OASIS Unstructured Operation Markup Language TC

CFP: OASIS Unstructured Operation Markup Language (UOML) TC

Date:      Fri, 5 Jan 2007 09:30:54 -0500
From:      Mary McRae <mary.mcrae@oasis-open.org>
To:        members@lists.oasis-open.org, tc-announce@lists.oasis-open.org
Cc:        uoml@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject:   OASIS Call for Participation: Unstructured Operation Markup Language (UOML)

A new OASIS technical committee is being formed. The OASIS Unstructured Operation Markup Language (UOML) Technical Committee has been proposed by the members of OASIS listed below. The proposal, below, meets the requirements of the OASIS TC Process [a]. The TC name, statement of purpose, scope, list of deliverables, audience, and language specified in the proposal will constitute the TC's official charter. Submissions of technology for consideration by the TC, and the beginning of technical discussions, may occur no sooner than the TC's first meeting.

This TC will operate under our 2005 IPR Policy [b]. The eligibility requirements for becoming a participant in the TC at the first meeting (see details below) are that:

you must be an employee of an OASIS member organization or an individual member of OASIS
the OASIS member must sign the OASIS membership agreement [c]
you must notify the TC chair of your intent to participate at least 15 days prior to the first meeting, which
members may do by using the "Join this TC" button on the TC's public page at [d]
you must attend the first meeting of the TC, at the time and date fixed below

Of course, participants also may join the TC at a later time. OASIS and the TC welcomes all interested parties.

Non-OASIS members who wish to participate may contact us about joining OASIS [c]. In addition, the public may access the information resources maintained for each TC: a mail list archive, document repository and public comments facility, which will be linked from the TC's public home page at [d].

Please feel free to forward this announcement to any other appropriate lists. OASIS is an open standards organization; we encourage your feedback.

Regards,

Mary

Mary P McRae
Manager of TC Administration, OASIS
email: mary.mcrae@oasis-open.org
web: www.oasis-open.org

[a] http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/process.php
[b] http://www.oasis-open.org/who/intellectualproperty.php
[c] See http://www.oasis-open.org/join/
[d] http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/tc_home.php?wg_abbrev=uoml

Charter and Call For Participation

Call For Participation: OASIS Unstructured Operation Markup Language (UOML) TC

OASIS Unstructured Operation Markup Language Technical Committee

Name

OASIS Unstructured Operation Markup Language (UOML) Technical Committee

Statement of Purpose

The purpose of this TC is to create an open, XML-based operation standard for unstructured documents. The Unstructured Operation Markup Language specification will define an XML schema for universal document operations. The schema is suitable for operating printable documents, including create, view, modify, and query information, that can be printed on paper, e.g., books, magazine, newspaper, office documents, maps, drawings, blueprints, but is not restricted to these kinds of documents. There are several commercial and free applications available based on the current draft of UOML cited below, with more currently under development.

Scope

The resulting specification must meet the following requirements:

It must be suitable for printable documents
It must define universal operations to these documents, including create, view, modify, query and retrieve
It must be compatible with the W3C Extensible Markup Language (XML) v1.0 and W3C Namespaces in XML v1.0 specifications
It must process layout-based information suitable for presenting the document
It must be friendly to document related applications
It must be cross-platform and program language independent

The existing UOML.org XML format specification was developed to meet the above criteria. It is anticipated that it will be contributed to the TC as a starting point for its work. A standard for document operation will be of great utility to many users and software companies developing applications, and should be made available as soon as possible.

Deliverables

The work of this TC has been divided into two phases:

1. In the first phase, the TC will review and adapt proven and established constructs so that the resulting specification can satisfy the immediate needs of many users, as well as serve as a base for future, less restricted development. The work of this TC in the first phase will concentrate on the following areas:

establishing a mechanism and policy for extensions, preferably relying on XML namespaces,
establishing a set of 'core' elements and attributes to be supported by all implementations,
incorporating feedback from early adopters of the contributed input specification and fixing technical problems that may have been uncovered, and
ensuring that the resulting specification and documentation are consistent and of high quality.

The TC will issue a first working draft of the UOML specification by March 31, 2007.

