Information Technology News: Standards Archives

JustSystems Contributes XBRL Rendering Technology to Financial Community

JustSystems announced that it is contributing intellectual property rights for its invention of eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) rendering technologies to XBRL International, the standards body responsible for the oversight of the XBRL specification. The invention, known as the "formatting linkbase," provides enabling technology for viewing XBRL data in financial and other business applications. JustSystems issued a statement that it will not seek to enforce any of its enforceable U.S. or foreign patents for the formatting linkbase against any implementation of the XBRL specification. This move ensures full, free use of JustSystems' rendering technologies as part of any XBRL applications and initiatives. XBRL is an XML specification that promises to transform financial reporting by making financial information highly accessible, interactive and comparable. XBRL is now mandated for financial filings in multiple jurisdictions worldwide and is expected to soon be mandated by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The XBRL formatting linkbase provides a standards-based method for defining how XBRL data - which is complex and largely unreadable by people - is rendered to documents, web pages, wireless devices and other applications. By mapping data elements to specific formatting conventions, the formatting linkbase helps organizations to ensure the consistent display of XBRL data across multiple output formats and delivery channels. For example, a formatting linkbase may specify that the label for the data element "Current Assets" is always displayed in bold. Or it may specify the value for "Net Income" is always displayed with a double underline. These types of formatting and rendering instructions are not specified within XBRL data, which is focused on readability by computers, rather than people. The formatting linkbase approach allows XBRL data to be displayed in a way that is appropriate for human consumption. JustSystems issued a statement of non-assertion to XBRL International on May 5, 2008, at which time the technology became fully accessible by members of the XBRL International Consortium. http://www.justsystems.com/

W3C Announces Canonical XML Version 1.1 is a W3C Recommendation

The W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) XML Core Working Group has published the W3C Recommendation of "Canonical XML Version 1.1." Canonical XML Version 1.1 is a revision to Canonical XML Version 1.0 to address issues related to inheritance of attributes in the XML namespace when canonicalizing document subsets, including the requirement not to inherit xml:id, and to treat xml:base URI path processing properly. Canonical XML Version 1.1 is applicable to XML 1.0 and defined in terms of the XPath 1.0 data model. It is not defined for XML 1.1. As a Recommendation, this is a stable document and may be used as reference material or cited from another document. http://www.w3.org/XML/

IXIASOFT Announce Availability of DITA CMS Framework 2.1

IXIASOFT announced the availability of the DITA CMS Framework 2.1. Not only is the latest version compatible with DITA 1.1. With its new capabilities, the DITA CMS Framework provides technical communicators with advanced project management features and support WYSIWYG for DITA bookmaps. The project management functionality offers an overview of multi-deliverable projects that may include documents as diverse as installation instructions, training packages and reference documentation. Project managers will use this feature to select the staff who will be responsible for documentation and review, for setting up review dates for the maps that make up a project and for specifying the languages in which each map should be translated to. In its latest version, the DITA CMS Framework supports DITA bookmaps directly within its DITA Map editor. Therefore, technical communicators now have a user friendly interface not only to create DITA bookmaps but also to help them qualify specific sections of a book. All of the already available DITA Map editor features - including map comparison, drag and drop of topics between maps and nesting and cloning of maps - will also be accessible to manage DITA bookmaps. http://www.ixiasoft.com

