I spent the week of October 18-23 in Orlando, enjoying not the sun but the company of my colleagues in TC171.  I’m fairly certain there was sunshine – I saw a few hints in the mornings before meetings and through the windows at lunch.  Heard rumors, at the very least.

TC171 managed to get a huge amount of work done during the week.  I was focused mainly on the work of the PDF WGs, but also had glimpses into the other WGs as well a some of the cross-TC work happening with TC46, with which we were co-located.  PDF kept me very busy, especially after we agreed to rewrite the PDF/UA document.  Guess who the project editor is for that one.  Uh huh. 

In rough order, here’s what we managed to do:

WG5 – the PDF/A WG – disposed of all the comments on their final CD for 19005-2 and agreed to go for a DIS vote following the circulation to the committee of a document containing the changes from the meeting.  We also agreed to include the PAdES standard, the European (ETSI) standard for digital signatures in PDF, as part of PDF/A-2.  ETSI was generous in granting TC171 the right to use the standard as needed.  The document will go out for the DIS vote just after the first of the year, and barring unforeseen objections, will become a new standard following the TC171 meeting next June. 

WG8 – PDF Reference, the core PDF standard – disposed of all the comments from the national bodies on its first WD for 32000-2, the next versions of the core standard.  There are a lot of changes and additions for part 2 so there was a lot of meat for comments.  In addition to changes from the industry, most from Adobe, there have also been suggestions coming in from each of the other PDF WGs, including new structure support for better accessibility from PDF/UA, increased support for 3-D and geospatial rendering from PDF/E, and document parts and other items from PDF/A.  We also discussed and agreed to adding PAdES support to 32000-2. In both WG5 and 8 this lead to a lot of discussion.  One of the most difficult parts of using PAdES as part of another standard is that ETSI’s practice for updating standards is very different from ISOs.  ETSI tends to overwrite a standard with any changes rather than creating addendum, notes, or a new standard with a –x designation, which are ISO’s usual options.  The project leader for 32000-2 also has another daunting task ahead of him – because 32000 was created via the ISO Fast Track process, there were a lot of allowances made for the standard not being fully compliant with ISO directives for wording and spelling.  Dr. Jim King, the WG8 project leader, now gets to go back through all 800 or so pages of the standard, find those anomalies, and correct them.  Next steps for 32000-2 are to update the document based on the discussions in Orlando, then circulate that draft for as a CD for national bodies to vote on. The WG will discuss the outcome of that at the June TC171 meetings.

WG9 – PDF/UA – The main topic of discussion for ISO14289 was supposed to be the disposition of comments from our first CD.  And dispose them we did.  One comment in particular, from the German delegation, spurred a great deal of discussion.  Both Germany and the UK had concerns about the organization of the standard and whether it would be comprehensible as written for implementers.  Now, since we followed the example of the PDF/A spec, that should have been a moot point.  But accessibility can be tricky, and it’s not a facet of software that’s well understood by all developers, so they were right to question whether we needed to change some parts of the document to be more clear.  We agreed to form an ad hoc editing committee, lead by me as the project leader, to reorganize and tweak some sections of the document.  We also talked about the usefulness of a best practices guide, which we’ll be discussing more in the ad hoc committee.  Accessibility is a particular passion of mine, so it is worth the effort, but I know there are a lot of folks on the US TAG for WG9 who are anxious to see the standard published after many long, hard years of work.  Our goal is to work aggressively to have a new draft ready by Christmas, circulate that to the full WG for approval in January, then put out a three-month CD, the results of which will be discussed in those TC171 meetings in June.  Fingers crossed, we’ll go to DIS following that meeting.

One of the great values of meetings of these standards technical committees is having many area experts all in one room to discuss the hard technical problems from all angles, including those of both implementers and users.  We have a good cross section in all of the WGs for PDF, and each of the international gatherings seems to bring new participants.  This year we added new voices from the world of document security and authenticity, an accessibility expert who has been very active in web accessibility, and a couple of people who know the challenges of 3-D rendering with great depth.  Without this type of input, standards don’t mean much – they become unwieldy, impossible to implement, or just too weak to matter.  I hope to see a few more new faces in June to make the next generation of PDF standards even stronger.

And hey, we’re going to PARIS!  How bad could it be?  Paris, in the spring time.  Come on … I’ll show you all my favorite chocolateries, patisseries, and some of the coolest graves in Père Lachaise cemetery that are not that of Jim Morrison.  I could also take you for a drive around Place de la Concorde that will keep you dizzy for days …