Cover Pages: XML Daily Newslink: Thursday, 01 October 2009

A Cover Pages Publication http://xml.coverpages.org/
Provided by OASIS and Sponsor Members
Edited by Robin Cover

This issue of XML Daily Newslink is sponsored by:
Oracle Corporation http://www.oracle.com

Headlines

DocBook Schema Version 5.0 Submitted for Ballot as an OASIS Standard
Location-to-Service Translation Protocol (LoST) Extension: ServiceListBoundary
Identity Products Pass Liberty Interoperable SAML 2.0 Interop Testing
W3C Publishes First Public Working Drafts for SVG Color 1.2
Red Hat Asks Supreme Court to Nix Software Patents

DocBook Schema Version 5.0 Submitted for Ballot as an OASIS Standard
Norman Walsh (ed), OASIS Approved Committee Specification

Members of the OASIS DocBook Technical Committee have submitted an approved Committee Specification of "The DocBook Schema Version 5.0" for consideration as an OASIS Standard. Statements of Use have been provided by Flatirons, IONA Solutions, and Pearson PLC. Voting will be held October 16-31, 2009.

"DocBook is a general purpose XML schema particularly well suited to books and papers about computer hardware and software (though it is by no means limited to these applications).

The Version 5.0 release is a complete rewrite of DocBook in RELAX NG. The intent of this rewrite is to produce a schema that is true to the spirit of DocBook while simultaneously removing inconsistencies that have arisen as a natural consequence of DocBook's long, slow evolution. The Technical Committee has taken this opportunity to simplify a number of content models and tighten constraints where RELAX NG makes that possible.

OASIS members work on structured information standards for documents that run the gamut from online catalogs to data sheets, from technical manuals to office memoranda, whether output to paper, CD-ROM, wireless devices, the Web, or all of the above. DocBook is one of the OASIS specification development activities supporting Document-Centric Applications. DocBook and DITA are both used for technical documentation. To a lesser extent, ODF is sometimes used with DocBook and limited conversion between them is possible to a certain extent..."

Location-to-Service Translation Protocol (LoST) Extension: ServiceListBoundary
Karl Heinz Wolf (ed), IETF Internet Draft

Members of the IETF Emergency Context Resolution with Internet Technologies (ECRIT) Working Group have published an updated Internet Draft for the specification Location-to-Service Translation Protocol (LoST) Extension: ServiceListBoundary.

LoST (A Location-to-Service Translation Protocol), as defined in Standards Track RFC 5222, "describes an XML-based protocol for mapping service identifiers and geodetic or civic location information to service contact URIs. In particular, it can be used to determine the location-appropriate Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP) for emergency services. LoST maps service identifiers and location information to service contact URIs. If a LoST client wants to discover available services for a particular location, it will perform a 'listServicesByLocation' query to the LoST server. However, the response from the LoST server does not provide information about the geographical region for which the returned service list is valid. Therefore, this document proposes a ServiceListBoundary to assist the client to not miss a change in available services when moving."

Details: "Location based service providers as well as Public Safety Answering Points (PSAPs) only serve a specific geographic region. Therefore the LoST protocol defines the ServiceBoundary, which indicates the service region for a specific service URL. However, not all services are available everywhere. Clients can discover available services for a particular location by the 'listServicesByLocation' query. The LoST server returns services list identifiers where the client does the initial LoST mapping and discovers the dialstrings for these services. Then the client moves, refreshing the service mappings when necessary as told by the ServiceBoundary. However, when arriving in location B (close to a mountain), service sos.mountainrescue is available, which was not available in location A. Nevertheless, the client does not detect this, because only the mapping of the initially discovered services (police, ambulance, fire) are refreshed. Consequently, the dialstring for the mountain rescue is not known by the client, and the emergency call to the mountain rescue service will certainly fail... Since the LoST protocol has the ServiceBoundary concept in order to avoid that clients continuously try to refresh the mapping of a specific service, a ServiceListBoundary would provide a similar mechanism for service lists..."