JustSystems Announces DITA Maturity Model Co-Authored with IBM

JustSystems, Inc. announced the availability of the “DITA Maturity Model,” which was co-authored with IBM and defines a graduated, step-by-step methodology for implementing Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA). One of DITA's features is its support for incremental adoption. Users can start with DITA using a subset of its capabilities, and then add investment over time as their content strategy evolves and expands to cover more requirements and content areas. However, this continuum of adoption has also resulted in confusion, as communities at different stages of adoption claim radically different numbers for cost of migration and return on investment. The DITA Maturity Model addresses this confusion by dividing DITA adoption into six levels, each with its own required investment and associated return on investment. Users can assess their own capabilities and goals relative to the model and choose the initial adoption level appropriate for their needs and schedule. The six levels of DITA adoption include: Level 1: Topics - The most minimum DITA adoption requires the migration of the current XML content sources; Level 2: Scalable Reuse - The major activity at this level is to break down the content in topics that are stored as individual files and use DITA maps to collect and organize the content into reusable units for assembly into specific deliverables; Level 3: Specialization and Customization - Now, users expand the information architecture to be a full content model, which explicitly defines the different types of content required to meet different author and audience needs and specify how to meet these needs using structured, typed content; Level 4: Automation and Integration - Once content is specialized, users can leverage their investments in semantics with automation of key processes and begin tying content together even across different specializations or authoring disciplines; Level 5: Semantic Bandwidth - As DITA diversifies to occupy more roles within an organization, a cross-application, cross-silo solution that shares DITA as a common semantic currency lets groups use the toolset most appropriate for their content authoring and management needs; Level 6: Universal Semantic Ecosystem - As DITA provides for scalable semantic bandwidth across content silos and applications, a new kind of semantic ecosystem emerges: Semantics that can move with content across old boundaries, wrap unstructured content, and provide validated integration with semi-structured content and managed data sources. http://www.ibm.com, http://na.justsystems.com

W3C: Canonical XML 1.1 Proposed Recommendation

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) XML Core Working Group has published the Proposed Recommendation of "Canonical XML 1.1." The specification establishes a method for determining whether two documents are identical, or whether an application has not changed a document, except for transformations permitted by XML 1.0 and Namespaces in XML. Canonical XML 1.1 is a revision to "Canonical XML 1.0" designed to address issues related to inheritance of attributes in the XML namespace when canonicalizing document subsets, including the requirement not to inherit xml:id, and to treat xml:base URI path processing properly. Comments are welcome through 07 March. Learn more about W3C's XML Activity. http://www.w3.org/XML/Core/, http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/PR-xml-c14n11-20080129/

Inmedius Enters DITA-Based Software Market with Acquisition of DITA Storm

Inmedius, Inc. announced the acquisition of LogPerspective’s DITA Storm, a full-featured DITA editing tool that enables authors to easily create DITA-compliant content in WYSIWYG mode regardless of their DITA XML knowledge. The editing environment is 100% browser-based and is completely customizable for a superior DITA user experience. DITA Storm will be available for purchase worldwide through Inmedius’ international network of offices and resellers. http://www.ditastorm.com, http://www.inmedius.com

W3C Issues XML Pipeline Language Draft

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) XML Processing Model Working Group has published a Last Call Working Draft of "XProc: An XML Pipeline Language." Comments are welcome through 24 October. Used to control and organize the flow of documents, the XProc language standardizes interactions, inputs and outputs for transformations for the large group of specifications such as XSLT, XML Schema, XInclude and Canonical XML that operate on and produce XML documents. Learn more about the Extensible Markup Language (XML) Activity. http://www.w3.org/TR/2007/WD-xproc-20070920/

Intalio BPEL Engine Becomes Apache Top Level Project

Intalio, Inc. announced that its open-source BPEL process engine named Orchestration Director Engine (ODE) has recently graduated from the Apache incubator to a Top Level Project. ODE was contributed by Intalio to the Apache Software Foundation in July 2006, following Intalio's acquisition of FiveSight Technologies. Intalio|Server is built on top of the ODE engine. ODE is the an open-source BPEL engine currently available under a liberal open-source license and supports all versions of the BPEL specification (1.0, 1.1, and 2.0). Intalio|Server is capable of supporting hundreds of thousands of different process models deployed on the same server, and hundreds of millions of process instances running concurrently on a single CPU. The ODE engine is now part of the Apache Software Foundation's collection of enterprise-class servers, among which is the Apache HTTP server. ODE version 1.1 is available for download from http://ode.apache.org/, http://www.intalio.com