2. In the second phase, this TC will maintain and extend the specification delivered in Phase 1 to encompass additional areas of applications or users, which may also include adapting the specification to recent developments. The work of this TC in the second phase will additionally allow for the following areas:

enabling additional areas of application
exploring new or experimental ideas for document operation
extending the expressiveness of the operation

The TC will aim to deliver the second draft as a Committee Draft by August 31, 2007 and to submit it for balloting by OASIS membership as an OASIS Standard. The TC also may choose to submit completed and approved work to other organizations in accordance with the OASIS Liaison Policy, while retaining the responsibility for the maintenance of its specifications.

Each of the drafts will include a set of XML schemas setting the vocabulary, constraints and semantics of each operation in question, and a set of written specifications that describe the elements and attributes of the schemas in plain English. The TC may deliver additional Committee Drafts approximately once per year.

Anticipated Audience

The anticipated audience for this work includes, but is not restricted to:

makers of document related applications
Docbase providers
Other specification writers that need document operations or parts of it

Language

The TC shall conduct its proceedings in English.

IPR Mode

The TC will operate under the RAND Mode under the OASIS IPR Policy.

Other Information

Non-normative information regarding the startup of the TC:

Related and Similar Work

Developers and users of office application and document formatting specifications such as the OASIS OpenDocument Format ("ODF") may find UOML useful. However, UOML addresses a different set of functions. The proposed UOML specification will operate on layout-based formatting information, rather than content-based formatting information (such as ODF). UOML will limit its functions to abstracting data from paper form, and defines an operation interface, rather than a file storage format.

Anticipated Contributions

It is expected that the existing UOML specification will be contributed to the TC by Sursen Co., along with possible additional contributions from HanWang Technology Co., TRS Information Technology Co., Redflag Chinese 2000 Software Co., and the Institute of Software, Chinese Academy of Sciences. [Note: see Additional References below]

Proposed Working Title

UOML specification

Proposed Date, Time, and Location of First TC Meeting

Date: February 6, 2007
Time: 11:00 AM Eastern U.S.
Duration: 2 Hours
Mode: Teleconference
Telephone: To be decided prior to the first meeting
Sponsor: Sursen Co.

Ongoing Schedule

Bi-weekly 90 Minute teleconferences sponsored by Sursen Co.

Proposers

Fang Gu, fanggmy@126.com, Changfeng Alliance
Andy Lee, javola@vip.sina.com, Changfeng Alliance
Charles H Schulz, charles-h.schulz@arsaperta.com, Ars Aperta
Alex Wang, dlwang@sursen.com, Sursen Co.
Liwei Wang, wangliwei@sursen.com, Sursen Co.
Bo Yan, yanbo@sursen.com, Sursen Co.

Convener

Alex Wang, CEO of Sursen Co., dlwang@sursen.com

Additional References [*Not part of the TC proposal as submitted]

