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In article <38169@sun.uucp> JPALME@QZCOM.bitnet (Jacob Palme QZ) writes:
() There is a draft international standard, [called ODA by ISO].

Actually, the DIS 8613 parts 1 to 5 have been promoted to IS status by
the pertinent working group ISO/IEC JTC1/SC18/WG3 recently (parts 6 to
8 probably will be promoted by .../WG5 this month), and it is highly
likely that CCITT will adopt the same wording as T.411 to T.418.
ODA is composed of seven parts:

        Part 1 (T.411): General overview
        Part 2 (T.412): Document structures (see below)
        Part 3: There is no part 3
        Part 4 (T.414): Document profile (a header describing a document)
        Part 5 (T.415): Interchange formats

Instead of lumping the document content with the document structures, there
are three more parts defining ``content architectures'':

        Part 6 (T.416): Character content architecture
        Part 7 (T.417): Raster graphics content architecture
        Part 8 (T.418): Geometric graphics content architecture
                T.419: (A funny Videotex compatibility content architecture
                        not adopted by ISO)

() ODA/ODIF supports both a logical text description (chapters,
() paragraphs etc.) and a physical description (layout, fonts etc.)
() in parallell for the same text.

In ODA terminology, this is ``processable text'' (text that can be processed
such as edited and formatted) vs. ``formatted text'' (text that only can
be printed but cannot be subjected to further processing).
The interesting part is, of course, the interchange of processable documents
(interchange of formatted documents can be had with other ways such as
Postscript).  ODA goes pretty far in separating the logical structure
of a document from its style aspects, very much in the line of current
development of text processing systems.

In article <38282@sun.uucp> morgan@jessica.Stanford.EDU writes:

() Some interesting initial questions are:
()
() * How do we get the ODA/ODIF standards documents?

Buy them from ISO, as soon as the standards have been printed,
or buy the CCITT blue books, as soon as these have been printed (by the
end of 1988).

() * How does ODA/ODIF compare with IBM's DCA, etc, which seems to be
() becoming a defacto interchange standard in this country?

No comment (how does C compare to IBM 1130 machine language?), however,
I would like to take issue with the statement that DCA is going to be
something like a standard -- IBM would have to converge at a ``standard''
idea what DCA is going to be, first.  This is very similar to the
open systems (TCP/IP, X.25) vs. SNA debate; if you want interoperability,
you know where to look.  The only standard to also keep in consideration
is ISO 8879 (SGML).  ODA and SGML are sometimes considered to be competing
standard, but, to the contrary, they combine in beautiful ways (but I'm
not going to open this can of worms in this message, for short, SGML is
a syntax to exchange document structures; one of the interchange formats
of ODA, the ODL format, uses SGML, while the other one uses ASN.1/X.209).

() * How does ODA/ODIF relate to something like PostScript, which
() (especially with its soon-to-arrive screen display versions) is an
() interchange standard of a different sort?

Postscript is an excellent interchange format for ``formatted'' documents
(to use ODA terminology).  What makes ODA interesting is its potential
as an interchange format (as well as system architecture model) for the
exchange of ``processable'' (i.e. source form) documents.  You can compare
this to exchanging the Troff or TeX form of a document instead of its
Postscript rendition, which gives you the ability to further edit the
document, or format it in other ways than those available to the originator.

() * Are there implementations of ODA/ODIF?

Certainly not, the WG3/WG5 editors are busy writing together the final
text of the standard.  However, there are some partial implementations
of the DIS versions of 8613.  Every year the ESPRIT project ``PODA''
has an interoperability show at the Hanover fair; each time they
implement a larger subset of the standard.

() * Is ODA/ODIF capable of rendering the sorts of hypermedia things we
() (well, I at least) expect to do?

How do you render hypermedia?  ODA is capable of specifying (and
transporting) the semantics of documents.  Work is under way in WG3 to
extend the ODA model by some form of ``active'' or ``automatic''
document.

() * Is there already a mailing list/newsgroup on this topic anywhere?

I'm sure interested to start one.

() * And, um, what do the letters stand for?

Office Document Architecture (for hysterical reasons, a move to change
it to Open systems Document Architecture was not accepted due to
strong opposition from some national member bodies of WG3).

Greetings, Carsten Bormann
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