CURRENT_MEETING_REPORT_



Reported by Peter Kirstein/UCL

Minutes of the Office Document Architecture Working Group (ODA)

There had been less progress in implementations of the newer FOD-26
version of the ODA Profile than had been hoped by the time of this
meeting.  Moreover, while early implementations may be available during
the Third Quarter of 1993, it is unlikely that there can be enough to
justify any pilot by that time.

In view of the above, and of the very poor attendance at the meeting, it
was agreed to terminate the Working Group.  If there is sufficient
interest at a later stage - e.g., the November 1993 meeting, then the
Working Group may be reinstated.  The current status is outlined below.

Documents Available

Some papers are available in an electronic form on the UCL-CS
info-server:  ``info-server@cs.ucl.ac.uk''.  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 Status of Q112 Implementations

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 or V2    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        ??       Q2 93      UPC


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UCL started shipping SLATE/ODA v1.2 in February 1992; this is based on
SLATE v1.2.  Few have tested it.  BBN brought out V2 of SLATE during Q4
92.  From a user viewpoint, this has better graphics and font support,
supports a fuller character set, and is easier to configure; the UCL
SLATE/ODA v2 supports only the same functionality as the SLATE/ODA v1.2
- because the extra facilities in the SLATE v2 are not supported in the
Convertor.  The Bull product has not been changed recently; 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 were delivered to UCL. They
have not really been tested for interoperability by UCL; little interest
in them was expressed in the last ODA WG meeting.  The WordPerfect/ODA
system from University Politechnic of Catalonia has been delivered
recently to UCL. There are some problems still which must be ironed out
- but the software should be available by June 1993.

There was also interest expressed in ODA vs SGML. UCL has produced an
SGML --> ODA convertor, which works with a specific DTD. This can be
made available to interested parties.

The Status of FOD-26 Implementations

The Profile used in all the ODA document activities described hitherto
is the Q112 Profile.  A new Profile called FOD26 has now been ratified.
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 under ODAC (Bull, DEC, IBM, ICL, Siemens-Nixdorf and UNISYS as
part of the ODA Consortium).  The manufacturers are providing their
further products only according to the FOD26 version.  The ODAC Toolkits
is now available in binary form for $US 100 from the Consortium.

In view of the above, there has been little interest in working with the
Q112 versions of the software, and for that reason we had chosen not to
have a meeting at the November 1992 IETF. There were a number of FOD26
developments announced; these include the following:



 PRODUCT                  Supplier   Status   Product  Availability Source

 SLATE/ODA V2             BBN/UCL    Testing SLATE-yes  Q3 1993      UCL
 Word-for-Windows/ODA     Bull       Testing    Yes     Q3 1993      Bull
 WordPerfect              UPC        Testing    Yes     Q3 1993      UPC
 ODAC Toolkit             ICL        Available  Yes     Now          ICL



Reference

1.  S. Bayderee et al:  The ODA Document Convertors, UCL Internal
Report, Version 5, March 1993.



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