UOML.org web site
"About UOML." — "UOML is the abbreviation of Unstructured Operation Markup Language. It defines a universally representative unstructured document operating language through the abstract description of unstructured documents. The application program can realize document-related operation through UOML application, including document organization, page description, information safety, index and search, content extraction, fonts management, storage management, plug-in mechanism, and script description etc. UOML is expressed with standard XML, featuring mighty compatibility and openness. At present [2007-01], it has defined and completed seven major functions, viz. document organization, page description, information safety, content extraction, fonts management, storage management, and plug-in mechanism. The operational interface designed for unstructured document processing through UOML standard can well solve the bottlenecks during unstructured document processing at present, such as different technical platforms for unstructured documents, various document formats, and diversified access interface etc..."
"Why UOML Standard." — "As thousands of document formats exist in the world, it is important to form a standard to realize the interoperation among different documents. All of the former attempts are limited to document storage format standards; for Simple format like TXT can't meet the need of various software, For complicated formats like PDF, only few company can afford the R&D cost and owns enough professional technology required to handle it among hundreds of thousands software company? All in all, format standards have been proved to be infeasible by industrial practice for over a decade. Now, the advent of UOML, an operation standard, provides a best way for document interoperation.
UOML: The best way for Document Interoperation. By Alex Wang (Founder/Chairman, Sursen Co. Presentation given at the OASIS Symposium in San Francisco, in May 2006. Posted September 01, 2006 to the uoml-discuss list. [source, posting, also source PPT]
UOML Manual Posted September 08, 2006. "The article describes the definitions, logic models and object Schema descriptions of Document Operation Language (UOML) based on unstructured data. Unstructured data cannot be abstracted to a three-layer model of structured data. For written documents of unstructured data whose logic depth possibly reach the tenth layer, we take the logic model as a reference to abstractly define a universal and representative UOML... UOML is the operation interface orienting written information processing, which separates the core processing technologies (such as description, storage, processing, management and presentation) for written information from actual applications. The application model of UOML is implemented through the DocBase technology. According to the experiences from developing database systems, the implemented DocBase technologies divide industries in the field of written information processing, and forming the situation similar to database industry..." [source, GZIP doc]
Announcement: New OASIS discussion List: Unstructured Operation Markup Language (UOML). "The OASIS members listed below plan to form the "OASIS Unstructured Operation Markup Language (UOML) TC", and wish to begin by using a publicly subscribable discussion list to [discuss their plans, and] welcome more members to join this TC... The Unstructured Operation Markup Language specification defines an XML schema for universal document operations. A version of the schema already has been developed, and is described at http://www.uoml.org/uoml_english.htm... The proposers plan to contribute it to the TC when it is formed, for further review, discussion and refinement. The schema is suitable for operating written documents, including create, view, modify, query information that can be printed in paper, e.g. books, magazine, newspaper, office documents, maps, drawings, blueprints, but is not restricted to these kinds of documents. There are several commercial and free applications available based on UOML, with more currently under development. A standard for document operation will be of great utility to many users and software companies developing applications, and should be made available as soon as possible.
application/vnd.uoml+xml. IANA Registration. Encoding considerations: UOML documents have an encoding of 7bit (US-ASCII). Security considerations: UOML is a XML-based markup language. For general security considerations see section 10 of RFC 3023. UOML documents contain no active or executable contents. Data integrity: To verify that the data of an UOML document has not been changed, destroyed or lost in an unauthorized or accidental manner, it is possible to check the hash sum and / or digital signature in the document's meta element. Data confidentiality: To ensure that the data of an UOML document stored on uniqueobject.com is accessible only to those authorized to have access, the meta element contains information about the access rights. Furthermore it is possible to encrypt parts of the document. Interoperability considerations: It is possible to transform parts of UOML documents into other XML formats, e.g. XHTML or XSL-FO.

Prepared by Robin Cover for The XML Cover Pages archive.

