Editor's Note: Minutes received 7/27 CURRENT_MEETING_REPORT_ Reported by Peter Kirstein/UCL Minutes of the Office Document Architecture Working Group (ODA) The Chair repeated that for the ODA Working Group, some papers are available in an electronic form on the UCL-CS info-server: ``info-server@cs.ucl.ac.uk''. Concern was expressed that a number of people, who had expressed previous interest, might not be on the mailing list; the Chair promised to ensure that those who had attended the IETF ODA Working Group would be on the mailing list. 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 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 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 ?? Q4 92 UPC UCL started shipping SLATE/ODA v1.2 in February 1992; this is based on SLATE v1.2. Few have tested it. BBN is planning to bring out V2 of SLATE during Q4 92. From a user viewpoint, this has better graphics and font support, supports a fuller character set, and should be easier to configure; nevertheless, for reasons given below, we expect SLATE/ODA v2 to be ready for shipping only during Q1 1993 at the earliest - and not for this stage of the Pilot. The Bull product has been released; 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 have been delivered to UCL. They are still being tested for interoperability by UCL. 1 The availability situation of the WORDPERFECT/ODA system from University Politechnic of Catalonia has kept changing. There has been a contractual problem in getting that version used in the Pilot, because it included some software from ICL - which UPC had not had permission to release for the Pilot. UPC has now stated that they intend to have software entirely of their own available for the September 1992 - this will be made available to UCL for in September; UCL hopes that it will be usable on the Pilot during Q4 1992. During an earlier discussion, it became clear that there was a requirement to use a large number of National characters; for instance support for the specific Nordic ones were requested by one participant, and of Greek ones by another. It was considered desirable to use character set switching according to ISO 8859/4 in the long term. The SLATE V2 system now uses ISO 8859/1; it was not clear who else supported it. The Bull implementation is expected to support a richer character set on the next version; we are discussing the requirements with them. No information was available on the Apple, DEC or Xerox ones. A number of small pilots were mentioned - a Nordic one, one based on Mitre, one organised by UCL in Europe, and a small one at NASA-Ames. There was interest in broader pilots. The Chair promised to set up a list of ODA and normal mailboxes. This list will be available from ietf-osi-oda, and the interested parties will be requested to provide their details to the Chair. So far, most use of the systems have been using X.400 for transport; interest has been expressed in working with the Multi-media Mail format (MIME). This is in accordance with the Charter, since this is a Draft Internet Standard. The Chair mentioned that ODA was a recognised Content Type in MIME, and stated that at least the BBN/UCL SLATE now supports MIME. He promised to investigate when there could be more general integration of MIME with some of the ODA products, and report this to the Distribution List. It had been expected that there would be substantial experience with the Pilot prior to the July IETF meeting in Boston. In practice there has been little such experience by IETF members. Future Extensions The current Profile used in all the ODA document activities described here is the Q112 Profile. A new Profile called FOD26 is in the process of ratification. 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 (e.g., Bull, DEC, IBM, ICL, Siemens-Nixdorf and UNISYS as part of the ODA Consortium). In the last few months, it has become clear that the manufacturers are going to provide most of their further products only according to the FOD26 version. Pending the ratification of the Standard, and the availability of Toolkits like those being produced by ODAC above, no additional new ODA products that can be expected; all enhancements will come in the FOD26 form. 2 In view of the above, it would seem advisable to continue pilots based on the products mentioned above, but not to envisage new products prior to Spring 1993. As far as the SLATE/ODA activity, it does not seem sensible to provide anything other than SLATE/ODA v2 - based on SLATE v2 and FOD 26. Security Extensions The Chair mentioned that UCL had prepared a subsystem that implemented the ODA extensions specified in the Addendum to the Standard - subject to the vital restriction that the extensions apply to whole documents, not also to the separate ODA portions in the document. The extension had been integrated into one version of their SLATE 1.2 systems, and could be adapted to the Bull and UPC ones (and possibly others); it would be used in the PASSWORD Pilot in Europe, which was piloting a number of security services (including confidentiality, integrity and authenticity for document interchange). While it was considered an interesting development, it was agreed that this system would not be used in the IETF ODA Pilot during the remainder of 1992 for two reasons: 1. It was considered undesirable to duplicate the functionality of Privacy Enhanced Mail (PEM), before PEM had been properly piloted; 2. It was considered unnecessary to introduce yet further functionality until the present Pilots were more advanced. Future Meetings While the attendance at this IETF ODA Working Group meeting was better than that at the previous one, we propose not to have meeting in November - but to postpone a further full meeting until the March 1993 IETF. It is hoped that by this time there would be extensive Pilots, and that the timing of FOD26 products would be clearer. Reference 1. D. Sadok et al: The ODA Document Convertors, UCL Internal Report No 2, Version 4, July 1992. People so far Receiving SLATE/ODA from UCL FIRST NAME SURNAME ORGANISATION CITY COUNTRY Velu Sinhu OKIDATA Framingham, Mass USA Jim Knowles NASA-AMES Mountain View, CA USA Mark Stansfield Paisley Coll Paisley Scotland Mark Savela Telecom Res Otakaari Finland Erik Lillevold NTRA Kjeller Norway Encarna Pastor U. Pol. Madrid Madrid Spain 3 Knut Holm SINTEF Trondheim Norway Trevor Hales CSIRO Carlton, Vic Australia Naresh Kumar Touch Com Campbell, CA USA Andrew Macpherson BNR-Europe Harlow, Essex UK Paul Kennedy DEC Galway Ireland Attendees Harald Alvestrand Harald.Alvestrand@delab.sintef.no Jisoo Geiter geiter@gateway.mitre.org David Katinsky dmk@rutgers.edu Peter Kirstein kirstein@cs.ucl.ac.uk Jim Knowles jknowles@trident.arc.nasa.gov Walter Lazear lazear@gateway.mitre.org Thomas Lenggenhager lenggenhager@switch.ch Mark Needleman mhn@stubbs.ucop.edu Sam Nicholson scion@pblx.knox.tn.us Rakesh Patel rapatel@hardees.rutgers.edu Robert Reschly reschly@brl.mil Jim Romaguera romaguera@cosine-mhs.switch.ch Vincent Sgro sgro@cs.rutgers.edu Sandro Wallach sandro@elf.com Peter Williams p.williams@uk.ac.ucl.cs Steven Winnett swinnett@bbn.com 4