sep30/oct1 meeting

Following is a preliminary, preliminary agenda (not even that) for the
Sep30/Oct1 meeting.  I welcome suggestions and expect that the agenda
will become much more specific as we get closer to the meeting.
This is also a call for agenda items.

-Ron


We have three concrete proposals (those of Wolfram [Smith/Soiffer],
Yee, and Raggett) from which to develop our specification.  We've
certainly spent more time discussing the Wolfram Proposal (WP) to
date, and it seems most practical to center our efforts on the it and
absorb other ideas into it as much as we can.  This isn't to say that
we've passed the point of major revision to the WP, but only that I'm
inclined to use the WP as our primary point of concrete focus in the
tradeoff between abstract and concrete.

With this in mind, I suggest we give the WP a thorough airing as the
first item of business --- tie it down as much as possible, discuss
examples, and get a concrete working feel for how it will operate (in
all ways: visual and audio rendering, maps to other notational
systems).  In this connection we should discuss performance measures,
editing capabilities, and filtering data into the notation.  To come
is a list of specific items for discussion (some which enter my mind
immediately are: (a) treatment of font calls in math; (b) display-list
format as submitted by Robert and Neil vs. ISO 12083; (c) more detail
in the way semantic information will be kept).  I can imagine this
discussion taking from 3 to 6 hours and beyond, depending upon how
widely opinions differ.

After centering discussion on the WP, we should integrate other
proposals and considerations into it.  Again, it's difficult to tell
how long this might take.  One can imagine several hours for this.
Clearly, if major revisions to the WP are to be proposed, it will help
greatly to have these aired well in advance of the meeting.  Ping's
proposal has been with us for quite a while, although we've had little
discussion of how to meld it with the WP.  I'll provide more
information myself on the difference I see between display-list format
as last proposed and ISO 12083.

Finally, we should discuss the formalities of getting W3C approval and
leave the meeting with our respective lists of action items and
schedules to meet.


I think it's best if every major topic hit the table by the end of the
day Monday.  To this end, I'd like to have the WP clearly delineated
and the ways in which other proposals or needs differ from those of
the WP by the end of our meeting day Monday (say, 5pm).  Some further
integration and modification can take place Tuesday morning, and we can
leave Tuesday afternoon for wrap-up and a cushion of extra decision
time.  We'll know more about our needs as we make points of discussion
clearer.

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Abstractly, the agenda looks something like this:


Review of agenda, last-minute adjustment of plans

Detailed consideration of Wolfram Proposal
  source language
  expression tree
  macros
  display-list
  template-matching
  examples, test suite

Anticipated working environments, real performance
  editors
  filters
  interplay with browsers
  polymediator

Discussion of other points of view and integration with WP
  Audio rendering
  Ping
  Raggett
  Safir review
  OpenMath
  Pike
  ISO 12083

W3C formalities
  proposal
  approval

Anticipated schedules, lists of achievables
Working environment (e.g. formal email proposals and voting procedures)