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The proposal, below, meets the requirements of the OASIS TC Process [a]. The TC name, statement of purpose, scope, list of deliverables, audience, and language specified in the proposal will constitute the TC's official charter. Submissions of technology for consideration by the TC, and the beginning of technical discussions, may occur no sooner than the TC's first meeting. This TC will operate under our 2005 IPR Policy [b]. The eligibility requirements for becoming a participant in the TC at the first meeting (see details below) are that: you must be an employee of an OASIS member organization or an individual member of OASIS the OASIS member must sign the OASIS membership agreement [c] you must notify the TC chair of your intent to participate at least 15 days prior to the first meeting, which members may do by using the "Join this TC" button on the TC's public page at [d] you must attend the first meeting of the TC, at the time and date fixed below Of course, participants also may join the TC at a later time. OASIS and the TC welcomes all interested parties. Non-OASIS members who wish to participate may contact us about joining OASIS [c]. In addition, the public may access the information resources maintained for each TC: a mail list archive, document repository and public comments facility, which will be linked from the TC's public home page at [d]. Please feel free to forward this announcement to any other appropriate lists. OASIS is an open standards organization; we encourage your feedback. Regards, Mary Mary P McRae Manager of TC Administration, OASIS email: mary.mcrae@oasis-open.org web: www.oasis-open.org [a] http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/process.php [b] http://www.oasis-open.org/who/intellectualproperty.php [c] See http://www.oasis-open.org/join/ [d] http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/tc_home.php?wg_abbrev=uoml Charter and Call For Participation Call For Participation: OASIS Unstructured Operation Markup Language (UOML) TC OASIS Unstructured Operation Markup Language Technical Committee Name OASIS Unstructured Operation Markup Language (UOML) Technical Committee Statement of Purpose The purpose of this TC is to create an open, XML-based operation standard for unstructured documents. The Unstructured Operation Markup Language specification will define an XML schema for universal document operations. The schema is suitable for operating printable documents, including create, view, modify, and query information, that can be printed on paper, e.g., books, magazine, newspaper, office documents, maps, drawings, blueprints, but is not restricted to these kinds of documents. There are several commercial and free applications available based on the current draft of UOML cited below, with more currently under development. Scope The resulting specification must meet the following requirements: It must be suitable for printable documents It must define universal operations to these documents, including create, view, modify, query and retrieve It must be compatible with the W3C Extensible Markup Language (XML) v1.0 and W3C Namespaces in XML v1.0 specifications It must process layout-based information suitable for presenting the document It must be friendly to document related applications It must be cross-platform and program language independent The existing UOML.org XML format specification was developed to meet the above criteria. It is anticipated that it will be contributed to the TC as a starting point for its work. A standard for document operation will be of great utility to many users and software companies developing applications, and should be made available as soon as possible. Deliverables The work of this TC has been divided into two phases: 1. In the first phase, the TC will review and adapt proven and established constructs so that the resulting specification can satisfy the immediate needs of many users, as well as serve as a base for future, less restricted development. The work of this TC in the first phase will concentrate on the following areas: establishing a mechanism and policy for extensions, preferably relying on XML namespaces, establishing a set of 'core' elements and attributes to be supported by all implementations, incorporating feedback from early adopters of the contributed input specification and fixing technical problems that may have been uncovered, and ensuring that the resulting specification and documentation are consistent and of high quality. The TC will issue a first working draft of the UOML specification by March 31, 2007. 2. In the second phase, this TC will maintain and extend the specification delivered in Phase 1 to encompass additional areas of applications or users, which may also include adapting the specification to recent developments. The work of this TC in the second phase will additionally allow for the following areas: enabling additional areas of application exploring new or experimental ideas for document operation extending the expressiveness of the operation The TC will aim to deliver the second draft as a Committee Draft by August 31, 2007 and to submit it for balloting by OASIS membership as an OASIS Standard. The TC also may choose to submit completed and approved work to other organizations in accordance with the OASIS Liaison Policy, while retaining the responsibility for the maintenance of its specifications. Each of the drafts will include a set of XML schemas setting the vocabulary, constraints and semantics of each operation in question, and a set of written specifications that describe the elements and attributes of the schemas in plain English. The TC may deliver additional Committee Drafts approximately once per year. Anticipated Audience The anticipated audience for this work includes, but is not restricted to: makers of document related applications Docbase providers Other specification writers that need document operations or parts of it Language The TC shall conduct its proceedings in English. IPR Mode The TC will operate under the RAND Mode under the OASIS IPR Policy. Other Information Non-normative information regarding the startup of the TC: Related and Similar Work Developers and users of office application and document formatting specifications such as the OASIS OpenDocument Format ("ODF") may find UOML useful. However, UOML addresses a different set of functions. The proposed UOML specification will operate on layout-based formatting information, rather than content-based formatting information (such