2006-105 Meeting Minutes

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February 28, 2006

PDF/UA Commitee Working Group 

PDF-UA 2006-105

(DRAFT) Meeting Minutes

February 28, 2005

3:00 P.M. – 5:00 P.M. EST

Conference Call

Tuesday, February 28, 2006

Introductions

Angy Brooks                            Independent Accessibility Consultant

Joe Clark                                 Independent Accessibility Consultant

Julia Drey                                 Criterion 508 Solutions

Betsy Fanning                           AIIM

Loretta Guarino-Reid                Adobe Systems

Duff Johnson                            Document Solutions (Chair)

Greg Pisocky                            Adobe Systems

Neil Soiffer                               Design Science

Approval of Agenda for February 28, 2006 PDF-UA 2006-106

Approved Soiffer / Brooks

Approval of Minutes for February 14, 2006 PDF-UA 2006-104

The previous minutes were late in arriving; they were subsequently approved upon delivery without objection when presented by the Chair. Johnson/Soiffer (at end of meeting).

Report on Previous Meetings Action Items

The discussion and assignment of subcommittees will be deferred until next meeting.

AIIM Annual Report

AIIM requires an Annual Report prior to May's AIIM conference. Report must describe progress made since the last annual report. The report needs to discuss goals direction and accomplishments. There is a need to get portions of the evolving standard on paper.

Discuss Drafting of Shell for PDF/UA Spec and Process for Completing Sections

Initial start, PDF/UA looked to the WCAG 2.0 and determined how the WCAG guidelines could be applied to PDF. New approach would be to adopt shall and other ISO constructions and associate them with the existing PDF Specification above all, because that is what is being talked about. For the PDF/UA model the group is examining sections of the PDF/A draft and PDF/E specifications that went to ISO and two drafts of the PDF/X specification.

These are instructive for their form and their language. Lists of shall statements and the types of document structures for application to the PDF/UA standard. These are crucial elements for what this working group is attempting to do. We are trying to focus in on the core tasks of the specification writing process.

It was noted the total page count in the model specifications was not that large. A 300 page specification is not what is called for.

The model specifications are riddled with references to the current PDF specification. Another observation there are lots of non-controversial items. For example, every PDF file begins with %PDF and the specification ID. We can quickly flesh out the document with these required, non controversial elements.

Our objective is to quickly develop a draft specification. We can begin by developing Headings of concern. Much of this work has progressed; it just involves committing written portions to the document.

Lately we have been focused on tables. The results of our tables work should be part of this first writing along with the various options: such as the table Algorithms we have been pondering for the specification or proposal of algorithms that imply a new element type.

The Framework and Organization of Headings

It was agreed to begin committing the non-controversial elements to the draft and to develop the section on tables. The general items such as Forward, Normative References, etc. can be dealt with in short order. We have a template and we should get the headings in there and flesh out the discussion of tables.

Put the table discussion in the draft spec and develop the table section somewhat. The algorithms under consideration have been documented in previous minutes.

Establishment of Additional Headings

Using the topic of Mathematics as an established heading: Three possible approaches to treating the discussion of heading treatment are possible:

1. Minimalist: Math should be represented in a way that maintains it structure
2. Math should be represented in a way that contains its structure and here is a recommendation for one way to do it.
3. Math should have a structure and this is the way it should be done.

Heading Recommendations

In addition to Mathematics, music, science, and chemistry have been put forth.

If music is selected, PDF/UA needs to consider other non linguistic notations such as phonetic notation. Language codes abound. An example is movement notation (small number of writing systems that attempt to notate movement). Under nonlinguistic type we should provide samples.  Combining forms, ligatures, writing direction, horizontal and vertical. Encoding of forms, that are non visual, Encoded Braille in a PDF (it would be possible to produce a Unicode document in PDF that is nothing but Braille).

Other Proposed Headings:

• Footnotes, endnotes, subheadings under the topic of logical structure
• FLASH, multi-media alternatives, structured graphics,
• z-order or stacking order (layers)
• Navigational elements, annotations,
• Initial object state and change of state,
• Order, grouping, mutual exclusion (now crossing over into forms territory),
• "Segmentation" PDF/A1 for instance says something about whenever a space characters to indicate word breaks.  (Spaces between words and sentences).
• Pie Menus, pie tables. Nucleus and data expands (Pie menus / pie tables)

Assignments:

• Greg Pisocky, to have minutes available no later than 1 day after the meeting adjourns.
• Joe Clark refresh proposal in language similar to Loretta's however Joe did not get the reminder.
• Duff Johnson develop list of problem classes for testing of algorithms for submission to Ian Hickson. Something more concrete on paper needed to be developed before submitting to Ian. In other words, a more concrete proposal should be developed before imposing on Ian's time.
• Joe Clark to ask Jacques Distler for advice re: MathML
• Angy Brooks to organize the headings and drop them into the ISO template.
• Duff Johnson will copy and paste the copy thus presented for algorithms 1 -4 and paraphrase the content of Steve Ferg's algorithm. Description of purpose, the relevant shall statements.
• Duff Johnson will take the algorithms and send them to Angy Brooks in some form. I am looking for a volunteer to write the obvious stuff.
• Joe Clark develop a series of short "shall" statements about the rudiments of table structure.
• Neil Soiffer volunteers to write text for the Math section

Next Meeting Time:

Tuesday, March 14, 3 - 5 pm Eastern