To OASIS Members:
A draft TC charter has been submitted to establish the OASIS Open Document
Format Interoperability and Conformance (OIC) Technical Committee (below).
In accordance with the OASIS TC Process Policy section 2.2:
(http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/process-2008-06-19.php#formation) the
proposed charter is hereby submitted for comment. The comment period shall
remain open until 11:45 pm ET on 8 September 2008.
OASIS maintains a mailing list for the purpose of submitting comments on
proposed charters. Any OASIS member may post to this list by sending email
to:
mailto:oasis-charter-discuss@lists.oasis-open.org. All messages will be
publicly archived at:
http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/oasis-charter-discuss/. Members who
wish to receive emails must join the group by selecting "join group" on the
group home page:
http://www.oasis-open.org/apps/org/workgroup/oasis-charter-discuss/.
Employees of organizational members do not require primary representative
approval to subscribe to the oasis-charter-discuss e-mail.
A telephone conference will be held among the Convener, the OASIS TC
Administrator, and those proposers who wish to attend within four days of
the close of the comment period. The announcement and call-in information
will be noted on the OASIS Charter Discuss Group Calendar.
We encourage member comment and ask that you note the name of the proposed
TC ([OIC]) in the subject line of your email message.
Regards,
Mary
---------------------------------------------------
Mary P McRae
Director, Technical Committee Administration
OASIS: Advancing open standards for the information society
email: mary.mcrae@oasis-open.org
web: www.oasis-open.org
phone: 1.603.232.9090
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PROPOSED CHARTER FOR REVIEW AND COMMENT
OASIS Open Document Format Interoperability and Conformance (OIC) Technical
Committee
1a. Name
OASIS Open Document Format Interoperability and Conformance (OIC) Technical
Committee
1b. Statement of Purpose
The OpenDocument Format for Office Applications (OpenDocument) OASIS
Standard defines an XML schema and semantics for a document format for
office applications. OpenDocument Format is suitable for office documents,
including text documents, spreadsheets, charts and graphical documents
like drawings or presentations, but is not restricted to these kinds of
documents.
There are several commercial and open source applications available based
on the OpenDocument Format, with more currently under development. With
the depth and breadth of functionality specified by OpenDocument Format
(ODF), achieving conformance and interoperability requires attention to
numerous details and diverse requirements.
It is the purpose of the OIC TC to produce materials and host events that
will help implementors create applications which conform the ODF standard
and which are able to interoperate.
1c. Scope of Work
In accordance with the OIC TC's purpose, the scope of our work will
include the following activities:
1. Initially and periodically thereafter, to review the current state of
conformance and interoperability among a number of ODF implementations; To
produce reports on overall trends in conformance and interoperability that
note areas of accomplishment as well as areas needing improvement, and to
recommend prioritized activities for advancing the state of conformance
and interoperability among ODF implementations in general without
identifying or commenting on particular implementations;
2.To collect the provisions of the ODF standard, and of standards
normatively referenced by the ODF standard, and to produce a comprehensive
conformity assessment methodology specification which enumerates all
collected provisions, as well as specific actions recommended to test each
provision, including definition of preconditions, expected results,
scoring and reporting;
3.To select a corpus of ODF interoperability test documents, such
documents to be created by the OIC TC, or received as member or public
contributions; To publish the ODF interoperability test corpus and promote
its use in interoperability workshops and similar events;
4.To define profiles of ODF which will increase interoperability among
implementations in the same vertical domain, for example, ODF/A for
archiving;
5.To define profiles of ODF which will increase interoperability among
implementations in the same horizontal domain, for example ODF Mobile for
pervasive devices, or ODF Web for browser-based editors.
6.To provide feedback, where necessary, to the OASIS Open Document Format
for Office Applications (OpenDocument) TC on changes to ODF that might
improve interoperability;
7.To coordinate, in conjunction with the ODF Adoption TC, Interop
Workshops and OASIS InterOp Demonstrations related to ODF;
8.To liaise on conformance and interoperability topics with other TC's and
bodies whose work is leveraged in present or future ODF specifications,
and with committees dealing with conformance and interoperability in
general.