W3C Links HTML/Microformats and Semantic Web with GRDDL

The World Wide Web Consortium is connecting the Semantic Web and microformats communities. With "Gleaning Resource Descriptions from Dialects of Languages", or GRDDL (pronounced "griddle"), software can automatically extract information from structured Web pages to make it part of the Semantic Web. Those accustomed to expressing structured data with microformats in XHTML can thus port their existing data to the Semantic Web. Microformats refer to sets of simple, open data formats built upon existing and widely adopted standards, including HTML, CSS and XML. The Semantic Web-based communities have pursued ways to improve the quality and availability of data on the Web, making it possible for more intensive data-integration and more diverse applications that can scale to the size of the Web and allow more powerful mash-ups. The Web-based set of standards that supports this work is known as the Semantic Web stack. "Each approach to "getting your data out there" has its place. But why limit yourself to just one approach if you can benefit, at low cost, from more than one?" GRDDL is the bridge for turning data expressed in an XML format (such as XHTML) into Semantic Web data. With GRDDL, authors transform the data they wish to share into a format that can be used and transformed again for more rigorous applications. GRDDL Use Cases provides insight into why this is useful through a number of scenarios, including scheduling a meeting, comparing information from various retailers before making a purchase, and extracting information from wikis to facilitate e-learning. http://www.w3.org/

OASIS Approves Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) 1.1 as OASIS Standard

OASIS announced that its members have approved DITA version 1.1 as an OASIS Standard, a status that signifies the highest level of ratification. DITA builds content reuse into the authoring process, defining an XML architecture for designing, writing, managing, and publishing many kinds of information in print and on the Web. DITA supports single sourcing across books, help files, training, and multimedia. It enables modular, topic-based authoring through rich, semantic markup. It incorporates special features for localization, accessibility, and robust conditional processing. Version 1.1 of DITA provides enhanced print publishing capabilities with new DITA Bookmap specialization, including extended book metadata. The standard offers more indexing capabilities with new elements for "see" and "see-also" references. It features new elements for defining structured metadata as well as the ability to add new metadata attributes through specialization. DITA was developed under the Royalty-Free on Limited Terms Mode of the OASIS Intellectual Property Rights Policy. http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/dita/, http://dita.xml.org/

W3C Announces CSS 2.1 Is a Candidate Recommendation

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) announced the advancement of "Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) 2.1" to Candidate Recommendation. Implementation feedback is welcome through 20 December. CSS is one of the Web's most widely implemented languages. By separating the presentation of style from the content of documents, CSS simplifies Web authoring and site maintenance. CSS 2.1 is derived from and is intended to replace CSS Level 2. A snapshot of usage, the specification brings the language in line with implementations, fixes errata and adds a few highly requested features including the inline-block value for the display property, the color orange and the values pre-wrap and pre-line for the white-space property. http://www.w3.org/TR/2007/CR-CSS21-20070719/, http://www.w3.org/Style/CSS/

XHTML Basic 1.1 Is a W3C Candidate Recommendation

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) announced the advancement of "XHTML Basic 1.1" to Candidate Recommendation. The specification adds four new features for small devices which are the language's primary users. Version 1.1 is intended to be the convergence of the "XHTML Basic 1.0" W3C Recommendation for mobile devices, released in coordination with the WAP Forum in 2000, and the Open Mobile Alliance ( OMA ) XHTML Mobile profile. Implementation feedback is welcome through 31 August. http://www.w3.org/TR/2007/CR-xhtml-basic-20070713/

Inmedius Adds Israeli Partnership

Inmedius, Inc. announced that an agreement has been signed with Widetech LTD to sell Inmedius product and service offerings in the Israeli market. Headquartered in Israel, Widetech specializes in providing professional engineering planning solutions. As more complex systems are manufactured in the aerospace and defense industry, Widetech sees increased demand from customers to provide very sophisticated and integrated digital documentation solutions with integrated illustrations using the ASD S1000D Standard and will supply this capability with Inmedius. http://www.widetech.co.il, http://www.inmedius.com

