At its Boston meeting, in the week preceding SGML '96, WG8 began a systematic clause-by-clause review of ISO 8879. We got as far as 11.3.4, but other clauses were discussed as a by-product and are reflected in this report.
The clauses after 11.3.4 will be covered systematically at our May meeting, which will be held in Barcelona in conjunction with SGML Europe '97.
Topics for which solutions had been identified at earlier meetings were not discussed because they were known to have been covered in earlier reports. A consolidated report will be developed in the future.
The full text of the report, ISO/IEC JTC1/SC18/WG8 N1893, is attached to this article. Please note that any conclusions reached in it are conclusions of the review team only; they do not represent final approval by the ISO.
The Technical Corrigendum that provided Extended Naming Rules for SGML character set descriptions was formally approved at the Boston meeting, and submitted to ISO for official publication.
In parallel with the SGML discussions a panel met to discuss the progression of the Standard Multimedia Scripting Language (SMSL). The meeting defined a model for SMSL that shows how its class/type descriptive capabilities form the basis for general purpose scripting languages. It has been decided that the existing mechanisms for describing classes and types of script objects should be proved/illustrated by defining the US DoD MID interactive electronic technical manual project using SMSL constructs and including this illustrative example in the standard. An editorial meeting will be held in January 1997 to produce a revised draft CD for February 1997.
Text for the revised draft of the HyTime TC was distributed for review at the Boston meeting. It is anticipated that revised camera-ready copy will be sent to ISO in February for official publication.
James Clark was appointed as Defects Editor for ISO/IEC 10179, DSSSL. Text for an initial amendment has been posted at James' WWW site http://www.jclark.com/dsssl for review by those working on DSSSL.
Two new projects were approved at the November meeting:
The Standard HTML project [ISO-HTML], which will be jointly edited by David Abrahamson of Trinity College, Dublin and Roger Price, will define a subset of HTML that is supported by a wide range of existing tools. The editors had a meeting with the W3C staff member responsible for HTML, Dan Connelly, whilst in Boston to ensure that the role of the new standard and its relationship with the W3C development work were understood.
The Topic Navigation Map project will use the revised HyTime TC to update the work done by the Committee for the Application of HyTime (CApH). Michel Biezunski and Martin Bryan have been appointed joint editors for the project. An electronic review process has been set up which experts wishing to contribute to this work are being invited to join. (Contact Martin Bryan at mtbryan@sgml.u-net.com for details.) A revised CD was prepared as a result of the Boston the meeting and distributed to the review committee during December.
A new CD for the Font Services standard was approved for circulation to national standards body for review. Following review of comments on the Draft Amendment to ISO/IEC 9541-1 on Typeface design a final text was prepared for submission to ISO. Draft text for a second amendment to cover minor technical issues was prepared for submission to national standards bodies for approval.
Contact Robin Cover with corrections and updates, or to submit contributions to the ISUG online document database.
