Posts tagged "W3C"

The Role of PDF and Open Data

Posted on April 19, 2013 by bmatthew | Comments (2)

The open data movement is pushing for organizations, in particular government agencies, to make the raw data that they collect, openly available to everyone for the common good. Open data has been characterized as the “new oil” that is driving the digital economy.  Gartner claims: “Open data strategies support outside-in business practices that generate growth and innovation.”

What promises to be a very interesting workshop on the topic “Open Data on the Web,” is being sponsored by the W3C in London on April 23-24, 2013. I will be attending and will present a talk entitled “The Role of PDF and Open Data,” which explores how PDF (Portable Document Format – ISO standard ISO 32000-1) can be effectively used to deliver raw data.

There is widespread belief that once data has been rendered into a PDF format, any hope to access or use that data for purposes other than for the original presentation, is lost.  The PDF/raw-data question arises because raw data is usually best represented as comma-separated values (CSV) or in a specific (well documented) XML language.

PDF is arguably the most widely used file format for representing information in a portable and universally deliverable manner. The ability to capture the exact appearance of output from nearly any computer application has made it invaluable for the presentation of author-controlled content.

The challenge has been to find ways to have your cake and eat it too: to have a highly controlled and crafted final presentation and yet keep the ability to reshape the same content into some other form. We know of no perfect solution/format for this problem but there are several ways in which PDF can contribute to solutions, which I have explored in previous blog posts and will expand on in my presentation at the workshop. I hope to see you there.

James C. King
Senior Principal Scientist

 

Who’s Making the Rules About the Internet?

Posted on December 5, 2012 by cargill | Comments (0)

Governance – who makes the policies and rules (but NOT the technology) on how the Internet runs – is one of the “invisible infrastructure” activities that just happen and keeps the Internet from failing. With the explosive growth of the Web and its importance to the world economy (coupled with the fact that the Internet is global and doesn’t recognize national borders), the last decade has seen governments and policy makers start to look more closely at who actually makes the rules that run the Internet and wonder if perhaps there isn’t a better way. Things like taxation, censorship, privacy, intellectual property, libel, economic stability, and financial dealings are all aspects of Internet governance the world is coming to recognize. And governments are loathe to grant U.S. based Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) (such as ICANN and ISOC and IETF[1]) the right to make the fundamental rules that impact these sovereign rights.

Part of the reason for this is the importance of the Internet to the world’s economic well-being. The global (and globalized) economy depends in large part on the instantaneous communications afforded by the Internet, which are now reaching ever-broader audiences.

However, the major impact of the Internet is on governance of nations – and not just of the individuals of the Internet. The “Arab Spring” movement showed the power of the Internet to galvanize public reaction. This can be a worrisome thing to a government trying to maintain economic or political stability. Wikileaks also illustrated the power of the Internet to disseminate governmentally unfavorable information that impacted governmental foreign policy, and the use of malware (e.g. Stuxnet) has become a tool for both industrial and military espionage and sabotage.

But in the international geopolitical arena, governance has expanded to mean more: It also means that all nations have an equal say and stake in the creation of the rules and deployment of the Internet. Note here that the term is “nations” – not individuals – because how the Internet is governed can have a tremendous impact on a nation’s ability to pursue a national growth and governance strategy.

One of the countries most concerned about this area is China. It was noted that the non-regulated nature of the Internet, and what could be viewed as favoritism to the developed countries, poses a long term and large problem for developing countries. On September 18, 2012, the Chinese government hosted an “emerging nations Internet roundtable,” where issues of Internet governance, content management, and cyber security were discussed. The governments of Russia, Brazil, India, and South Africa all participated, and together looked at Internet governance so that the needs of developing nations are taken into consideration.

Following the meeting, a statement was released that said that participating governments would continue to meet on a regular basis and that consensus has been reached on the following four major topics:

1. Internet governance must become a governmental mandate, and the impact of social networks on society (good, bad, and otherwise) is of particular concern.

2. Content filtering needs increased regulation and legislation to both protect and promote the interests of developing and emerging nations.

3. The whole area of cyber-security needs increased transnational cooperation and coordination – but this must be balanced with the economic needs of emerging states.

4. Emerging and developing nations offer the greatest opportunity for Internet growth, and these nations must take responsibility for managing this growth.

This conference clearly delimits the debate between those who seek an unfettered (open and based in information technology) Internet and those who would like a more regulated (in the style of the regulated telecommunications industry) model.