W3C Announces Web Services Description Language (WSDL) 2.0 is a Proposed Recommendation

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) announced the advancement of the Web Services Description Language (WSDL) Version 2.0 to Proposed Recommendation in three parts: "Part 0: Primer," "Part 1: Core Language" and "Part 2: Adjuncts." Comments are welcome through 20 June. WSDL models and describes modular Web services and is used to document distributed systems and to automate communication between applications. WSDL "Additional MEPs," "RDF Mapping" and "SOAP 1.1 Binding" are updated Working Drafts. http://www.w3.org/TR/2007/PR-wsdl20-20070523/

W3C Updates CSS3 Working Draft: Generated Content for Paged Media

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) CSS Working Group has released an updated Working Draft for Cascading Style Sheets Level 3 (CSS3). Generated Content for Paged Media describes features such as cross-references, footnotes, headers and footers often used in printed publications. CSS is the Web's most widely-implemented language for style, used to render structured documents like HTML and XML on screen, on paper and in speech. Visit the CSS home page at: http://www.w3.org/Style/CSS/

Adobe to Open Source Flex

Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq: ADBE) announced plans to release source code for Adobe Flex as open source. This initiative will let developers worldwide participate in the growth of the framework for building cross-operating system rich Internet applications (RIAs) for the Web and enabling new Apollo applications for the desktop. The open source Flex SDK and documentation will be available under the Mozilla Public License (MPL). Available since June 2006, the free Adobe Flex SDK includes the technologies developers need to build effective Flex applications, including the MXML compiler and the ActionScript 3.0 libraries that make up the Flex framework. This announcement expands on Adobe's contribution of source code for the ActionScript Virtual Machine to the Mozilla Foundation under the Tamarin project, the use of the open source WebKit engine in the “Apollo” project, and the release of the full PDF 1.7 specification for ISO standardization. Using the MPL for open sourcing Flex will allow full and free access to source code. Developers will be able to freely download, extend, and contribute to the source code for the Flex compiler, components and application framework. Adobe also will continue to make the Flex SDK and other Flex products available under their existing commercial licenses, allowing both new and existing partners and customers to choose the license terms that best suit their requirements. Starting this summer with the pre-release versions of the next release of the Flex product line, code named “Moxie,” Adobe will post daily software builds of the Flex SDK on a public download site with a public bug database. The release of open source Flex under the MPL will occur in conjunction with the final release of Moxie, currently scheduled for the second half of 2007. http://www.adobe.com/go/opensourceflex

W3C Announces Last Call: Web Services Description Language (WSDL) 2.0

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Web Services Description Working Group released three Last Call Working Drafts for the Web Services Description Language (WSDL) Version 2.0: "Part 0: Primer," Part 1: Core Language" and "Part 2: Adjuncts." Comments are welcome through 15 April on this brief Last Call for changes since Candidate Recommendation review. WSDL "RDF Mapping" and "SOAP 1.1 Binding" are updated Working Drafts. WSDL 2.0 models and describes modular Web services and is used to document distributed systems and to automate communication between applications. Read about Web services. http://www.w3.org/TR/2007/WD-wsdl20-20070326/

W3C Releases XQuery Scripting Extension and Version 1.1 Requirements: Working Drafts

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) announced that because of requests from Working Group participants and the wider community, the XML Query Working Group released two First Public Working Drafts. "XQuery Scripting Extension 1.0 Requirements" describes goals and requirements for making XQuery 1.0 functional as a scripting language. "XML Query (XQuery) 1.1 Requirements" describes compatibility and functionality requirements for extending XML Query 1.0. http://www.w3.org/TR/2007/WD-xquery-sx-10-requirements-20070323/