Identity Products Pass Liberty Interoperable SAML 2.0 Interop Testing
Staff, Liberty Alliance Announcement

"Kantara Initiative and Liberty Alliance announced that identity products from Entrust, IBM, Microsoft, Novell, Ping Identity, SAP and Siemens have passed Liberty Interoperable SAML 2.0 interoperability testing. These vendors participated in the third Liberty Interoperable full-matrix testing event to be administered by the Drummond Group Inc., and the first event to test products against the new eGovernment SAML 2.0 profile v1.5 recently released by Liberty Alliance. Web-based full-matrix testing allows vendors to participate from anywhere in the world and features rigorous processes for ensuring products meet SAML 2.0 interoperability requirements for open, secure and privacy-respecting federated identity management.

This year's program featured enhanced SAML 2.0 testing scenarios between Service Provider (SP) and Identity Provider (IdP). The eGovernment SAML 2.0 profile and its requisite test plan have been developed by Liberty Alliance with input from the Danish, New Zealand and U.S. governments. Testing processes for the eGovernment profile included multiple SP logout scenarios, requested authentication context comparisons, and other aspects of SAML 2.0 necessary to meet interoperability, privacy, security and transparency requirements in the global eGovernment sector..."

Gerry Gebel, VP and service director at Burton Group: "SAML 2.0 is the most popular federation protocol in the industry and utilized by commercial, educational, and government institutions around the globe. Federated single sign-on demand is growing, spurred by broad adoption of SaaS applications and the general increase in collaboration among business partners in every industry. The Liberty Interoperable program is instrumental to sustaining successful deployments in advanced federation scenarios where multiple products are in use."

W3C Publishes First Public Working Drafts for SVG Color 1.2
Chris Lilley and Anthony Grasso (eds), W3C Technical Reports

Members of the W3C SVG Working Group have published First Public Working Drafts for SVG Color 1.2, Part 1: Primer and SVG Color 1.2, Part 2: Language. Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) brings the powerful combination of interactive, animated two-dimensional vector graphics and Extensible Markup Language (XML). The SVG Working Group invites comments on the draft specification; acceptance of the W3C archiving policy is requested automatically upon first post to the lists.

"SVG Color extends the control of color, relative to SVG Tiny 1.2, in three ways. Firstly by adding an additional color space for interpolation and compositing; this means that colors are no longer constrained to the sRGB gamut. Secondly by extending the syntax for Paint, thus allowing colors to be specified as calibrated (ICC and named) and uncalibrated ('device') color. Thirdly, it mandates the color management of embedded images.

SVG Color 1.2, Part 1: Primer explains the technical background and gives guidelines on how to use the SVG Color specification with SVG 1.2 Tiny and SVG 1.2 Full modules. Because of its scalable, geometric nature, SVG is inherently suited to both print and screen output. The same colors can be output, using an ICC-based color managed workflow on the printer and an sRGB fallback approximation on screen. This has been true since SVG 1.0, and so SVG has been used in print workflows (for example, in combination with XSL FO) as well as on screen...

SVG Color 1.2, Part 2: Language defines features of the Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) Language that are specifically for color-managed environments. including document interchange, publishing, and high-quality display.

See also: the W3C SVG Working Group

Red Hat Asks Supreme Court to Nix Software Patents
Charles Babcock, InformationWeek

"Red Hat has filed a friend of the court brief (amicus brief) with the U.S. Supreme Court asking it to uphold a lower court's ruling that software isn't patentable. Red Hat is not a direct party but took a position against software patents in the case of Bernard Bilski and Rand Warsaw versus David Kappos, Undersecretary of Commerce and director of the U.S. Patent Office. The case is now before the Supreme Court. Rob Tiller, an assistant general counsel at Red Hat, filed the brief in what he said was a rare chance to attack the patent issue head-on: 'Our patent system is supposed to foster innovation, but for open source and software in general, it does the opposite'...

Tiller's brief argues that under the less defined, 'useful' standard, "there are now hundreds of thousands of patents on abstract subject matter and tens of thousands of new patents are granted each year for software and business methods that were previously excluded... the flood of patents makes it virtually impossible to rule out the possibility that a new software product may arguably infringe some patent, and that danger stifles innovation and will eventually turn away new investments in software'... Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst in a blog post said Red Hat will continue fighting to curtail software patents..."

See also: the Red Hat blog


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