of 1992 for two reasons:


  1. It was considered undesirable to duplicate the functionality of
     Privacy Enhanced Mail (PEM), before PEM had been properly piloted;

  2. It was considered unnecessary to introduce yet further
     functionality until the present Pilots were more advanced.


Future Meetings

While the attendance at this IETF ODA Working Group meeting was better
than that at the previous one, we propose not to have meeting in
November - but to postpone a further full meeting until the March 1993
IETF. It is hoped that by this time there would be extensive Pilots, and
that the timing of FOD26 products would be clearer.

Reference

1.  D. Sadok et al:  The ODA Document Convertors, UCL Internal Report No
2, Version 4, July 1992.

People so far Receiving SLATE/ODA from UCL

     FIRST NAME SURNAME    ORGANISATION    CITY             COUNTRY
     Velu       Sinhu      OKIDATA        Framingham, Mass  USA
     Jim        Knowles    NASA-AMES      Mountain View, CA USA
     Mark       Stansfield Paisley Coll   Paisley           Scotland
     Mark       Savela     Telecom Res    Otakaari          Finland
     Erik       Lillevold  NTRA           Kjeller           Norway
     Encarna    Pastor     U. Pol. Madrid Madrid            Spain

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     Knut       Holm       SINTEF         Trondheim         Norway
     Trevor     Hales      CSIRO          Carlton, Vic      Australia
     Naresh     Kumar      Touch Com      Campbell, CA      USA
     Andrew     Macpherson BNR-Europe     Harlow, Essex     UK
     Paul       Kennedy    DEC            Galway            Ireland


Attendees

Harald Alvestrand        [e-mail]
Jisoo Geiter             [e-mail]
David Katinsky           [e-mail]
Peter Kirstein           [e-mail]
Jim Knowles              [e-mail]
Walter Lazear            [e-mail]
Thomas Lenggenhager      [e-mail]
Mark Needleman           [e-mail]
Sam Nicholson            [e-mail]
Rakesh Patel             [e-mail]
Robert Reschly           [e-mail]
Jim Romaguera            [e-mail]
Vincent Sgro             [e-mail]
Sandro Wallach           [e-mail]
Peter Williams           [e-mail]
Steven Winnett           [e-mail]



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