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Subject: Re: [ubl] Comments to UBL V2.0 main specification (CS sanity check 4) by JPLSC
Dear Jon Bosak, Thank you very much for your comments. We will discuss your comments at the next JPLSC F2F meeting which is scheduled to hold on December 8, 2006. The followings are my thinking. (1) I understand the merits to use the electronic hypertext like UBL specification. (2) What is a policy for OASIS to publish specifications regarding style? Will all specifications of OASIS change to DocBook stylesheets in future? As you maybe know, ebXML specifications (ebMS, ebCPPA, and ebBP) are written by MS Word. And these specifications are well formatted. In case to print these specifications on paper, we get good layout printed specifications. I like these specification styles for users, because we only see or study these specifications. Best Regards, Yukinori Saito ----- Original Message ----- From: <jon.bosak@sun.com> To: <saito-yukinori@fujielectric.co.jp> Cc: <ubl@lists.oasis-open.org>; <kenichi.hayashi@mitsubishicorp.com>; <kunio_ohno@justsystem.co.jp>; <kueno@iea.att.ne.jp>; <naitoh@is.oit.ac.jp>; <N.Itoh@otsuka-shokai.co.jp> Sent: Saturday, October 14, 2006 12:07 AM Subject: Re: [ubl] Comments to UBL V2.0 main specification (CS sanity check 4) by JPLSC Hello Saito-san, Thank you very much for your comments! With regard to your comments about style, please understand that we are now using the OASIS DocBook templates to generate the HTML output from an XML original. In other words, the document itself (UBL-2.0.xml) has no inherent output format; the format is provided by the standard DocBook stylesheets as modified by OASIS for OASIS publications. Consequently, we no longer have control over the appearance of the document. For example, the placement of figure titles is dictated by the OASIS DocBook stylesheets, not by us. Therefore the formatting issues you raise must be addressed by OASIS for all of its DocBook-based publications. Please note that printed output is not a deliverable of this specification. The UBL 2.0 specification is an electronic hypertext. The PDF file included in the package exists only to fulfill a procedural requirement of the OASIS process and is not intended to be printed out. I hope that future versions of the OASIS DocBook stylesheets will allow conformant applications to produce usefully formatted PDF representations of some of the specification, but this is an item over which we have no control. On the other hand, it seems to me that the fact that UBL 2.0 has no "official" printed representation means that the localization subcommittees are free to create any format they like for printed localized versions. I see nothing that would prevent the JPLSC from implementing its formatting suggestions in its own publication of the specification. I believe that this would apply even to the HTML version, as it, too, is just a generated artifact of the XML document. Perhaps JPLSC members such as Justsystem can approach this task as an interesting technical challenge. With regard specifically to your comment about possible ISO publication, I agree that there are problems here, but they are much more extensive than perhaps you are aware. For example, ISO guidelines for the names of files submitted for publication are not the same as ISO guidelines for the names of files to be published on CD. In fact, the entire ISO publication process appears to be based on the requirements of certain proprietary applications. I believe that ISO itself must adopt standard data formats and bring its publication processes into the new century before we can hope to achieve alignment, especially in the case of large electronic hypertexts such as UBL 2.0 that have no official paper representation. Regarding your other comments, with the close of the ballot yesterday, UBL 2.0 is now an OASIS Committee Specification and cannot be changed. However, the issues you raise appear to be ones that can easily be addressed in UBL 2.1, and we will certainly keep your input on hand for use when we begin the next minor revision cycle. For UBL 2.0, the next steps are (1) localization and (2) the creation of the Support Package, beginning with the meeting next month in Singapore. I will be grateful indeed if the JPLSC contributes the level of quality and leadership it gave to UBL 1.0 localization! Best regards, Jon
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