The following activities are explicitly not within the Scope of the OIC
TC:
1.Acting as a rating or certifying authority or agency for conformance of
particular ODF implementations;
2.Authoring or distributing software that tests the conformance or
interoperability of ODF implementations;
1d. List of Deliverables
1.Initial report on the state of ODF conformance and interoperability
(March 1st, 2009);
2.Report on the best practices on profiles and recommendations on possible
ODF-related profiles (April 1st, 2009);
3.A conformity assessment methodology specification, detailing how each
provision and recommendation in the ODF standard may be tested for
conformance (May 1st, 2009);
4.Interoperability test corpus documents, released in batches, according
to functional area (several incremental deliverables, Q4 2008 through
2009)
1e. IPR Mode
This TC will operate under the "RF on Limited Terms" mode
1f. Audience
The direct audience of the OIC TC's work will be:
1. Implementors -- Commercial and Open Source publishers of ODF native or
compatible applications and tools.
2. Testers -- Third-party testing and certification labs.
3. Procurers -- Those who purchase or define requirements for the purchase
of ODF-related technology.
4. Regulators -- Officials who specify the use of document standards.
Other, indirect users of the TC's work may include:
1. Integrators -- Third-party developers and independent software vendors
who interact with and/or integrate ODF.
2. Users -- End Users of ODF applications and tools, including both typical
and "power" users.
1g. Language of the TC
TC business will be conducted in English.
2. Informative information
2a. Similar work
We note the work of Lotzi Bölöni at the University of Central Florida and
his initial work in defining an ODF "test suite", work now maintained by
the Open Document Fellowship:
http://develop.opendocumentfellowship.com/testsuite/
We also note that the work of the OASIS Test Assertions Guidelines (TAG)
TC may be of use to us in defining test cases:
http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/tc_home.php?wg_abbrev=tag
Sun Microsystems has also done some work related to ODF conformance
testing:
http://blogs.sun.com/GullFOSS/entry/openoffice_org_odf_validation_service
We note that the W3C has test suite projects pertaining to several of the
standards which ODF references, including MathML and XForms. We would
expect to consult with them on any overlapping topics.
We also note the work of Rajiv Shah and Jay Kesan, "Lost in Translation:
Interoperability Issues for Open Standards - ODF and OOXML as Examples",
The Proceedings of the 36th Research Conference on Communication,
Information and Internet Policy (TPRC), Arlington, VA, Sept.26-28, 2008,
available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1201708
This work, its references, and similar comparisons among ODF
implementations as well as translation efforts may inform the TC's initial
approach to surveying the current state of ODF conformance and
interoperability and determining priorities for the development of
conformity assessment methodology specifications.
Finally we observe that the OASIS Open Document Format for Office
Applications (OpenDocument) TC owns the development of the ODF standard,
with all that it implies, including the definition of conformance for the
various versions of ODF. The OIC TC's work does not overlap with it, since
its scope would not include defining conformance for ODF, but defining
test cases (preconditions, specific test actions, expected results) that
are traceable to the provisions of the ODF standard and referenced
standards.
2b. First meeting.
The initial meeting will be by telephone, hosted by IBM, and will occur
on Wednesday, 22 October 2008 at 1400 GMT (10am ET, 7am PT).
2c. Meeting schedule
We anticipate meeting, by teleconference, initially every week as we
prepare for an interoperability workshop in November, and then reverting
to a normal alternate week meeting schedule
2d. Minimum membership who support this proposal.
1. Robert Weir, robert_weir@us.ibm.com, IBM
2. Bart Hanssens, bart.hanssens@skynet.be, Individual
3. Dennis E. Hamilton, dennis.hamilton@acm.org, Individual
4. Zaheda Bhorat, zaheda@google.com, Google
5. Charles-H. Schulz, charles-h.schulz@arsaperta.com, Ars Aperta
6. Michael Brauer, michael.brauer@sun.com, Sun Microsystems
7. Donald Harbison, donald_harbison@us.ibm.com, IBM
8. Alan Clark, ACLARK@novell.com, Novell
9. Jerry Smith, Jerry.Smith@disa.mil, US Department of Defense
2e. Convener: Robert Weir/ IBM
2f. Member section affiliation: None
2g. (optional) Contributions: None
2h (optional) FAQ's: N/A
2i (optional) Working titles and acronyms for specifications: None.