Current status

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/webdav-draft-06.html
  Editor: Del Jensen <dcjensen@novell.com>

This document is currently at v0.6, last updated on January 23, 1997.  The
document editor is currently working to submit this document as an
Internet-Draft. The document represents the design developed by the design
team, which developed the draft during December and January.  The draft has
been reviewed by the participants of the Irvine WEBDAV meeting.  Mailing
list members are encouraged to submit revisions and comments on this draft.


* Distributed Authoring Requirements
  "Requirements on HTTP for Distributed Content Editing"
  http://www.ics.uci.edu/~ejw/authoring/draft-whitehead-http-distreq-00.html
* Versioning Requirements
  "Functional Requirements and Framework for Versioning on the WWW"
  http://www.cs.bu.edu/students/grads/dgd/draft-durand-versreq-00.html
  Editor: Judith Slein <slein@wrc.xerox.com>

The distributed authoring requirements  document is currently at Author's
Rev. 0.4, which is one revision higher than the Internet Draft, version 00.
The versioning requirements document is currently at revision November 6,
1996.  It has not been successfully submitted as an Internet-Draft (the San
Jose deadline was missed by a few hours due to email delays, and has not
been resubmitted).  The document editor is currently working on merging the
two requirements documents together into a single document which reflects
the full set of distributed authoring and versioning requirements.


* Distributed Authoring Scenarios
  " HTTP-based Distributed Content Editing Scenarios"
  http://ds.internic.net/internet-drafts/draft-lassila-http-edit-dist-00.txt
  Editor: Ora Lassila <lassila@w3.org>

The latest version of this document is Internet Draft revision 00, updated
on November 25, 1996.  Participants at the Palo Alto meeting felt that work
should continue on this scenarios document, since they can be used as a
sanity check on our final specification, as a good way for people to
understand our work, and to understand the rationale for our requirements.
Despite this, there has been little traffic on this topic.


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

The charter is currently at draft v0.4, November 20, 1996.  The charter has
been reviewed by the Application Area Directors, who have submitted
comments.  The charter needs to be reviewed based on these comments, and
resubmitted to the Application Area Directors.


MEETINGS:

* The fifth technical meeting on World Wide Web Distributed Authoring and
Versioning (WEBDAV) was held January 27-28, 1997, at U.C. Irvine.
Participants at this meeting reviewed the current draft protocol
specification.  Minutes of this meeting are currently under preparation by
Del Jensen.  A meeting page is being prepared, and will be found at:
<http://www.ics.uci.edu/~ejw/authoring/irvine/>. there were 25 people in
attendance at this meeting.

* The fourth technical meeting on WEBDAV was a birds-of-a-feather (BOF)
meeting on December 11, 1996 at the San Jose IETF meeting.  Minutes from
this meeting were posted to the list and can be found in the archives at
URL: <http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-dist-auth/msg00478.html>, but
have not yet been revised based on received feedback.  At the end of the
session, the attendees were polled on whether they thought it would be
worthwhile for the IETF to work on WWW Distributed Authoring and
Versioning. Overwhelmingly, the attendees thought the IETF should pursue
work in this area (the vast majority were in favor, with 2-3 opposed, and a
handful of abstentions). 79 people attended over the course of the meeting.

* The W3C Symposium: Distributed Authoring: Present and Future was held in
Sunnyvale, California, on December 4-5, 1996.  This symposium featured
presentations on distributed authoring and versioning by Microsoft,
Netscape, America Online, Novell, Continuus, W3C/INRIA, GMD FIT, and U.C.
Irvine.  Approximately 70 people attended.


PROCESS:

Based on feedback I have received from the W3C, the IETF Application Area
Directors, discussion at the Irvine meeting, and from members of the list,
I am now working towards the formation of an IETF Applications Area working
group on the subject of WWW Distributed Authoring and Versioning.   The W3C
will continue to assist and facilitate the development of interoperability
specifications for WWW distributed authoring and versioning.  This involves
the IETF WEBDAV WG (after its formation) being able to hand copies of
documents to the W3C for publication at the appropriate level within the
W3C (either a working draft, proposed recommendation, or recommendation),
and to receive technical review and guidance from W3C staff.


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 Monday, 3 February 1997 17:52:33 UTC