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Subject: Follow up: In regards to LegalXML E-Contracts Draft Specification and Electronic Court Filing
Attached and below in plain text format is a draft version of a report about LegalXML EContracts TC's Draft Specification and the impact or overlap with the LegalXML Electronic Court Filing TC's work. The report was produced by Dr. Laurence Leff and Rex McElrath. ************************************************************************ *** Report on Discussions Regarding Reconciliation of ECF 3.0 and E-Contracts Draft Specification Issue: Are there areas where the E-Contracts and Court Filing Technical Committee's work overlap or conflict? Response Summary: At this point, it does not seem so, as it appears that the work of both Technical Committees is complimentary to each other. Explanation: * An E-Contracts document could easily be a document used in transmitting a message using ECF 3.0 * E-Contracts is more focused on document oriented markup that data can be extracted from and the Court Filing Documents Subcommittee is more focused on data oriented markup that documents can be extracted from. ** Data V/S Document Orientation Reference: http://www.w3.org/TR/xmlschema-2/#purpose At this point, the work of the E-Contracts TC and the Court Filing TC seem complimentary. The Court Filing TC's ECF 3.0 Filing Message could be used to transport an E-Contracts marked-up document, and the Documents Subcommittee's work is looking at Documents from a different angle. To illustrate the differences in the approach to document markup, below are examples of the two different types of document markup approaches: Example of E-Contracts Markup showing document oriented markup: Text: You or Your means an individual or entity exercising rights under this License. XML: .. . . (preceding XML) <definition> <terms><term>You</term> or <term>Your</term></terms> <block> <text>means an individual or entity exercising rights under this License.</text> </block> </definition> .. . . (following XML) Note: The markup is in line and well suited for use in existing word processors and for marking up free form documents, but would be more difficult to use for data exchange packages following GJXDM and NIEM guidelines. Example of GJXDM Compliant Markup of same text, showing data oriented markup: Text: You or Your means an individual or entity exercising rights under this License. XML: .. . . (Preceding XML) <j:Person id="p1"> <j:PersonName id="p1n"> <j:PersonGivenName id="p1gn">Christina</j:PersonGivenName> <j:PersonSurName id="p1sn">Edwards</j:PersonSurName> </j:PersonName> </j:Person> <local:LicenseDefinition> <local:DefinitionText>You or Your means an individual or entity exercising rights under this License.</local:DefinitionText> <local:DefinitionPersonReference ref="p1"/> </local:LicenseDefinition> .. . . (Following XML) Note: The markup is well suited for data exchange using GJXDM or NIEM structures, but makes markup in a document more difficult as the document needs to be machine analyzable to know where to place data. May require custom editor to ensure data is written in form that is analyzable into data structures. Further Information of Interest to the Electronic Court Filing Technical Committee: 1. The definition of and distinguishing between "machine-readable" and "narrative" which is proposed to be used to standardize the words used for this issue throughout the LegalXML Member Section. The definitions proposed by the eContract TC are descriptive and help distinguish what is being discussed with these issues. For example, textual information could be considered "machine-readable" in a broad sense of the term in that text can be parsed and displayed using a computer, but the definition used by eContracts makes the term to mean not only information that the computer can parse, but also information that the computer can assign value or meaning to. In this view a difference between parsing a phrase for either storage or display and reading a phrase to be able to place the phrase into a semantically meaningful context, such as "$1.00" versus "$1.00 is owed to John Doe", is distinguished. 1.1. Quote of definition from eContracts Draft Specification: a) machine-readable information - .. This is information in the contract document that refers to information about contract rights, obligations, or states, that can be extracted from the document by a computer system. It includes information represented in deontic contract language, contract metadata and embedded data values. It does not refer to the computer readable characters in the text unless the meaning of that text can be determined by a computer system. For example, a monetary amount that can be read from the text is not machine-readable information unless the system can determine useful information about the statement of that amount in the contract such as who must pay it, to whom it must be paid, and at what time is it to be paid for what purpose is it paid. 1.2. This definition of "machine-readable" is useful in talking about the issues that come up on LegalXML and may help in our discussions. It may be confusing to some persons who have worked with data parsing who use the more broader meaning for "machine-readable" but in the context of LegalXML, where a goal is to be able to use marked up text in such a way as it to be meaningful and useful, it is a fitting definition. 2. The eContracts technical committee looked at the issue of using a "host schema." The concept of a "host schema" is to use an existing schema to represent document-related information such as paragraphs and lists and to which would be added markup for concepts and items specific to the legal domain. eContracts TC identified and evaluated several possibilities for "host schema" including our own Court Documents 1.1 standard, DocBook, Open Document Standard from OASIS, and Microsoft's WordML. In relation to the Electronic Court Filing TC, our "host schema" for documents would be the ECF 3.0 core set of schema or a GJXDM-based schema which we would use for a base to hold information and data. 2.1. Western Illinois University did work, as requested by the Electronic Court Filing Technical Committee, on how one relates narrative and machine-readable information. Western Illinois University prepared several examples of how one marks up domestic violence orders. This was done based upon sample documents from several jurisdictions of protection. As a result of the work, The International Journal of Law and Information Technology anticipates publishing an article about the work in 2007. The research included investigating embedding GJXDM elements in a Court Document or other host schema as well as putting the text inside the GJXDM document; however GJXDM does not currently have markup for narrative text. 2.2. In the Documents Subcommittee of Electronic Court Filing, we are looking at extending the GJXDM and to enable the capturing of narrative text in a structured manner and including the document-related information as a Lead or supporting document in an ECF 3.0 filing. 3. The eContracts TC developed the concept of an XML element deemed "field" to use in the markup of documents to denote a field which is to be filled from a database or other external data source. The "field" form is an embedded XML tag within a narrative of a document that denotes that the section is to be filled out using external data and to reference the id of the type of data. eContracts hopes that the use the of the eContracts standard and of this element will become a standard practice for markup of documents in the legal field to help with having a common standard for document markup. 3.1. In relation to the Electronic Court Filing TC, this proposal would not effect the ECF 3.0 specification, but would be related to creation of forms that could be filled out with data from an ECF 3.0 filing message or other data source. 3.2. In relation to the Electronic Court Filing Documents Subcommittee, this concept may not be applicable as the entire contents of the view of the data that meets the court specified formatting requirements could be drawn from the data source of the XML, therefore specifying sections to be filled would not be necessary. 4. The eContracts TC noted that links between two separate documents could be represented using XML ID's or Resource Description Framework, or RDF. 4.1. In relation to the Electronic Court Filing TC, a recent proposal from Maricopa County and Georgia to the TC proposes the use of ID's to relate two documents to each other to show that they contain the same content but are of different formats and ECF 3.0 currently includes a ID to relate a document in current filing with a previously file document. 4.2. The findings by both TC's seems to strengthen the case for use of XML ID attributes and elements to relate to each other and the use of the GJXDM and NIEM RDF-like association structures with element ID's to relate information structures. ----------------------------------------- This e-mail and any files transmitted with it are intended solely for the use of the entity or individual(s) to whom they are addressed and not for reliance upon by unintended recipients. If you are not the intended recipient or the person responsible for delivering the e-mail to the intended recipient be advised that you have received this e-mail in error and that any use, dissemination, forwarding, printing, or copying of this e-mail and any files transmitted are strictly prohibited. If you have received this e-mail in error please delete the entire email and immediately notify us by email to the sender or by telephone to the AOC main office number, (404) 656-5171. Thank you.
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