New Xandros Linux Server to Provide O3Spaces OpenDocument Collaboration

Xandros, Inc. and O3Spaces, B.V., provider of O3Spaces Workplace collaboration for OpenOffice.org, StarOffice and MS Office, announced an agreement to provide OpenDocument and MS Office document collaboration, management and retention services for the forthcoming release of Xandros Server 2.0 - Standard Edition. O3Spaces Workplace provides any office user with a professional out-of-the-box extension for team and project collaboration. The O3Spaces plug-in for Xandros Server 2 will be available via the Xandros Networks update facility in April 2007. http://www.xandros.com, www.o3spaces.com

OASIS Updates ODF to Version 1.1

OASIS announced that its members have approved version 1.1 of the Open Document Format for Office Applications (OpenDocument) as an OASIS Standard, a status that signifies the highest level of ratification. The result of a collaboration between advocacy groups for the disabled and open source and commercial software vendors, this new version of the standard provides key accessibility enhancements to ensure that the OpenDocument format (ODF) addresses the needs of people with disabilities. OpenDocument 1.1 supports users who have low or no vision or who suffer from cognitive impairments. The standard not only provides short alternative descriptive text for document elements such as hyperlinks, drawing objects and image map hot spots, it also offers lengthy descriptions for the same objects should additional help be needed. Other OpenDocument accessibility features include the preservation of structural semantics imported from other file formats, such as headings in tables, and associations between drawings and their captions. The new version of OpenDocument reflects the work of the OASIS OpenDocument Accessibility Subcommittee, which is made up of accessibility experts from IBM, the Institute for Community Inclusion (ICI), RNIB, Sun Microsystems, and others. The Subcommittee's recommendations were incorporated into the OpenDocument specification by members of the OASIS OpenDocument Technical Committee, which includes representatives from Adobe Systems, IBM, Intel, Novell, Sun Microsystems, and others. http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/office/, http://www.oasis-open.org

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Information and content technology industry news reported bythe Gilbane Group NewsShark team. Comments are welcome and are moderated.

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May 5, 2008

JustSystems Contributes XBRL Rendering Technology to Financial Community

May 2, 2008

W3C Announces Canonical XML Version 1.1 is a W3C Recommendation

April 7, 2008

IXIASOFT Announce Availability of DITA CMS Framework 2.1

February 4, 2008

JustSystems Announces DITA Maturity Model Co-Authored with IBM

January 29, 2008

W3C: Canonical XML 1.1 Proposed Recommendation

October 16, 2007

Inmedius Enters DITA-Based Software Market with Acquisition of DITA Storm

September 24, 2007

W3C Issues XML Pipeline Language Draft

September 12, 2007

Intalio BPEL Engine Becomes Apache Top Level Project

September 11, 2007

W3C Links HTML/Microformats and Semantic Web with GRDDL

August 13, 2007

OASIS Approves Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) 1.1 as OASIS Standard

July 19, 2007

W3C Announces CSS 2.1 Is a Candidate Recommendation

July 13, 2007

XHTML Basic 1.1 Is a W3C Candidate Recommendation

May 30, 2007

Inmedius Adds Israeli Partnership

May 23, 2007

W3C Announces Web Services Description Language (WSDL) 2.0 is a Proposed Recommendation

May 4, 2007

W3C Updates CSS3 Working Draft: Generated Content for Paged Media

April 26, 2007

Adobe to Open Source Flex

March 26, 2007

W3C Announces Last Call: Web Services Description Language (WSDL) 2.0

March 23, 2007

W3C Releases XQuery Scripting Extension and Version 1.1 Requirements: Working Drafts

March 15, 2007

New Xandros Linux Server to Provide O3Spaces OpenDocument Collaboration

February 14, 2007

OASIS Updates ODF to Version 1.1

Information and content technology industry news reported by
the Gilbane Group NewsShark team. Comments are welcome and are moderated.