ZOOM Progress

From: Mike Taylor <mike@tecc.co.uk> · Date: Thu, 28 Feb 2002 16:49:23 GMT

ZIGgers,

The ZOOM web site has been up for some time now at
	zoom.z3950.org
and is linked from the Maintenance Agency's ZING page at
	www.loc.gov/z3950/agency/zing/zing.html
but we've not had as many people join the ZOOM mailing list as I'd
hoped: just sixteen of us so far.

We're keen to avoid any sense that we've gone off in a corner to do
out own thing and present it as a fair accomplis, so I'm taking this
opportunity to publicise the web-site and mailing list in the hope of
broadening the base of participation so that what we end up with
really reflects the needs of the Z39.50 community as a whole rather
than just a segment of us.

Anyone who wants to get involved is invited to look through the
website and to join the (low volume) mailing list, which you can do
quickly and easily at
	http://www.indexdata.dk/mailman/listinfo/zoom
A full set of mailing-list archives is also available at that address.

The current ZOOM discussion is concentrated in two areas: the
development of a Scan specification in the Abstract API at
	http://zoom.z3950.org/api/zoom-1.2.html#3.2.7
and the work on a Java binding at
	http://zoom.z3950.org/bind/java/index.html

We are very keen to gather comments on both, and on any other aspects
of the ZOOM work that interest you.

 _/|_	 _______________________________________________________________
/o ) \/  Mike Taylor   <mike@miketaylor.org.uk>   www.miketaylor.org.uk
)_v__/\  "I did it preserve the Union and promote sales of my book"
	 -- Charles J. Guiteau.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
For anyone who doesn't remember what ZOOM is all about, the following
text is taken from the zoom.z3950.org front page.
--

The ZOOM initiative presents an abstract object-oriented API to a
subset of the services specified by the Z39.50 standard, also known as
the international standard ISO 23950. If you are trying to build any
kind of Z39.50 client or client-based service, ZOOM is an excellent
place to start.

The API is: 

	Abstract because we don't want to limit its use to a single
	implementation language.

	Object-oriented because the services lend themselves naturally
	to this widespread idiom.

	For a subset of the full Z39.50 services because at this stage
	simplicity is more important than completeness.

The ZOOM specifications, bindings for several languages, and many
implementations, are available for free browsing and download.

Here's a completely unsolicited testimonial:

	Date: Wed, 6 Feb 2002 16:24:12 -0800 (PST)
	From: Dan Ancona <ancona@alexandria.ucsb.edu> 

	ZOOM definitely looks like it's going to do it for me. It's so
	so nice - I just wish I'd read the docs more carefully and
	found out about it sooner. [...] ZOOM is just dreamy - it's
	exactly the clean and straightforward API that I was looking
	for when I started on this project. It's going to be the last
	piece of a puzzle that has confounded many who worked on this
	before me.
------------------------------------------------------------------------