Advisory Committee:
Participating Experts:
Apologies:
The agenda for the call was distributed to the Advisory Committee list on November 20. There were no additions to the agenda.
The next conference call is 2007 December 5, 0900 Eastern USA and then at the same time on December 19.
GK reviewed the Save As DAISY announcement and MG summarized the interview process in Barcelona with Reed Shaffner, the Microsoft Office accessibility contact. MG did ask for future support of mathematics and braille extensions.
Q: (Rob) Will Word provide any constraints on the XML output?
A: (MG) Without too much trouble they will be able to replicate every
element by using styles as well as heuristics to figure out every heading.
The next step mentioned by MS is support of PowerPoint conversion to
DTBook as the next obvious thing to do.
GK noted that as part of the contract with Sonata, the developer, we are to provide consulting and are on call to collect sample Word content from different providers such as 1) publishers, 2) access providers, 3) teachers who want to produce content for their students, and 4) individuals who want to produce content for themselves. We want to collect samples of the four classes of documents in multiple languages and are being paid to do so.
Q: (Lloyd) Is the DAISY Pipeline all set up to take a DTBook 2005 file
and make an audio book from it, or is there still work to be done on
that?
A: (Linus) We can produce both Z3986 2005 and DAISY 2.02 books, using
TTS.
GK reviewed the IDPF and Adobe's response. We would like to see "Save As DAISY" from Adobe, which they said they may end up doing. The output would be to the IDPF package file from InDesign and perhaps FrameMaker. The Adobe output in the ePub container may be encrypted but it needn't be, depending on the author.
GK visited Karen Wetzel at NISO last week, however Todd Carpenter was not there. The first thing sorted out was the Terms of Reference. NISO has a new process document which defines that it is only the Maintenance Agency that is concerned with the maintenance of the Standard. It is completely up to the DAISY Consortium to develop the Terms of Reference which has nothing to do with NISO.
The Call for Revision is totally different from the Call for Requirements Gathering. The modularization activity itself would be enough to warrant a revision. The Content and Collections group, which is the NISO committee that this would fall under, would hope to issue a call for revision soon. Thus, this existing group, the Z39.86 Advisory Committee, may be joined by a few others, but Karen said to move forward, and to not let anything in NISO hold us up.
The first concern is regarding voting members of the committee. We should be aware that whereas DAISY has been historically lead by not-for-profit organizations, it could now theoretically be lead by commercial developers. How can we ensure that the user groups remain in control of the Standard? The DAISY Board of Directors, which is made up of only non-profit organizations, will help maintain the proper balance by approving or disapproving members. It was decided that nominations, which are open to be anyone in the world, not just DAISY Members or Friends, are to be submitted to the Advisory Committee, which would vote on their status and make a recommendation to the Board. The Board then has the power to approve or reject each nomination to the Advisory Committee.
So far, the Requirements Gathering process has been announced on the TechDev list, DAISY News, and in the NISO Press Release. The "Save as DAISY" announcement overshadowed it a bit. JS will write the broader RG announcement and circulate it for approval, avoiding double posting. JS brought up that an accessible way to configure the RG forms has been found, i.e. a Drupal-based configuration of TinyMCE to disable WYSIWYG editing, enabling sighted folks and those using screen readers to each have a way to enter input. No requirements have been received yet. Diana and Markus have some coming. The two requirements regarding Schema and RelaxNG need review and some help in preparing. MG mentioned that requirements should be more about seeking effects than suggesting solutions.
Kathy pointed out that there is a need for a stand-alone errata document that lists the specific changes to DAISY 2005, as there is for DAISY 2002 and each DTD version. Also, certain issues should not be listed as closed until the actual errata wording is posted. Issues classified as 'Future Directions' have been entered in the Requirements Gathering database which will be documented as part of the resolution for each of these issues.
The MS Save as DAISY should be able to be produced to the latest version of the DTD. James suggested the following approach: 1) get the issues cleaned up; 2) assign people to do the work; 3) schedule a conference call to discuss the work and set a deadline. This will be done on the call with George, Kathy and James next week.
The Structure Guidelines has been totally revisited regarding NIMAS examples. Images to explain each element have been added, plus a new Forward and several Appendices. The file set with images is now 50Mg. Per Lynn, we will be ready sometime this month to post the Call for Review.
Time: 9:00 – 10:00 EST
Venue: telcon
Conference Recording Filename: 20071121 (call the DAISY Conference number and enter *3 for playback)
Scribe: Kathy Kahl
Last Edited: 2007 November 27
Status: Version 1 reviewed by GK