Status Update

This group has been very busy recently!  I am very appreciative of all the
hard work that has gone into writing and commenting on the documents and
activities of this work group.

So you can keep up to date, here is the status of this group's current
activities:

DOCUMENTS:

* Distributed Authoring and Versioning Specification
  "Extensions for Distributed Authoring and Versioning on the World Wide Web"
  http://www.ics.uci.edu/~ejw/authoring/dav_spec.html

This document was submitted to the working group on October 25, and the
most current version is Author's draft v0.1.  A new revision is in
preparation, which contains details on versioning operations, and revisions
based on comments posted to the list.  This new document will be made
available to the working group by week's end at the latest.

* Distributed Authoring Scenarios
  http://www.w3.org/pub/WWW/Authoring/draft-lassila-dist-auth-scenarios.html

The latest version of this document is v0.2, updated on September 26.  Ora
has stated that he will integrate the Novell scenarios into this document,
and produce a new draft.

* Distributed Authoring Requirements
  "Requirements on HTTP for Distributed Content Editing"
  http://www.ics.uci.edu/~ejw/authoring/draft-whitehead-http-distreq-00.html

This document has been modified based on feedback received at the Cambridge
meeting.  It is currently at Author's Rev. 0.4, which is one revision
higher than the Internet Draft, version 00.  This document needs to be
updated to reflect the specification, which has additional functionality
beyong the requirements.

* Versioning Requirements
  "Functional Requirements and Framework for Versioning on the WWW"
  http://www.cs.bu.edu/students/grads/dgd/draft-durand-versreq-00.html

This document still requires modification based on feedback received at the
Cambridge meeting. Once this modification has been performed, this document
needs to be released as an Internet-Draft.

There has been some discussion on merging the two requirements documents
together into a single document which reflects the full set of distributed
authoring and versioning requirements, and which would be more suitable for
eventual publication as an RFC.

* Draft Working Group Charter
  "WWW Distributed Authoring and Versioning (webdav) Charter"
  http://www.ics.uci.edu/~ejw/authoring/charter.html

This charter still requires revision based on feedback received at the
Cambridge meeting.  This revision will occur before the Palo Alto meeting
so the charter can be discussed at this meeting.  Currently at author's
draft v0.1.

* The executive summary of the San Mateo meeting, and the distributed
authoring historical timeline were published in the article, "Distributed
Authoring on the World Wide Web: Informal Working Group Meeting," which
appeared in the Fall 1996 issue of the World Wide Web Journal (Vol. 1, No.
4).

* The internet draft on distributed authoring requirements was also
reprinted in the Fall 1996 issue of the World Wide Web Journal.

* NTT Labs has indicated they may submit a draft document describing
specifications of their version control mechanism based on meta-level
links.  I have encouraged them to submit this draft to the working group
soon so it may receive a hearing before the Palo Alto meeting.

* At San Mateo, there was an action item to create a list which collates
"key functionality" among AOLpress/AOLserver, FrontPage, Word, Netscape,
and other distributed authoring tools (Dave Long).  Dave Long made a call
for functionality lists in July, and repeated at Cambridge that he will
create this document if he receives input from other distributed authoring
tool creators.

MEETINGS:

* The third technical working meeting will take place on November 14-15, at
Xerox PARC in Palo Alto, California.  The final registration deadline is
this coming Sunday, November 10.  There are currently 22 registered
attendees.  Details: http://www.ics.uci.edu/~ejw/authoring/paloalto/

* The final report from the Cambridge meeting is still under preparation.
It is currently being hampered by the inability to cleanly convert slides
to HTML, and lack of time to process the notes.

* The W3C is sponsoring the Symposium: Distributed Authoring: Present and
Future in Sunnyvale, California, on December 4-5, 1996.  This symposium
provides an easy way to become educated on distributed authoring and
versioning, and there will be presentations by Microsoft, Netscape, America
Online, W3C/INRIA, GMD FIT, and U.C. Irvine.  Space is still available.
Details and registration information:
http://www.w3.org/pub/WWW/Authoring961001/Call.html

* There is currently a slot reserved for distributed authoring and
versioning at the December IETF meeting, from 9-11:30 on Wednesday,
December 11 (Opposite ids, agentx, tagsw-bof, dnssec, rtfm).

If i have missed something, or if you have comments, please let me know.

- Jim Whitehead <ejw@ics.uci.edu>
  714-824-4121

Received on Wednesday, 6 November 1996 15:55:44 UTC