Finally, the ODF summit technical report

[Nathaniel S Borenstein <nborenst@us.ibm.com>]

Sorry this took so long, but here's
the report from the technical breakout group from the 11/4 ODF summit:

Summary of technical break-out discussions
November 4 ODF summit 

The parties present (no roll call was
taken) discussed 
and achieved rough consensus on the
following topics:

1.  Reference implementation:  It
is very hard to know what
an ODF reference implementation would
actually include.
The most productive approach might be
to focus on small
but useful pieces of ODF-related code,
for example:

        --
A free ODF viewer
        --
Some free, simple translators, 
         
  such as ODF-to-PDF or html-to-ODF.
        --
Code libraries that map ODF documents onto a DOM object      
     
2.  Formula formats.  Everyone
agreed that this is important and
the committee must take it on.  There
may be more than one formula
format some day, but there needs to
be at least one now.
David Wheeler's OpenFormula proposal
seems like an excellent 
starting point, but awaits resolution
of IPR issues.  Fortunately,
in the short term we can work on function
definitions that 
will be useful either in extending OpenFormula
or in a new
replacement, but it would still be good
to resolve these issues
as soon as possible.  The group
endorsed the creation of a
new subcommittee of the TC to deal with
formula formats.

3.  Accessibility:  The group
agreed that accessibility was a
complex problem that needs to be addressed
at both the level
of the standard itself *and* open source
implementations.  
The group endorsed the creation of a
new subcommittee of the 
TC to deal with accessibility issues
in ODF itself, with the
understanding that doing so properly
will inevitably be 
entangled with issues of open source
implementation.

The group also agreed that beyond the
technical enhancements
necessary to support accessibility,
there is an  urgent need
for refining our public message about
ODF and accessibility, 
and for coordination of our ODF efforts
with the larger
accessibility community.  

4.  Conformance testing:  Conformance
testing for a standard
as complex as ODF will never be complete,
but that does not
mean it can be ignored.  The group
endorsed the creation of 
a new subcommittee to create examples,
tests, screen shots,
and any other materials that will enable
such testing and 
promote interoperability.

5.  Digital Rights Management:
 ODF has no DRM mechanisms,
and there does not appear to be any
enthusiasm for adding
such mechanisms in the future.  However,
there is probably
a need to clarify how ODF will work
with future DRM schemes.
This is less because of the imminent
adoption of such
technologies than because the absence
of a DRM strategy
seems to be an effective criticism of
ODF in some quarters.

6.  Non-technical matters:  Although
it does not regard them
as in scope for the OASIS technical
committee, the technical
group discussed several non-technical
matters and informally
agreed on the importance of several
non-technical efforts
that we thought should begin:

-- a campaign to promote ODF adoption.

-- the creation of an online community
around ODF.  
Suggestions included using the existing
Open Document 
Fellowship, and creating an opendocument.xml.org.

-- Creating international documentation
in languages beyond
English.

I believe that this is a fair summary
of our discussions,
but any errors are my own, and I will
try to correct them
as they are pointed out.  -- Nathaniel