Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!seismo!sundc!pitstop!sun!tombre@crin.crin.fr From: tombre@crin.crin.fr (Karl Tombre) Newsgroups: comp.text.desktop Subject: Re: ODA/ODIF Message-ID: <38850@sun.uucp> Date: 14 Jan 88 17:47:45 GMT Sender: news@sun.uucp Distribution: comp Lines: 107 Approved: desktop-request%plaid@sun.com >Yes, let's hear more about ODA/ODIF. As with so many convergences in OK I'll try to give some information... Disclaimer : I personally am no specialist of ODA/ODIF. But I worked on an ESPRIT project (Research founded by the European Community) whose aim was an implementation of ODA/ODIF, and thus worked with several people who were behind the design of ODA/ODIF. As those people are not on the net as far as I know (people from SIEMENS AG in Munich, FRG), I will answer as a representant of this HERODE project, although not the best one for ODA/ODIF matter... >Some interesting initial questions are: I'll begin with answering the last question : >* And, um, what do the letters stand for? ODA means Office Document Architecture. It is a means for describing the double structure of an office document : its logical structure and its layout structure, as well as the relations between those 2 structures. ODIF means Office Document Interchange Format. It is a standardized format for interchanging composite documents, having text, graphics, photographic and maybe even voice parts. >* How do we get the ODA/ODIF standards documents? ODA/ODIF was adopted as standard by ECMA (European Computer Manufacturers Association) in June 1985, under number ECMA standard 101. It is also an ISO draft proposal (don't know if it has been definitively adopted yet). There are 6 documents : ISO DP 8613/1 to 8613/6. For a more global introduction to ODA/ODIF, I recommend Mr. Horak's article in COMPUTER Magazine October 1985 : Wolfgang Horak (Siemens AG) : "Office Document Architecture and Office Document Interchange Formats: Current Status of International Standardization", COMPUTER 10/85, pp. 50-60 Wolfgang Horak happened to be the manager of our ESPRIT project for its first 2 years. >* 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? Yes, exactly, of a different sort. I don't think it is at the same level. Interchange with ODIF would be closer to interchange of LaTeX documents and styles, with regards to level of abstraction, although it's not at all the same thing. >* Are there implementations of ODA/ODIF? (-; my bit of advertisement ;-) The ESPRIT project HERODE (Handling the Electronic Representation of an Office Document based on ECMA 101 standard), formed by SIEMENS AG (Munich) and TITN (Paris), with cooperation of QMC Research Ltd (London) and CRIN (Nancy), aimed at building a prototype workstation for office automation based on ODA/ODIF. As we (CRIN) were involved in quite another part (automated entry of documents and their coding into ODIF), I can only give superficial info on the real ODA/ODIF work done. The project finished in November 1987, with a first demo of the feasability of such a system. On a SUN workstation, with C and Objective-C as the programming languages, a document handler based on ODA was developped, integrating three editors (WYSIWYG text editor, GKS graphics editor and photographic editor) for the content parts as well as an editor for the logical structure. Online formatting tools manage the coherence between the two structures at any oment. The system is completed by a document archiver for storing ODIF documents on magnetic or optical disk, with a common user interface and with our automated document entry module, which works with a pape document as its input. This was of course a research project, resulting in a prototype but no commercial system at this moment. Another ESPRIT project, PODA, were we are no longer involved, is continuing the work on an ODA office system. SIEMENS, TITN and QMC are also involved there. (As we work on Pattern Recognition and Artificial Intelligence, PODA was out of the scope of our interest). Other european manufacturers are also in PODA. I'm not sure which ones, but maybe Olivetti (excuse me if I'm wrong) is along. >* Is ODA/ODIF capable of rendering the sorts of hypermedia things we >(well, I at least) expect to do? (-; As I don't know what you expect to do, I cannot answer ;-) BTW, have a look at all the issue of COMPUTER magazine devoted to Multimedia Communications (Oct. 1985). I'm afraid I'm not clever enough on this field to give more info.l >* Is there already a mailing list/newsgroup on this topic anywhere? As far as I know, no. OK, this has become much longer than expected. But I hope the info can be useful to someone. --- Karl Tombre @ CRIN (Centre de Recherche en Informatique de Nancy) EMAIL : tombre@crin.crin.fr -- tombre@crin.UUCP POST : Karl Tombre, CRIN, B.P. 239, 54506 VANDOEUVRE CEDEX, France PHONE : +33 83.91.21.25 ---------------------------------------- Submissions to: desktop%plaid@sun.com -OR- sun!plaid!desktop Administrivia to: desktop-request%plaid@sun.com -OR- sun!plaid!desktop-request Paths: {ihnp4,decwrl,hplabs,seismo,ucbvax}!sun