as ODF). UOML will limit its functions to abstracting data from paper form, and defines an operation interface, rather than a file storage format. Anticipated Contributions It is expected that the existing UOML specification will be contributed to the TC by Sursen Co., along with possible additional contributions from HanWang Technology Co., TRS Information Technology Co., Redflag Chinese 2000 Software Co., and the Institute of Software, Chinese Academy of Sciences. [Note: see Additional References below] Proposed Working Title UOML specification Proposed Date, Time, and Location of First TC Meeting Date: February 6, 2007 Time: 11:00 AM Eastern U.S. Duration: 2 Hours Mode: Teleconference Telephone: To be decided prior to the first meeting Sponsor: Sursen Co. Ongoing Schedule Bi-weekly 90 Minute teleconferences sponsored by Sursen Co. Proposers Fang Gu, fanggmy@126.com, Changfeng Alliance Andy Lee, javola@vip.sina.com, Changfeng Alliance Charles H Schulz, charles-h.schulz@arsaperta.com, Ars Aperta Alex Wang, dlwang@sursen.com, Sursen Co. Liwei Wang, wangliwei@sursen.com, Sursen Co. Bo Yan, yanbo@sursen.com, Sursen Co. Convener Alex Wang, CEO of Sursen Co., dlwang@sursen.com *Additional References [Not part of the TC proposal as submitted]** UOML.org web site "About UOML." — "UOML is the abbreviation of Unstructured Operation Markup Language. It defines a universally representative unstructured document operating language through the abstract description of unstructured documents. The application program can realize document-related operation through UOML application, including document organization, page description, information safety, index and search, content extraction, fonts management, storage management, plug-in mechanism, and script description etc. UOML is expressed with standard XML, featuring mighty compatibility and openness. At present [2007-01], it has defined and completed seven major functions, viz. document organization, page description, information safety, content extraction, fonts management, storage management, and plug-in mechanism. The operational interface designed for unstructured document processing through UOML standard can well solve the bottlenecks during unstructured document processing at present, such as different technical platforms for unstructured documents, various document formats, and diversified access interface etc..." "Why UOML Standard." — "As thousands of document formats exist in the world, it is important to form a standard to realize the interoperation among different documents. All of the former attempts are limited to document storage format standards; for Simple format like TXT can't meet the need of various software, For complicated formats like PDF, only few company can afford the R&D cost and owns enough professional technology required to handle it among hundreds of thousands software company? All in all, format standards have been proved to be infeasible by industrial practice for over a decade. Now, the advent of UOML, an operation standard, provides a best way for document interoperation. UOML: The best way for Document Interoperation. By Alex Wang (Founder/Chairman, Sursen Co. Presentation given at the OASIS Symposium in San Francisco, in May 2006. Posted September 01, 2006 to the uoml-discuss list. [source, posting, also source PPT] UOML Manual Posted September 08, 2006. "The article describes the definitions, logic models and object Schema descriptions of Document Operation Language (UOML) based on unstructured data. Unstructured data cannot be abstracted to a three-layer model of structured data. For written documents of unstructured data whose logic depth possibly reach the tenth layer, we take the logic model as a reference to abstractly define a universal and representative UOML... UOML is the operation interface orienting written information processing, which separates the core processing technologies (such as description, storage, processing, management and presentation) for written information from actual applications. The application model of UOML is implemented through the DocBase technology. According to the experiences from developing database systems, the implemented DocBase technologies divide industries in the field of written information processing, and forming the situation similar to database industry..." [source, GZIP doc] Announcement: New OASIS discussion List: Unstructured Operation Markup Language (UOML). "The OASIS members listed below plan to form the "OASIS Unstructured Operation Markup Language (UOML) TC", and wish to begin by using a publicly subscribable discussion list to [discuss their plans, and] welcome more members to join this TC... The Unstructured Operation Markup Language specification defines an XML schema for universal document operations. A version of the schema already has been developed, and is described at http://www.uoml.org/uoml_english.htm... The proposers plan to contribute it to the TC when it is formed, for further review, discussion and refinement. The schema is suitable for operating written documents, including create, view, modify, query information that can be printed in paper, e.g. books, magazine, newspaper, office documents, maps, drawings, blueprints, but is not restricted to these kinds of documents. There are several commercial and free applications available based on UOML, with more currently under development. A standard for document operation will be of great utility to many users and software companies developing applications, and should be made available as soon as possible. application/vnd.uoml+xml. IANA Registration. Encoding considerations: UOML documents have an encoding of 7bit (US-ASCII). Security considerations: UOML is a XML-based markup language. For general security considerations see section 10 of RFC 3023. UOML documents contain no active or executable contents. Data integrity: To verify that the data of an UOML document has not been changed, destroyed or lost in an unauthorized or accidental manner, it is possible to check the hash sum and / or digital signature in the document's meta element. Data confidentiality: To ensure that the data of an UOML document stored on uniqueobject.com is accessible only to those authorized to have access, the meta element contains information about the access rights. Furthermore it is possible to encrypt parts of the document. Interoperability considerations: It is possible to transform parts of UOML documents into other XML formats, e.g. XHTML or XSL-FO. Prepared by Robin Cover for The XML Cover Pages archive.