The issue of who controls a tremendously powerful communications force is, of course, a matter of high interest to nearly everyone. But the essential issue is that this policy and governance issue is being fought in the standards arena – that is, who has the right and duty to make the rules about the standards that will drive the next generation of innovation in the massively connected world. Currently, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU)[2], is proposing to assume an increased role in making rules for the Internet, with support from many of the G-30 nations. And ISOC, the IETF, W3C, and the IEEE are responding with the Open Stand (http://open-stand.org) initiative. Europe is moving to recognize consortia specifications – and the national standards bodies (with implicit support of their governments) are trying to slow and limit this change. And we will see this same type of standards-based activity in policy decisions on privacy, security, accessibility, and others. As the world becomes more and more highly interconnected, the need for and control of who creates and who mandates standards – their creation, implementation, testing, and IPR status – will become major issues in national and international policy. And this is the lesson that is being learned from the internet governance discussions.

(1)Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN); Internet Society (ISOC); Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)

 (2) The ITU is a specialized U.N. Treaty Organization responsible for Information and Communications technology. It creates standards to regulate telecommunications.

W3C Web Platforms Docs: A Standards Perspective

Posted on October 16, 2012 by cargill | Comments (2)

Recently, Adobe, along with many others in the community, initiated a major community effort to build a common suite of developer-oriented documentation of the Open Web Platform as a community effort sponsored by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) .

One of the problems with standards is that generally, they are meant more for implementors and less for users of the standards (often by design). Those who actually write the standards and work on the committees that create them know that they are fragile interface descriptions – and this fragility is what requires the care in their crafting.

Standards specifications are necessarily quite detailed, in order to really promote interoperability and ensure things work the same. And this is where things get sticky. The implementations are based on the standard or the specification, and all standards (well, nearly all) are written in native language by people who are usually specialists in technology, as are many people who implement the developer-oriented documentation.

What’s exciting here is that the Web Platform Docs (WPD) effort is really targeted at the user community to help document the standards in a way that is useful to that community.

But a standard really only gains value when it is implemented and widely deployed. And this is why the WPD is so innovative. WPD is about use and deployment of the standard. It has tutorials on how to use a feature; it has examples of uses. This is the kind of material that the W3C working group does not have time to create, but values. It is what the vendors provide to get their implementations used.

The importance of the site, from a standards point of view, is that it helps build an informed user base. Not at all a simple task.

The Web is evolving – and in its evolution, it is forcing others to change as well. Ten years ago, this type of common activity, open to all (for both contributions and information) would have been if not unthinkable, at least foreign. With this announcement, the contributors and the W3C have (hopefully) begun to change the way standards are seen – to an easier and kinder environment.  And this is a good thing.

For an Adobe developer’s view, see: What’s one of the biggest things missing from the Web?

Leading the Web Forward: Adobe’s “Create the Web” Event and Open Standards

Posted on October 5, 2012 by szilles | Comments (0)

I recently attended Adobe’s “Create the Web” event in San Francisco on September 24, 2012. One of things that struck me was the role standards are playing in the tools and technologies announced at that event.  Adobe is increasingly delivering standards-based tools to simplify the creation of imaginative content for the Web as well as contributing technology to the continuing development of the Open Web Platform standards within the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).
 
Adobe has for many years been one of the primary vendors of tools for creating visual content. Our customers look to us to help them create innovative and effective presentations and content: graphically, textually and interactively. Originally, these tools involved display vehicles created by Adobe, but increasingly, the tools Adobe is providing are moving to standards-based platforms such as the Open Web Platform. For example, the recently announced Edge Animate tool makes the creation of animations using HTML5, CSS and JavaScript much more natural; a user interacts with a graphical display of the objects being animated, and the tool helps the user write the “code” for inclusion of the objects on the user’s Web page.
 
As the Web platform standards have become available on mobile as well as desktop devices, creating presentations that scale across these devices has become more challenging. The Edge Reflow tool helps create presentations that shift the way the same content is displayed on devices of different sizes using a Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) feature called media queries. PhoneGap Build then allows an author to take a Web platform-based application and package it as a native application that can run on a number of mobile device operating systems.
 
But, the Web of today still lacks many of the features Adobe customers have grown to appreciate and use. For that reason, Adobe is very active in extending the Web standards to include those features. In the area of presentation layout, Adobe has submitted proposals to allow a presentation to be constructed from multiple flows of material and to have objects on the page exclude other objects or text to achieve layout effects commonly seen in magazines. In the area of graphics, Adobe is helping to standardize the technologies used to create filters that add pizazz to presentations and to allow various elements to be overlaid, transparently. These efforts are accompanied by open-source demonstration implementations that help vendors supporting the Open Web Platform understand the value of and possibilities around the features being contributed. Adobe is in active partnerships developing these features to lead the Web forward.
 
Adobe is making a strong statement in support of the Open Web Platform standards. We are developing tools that make it easier to produce content for the Open Web, and we are working to extend that standard to better meet the needs of Adobe customers. Thus, standards are significant in the ways Adobe helps creative professionals, publishers, developers and businesses create, publish, promote and monetize their content anywhere.