I have been engaged in development of International Standards (ISO and IEC), Japanese Industrial Standards (JISs) and related standardization documents such as Technical Reports. Nowadays the number of documents to be discussed for developing standards is increasing so rapidly that it is indispensable to introduce information and communication technology for high efficient standardization activity.
This paper shows some actual examples of IT application to development of standards, in particular, JISs and JIS/TRs.
NOTE: The examples of documents associated with JISs or JIS/TRs contain the Japanese character codes. Rendering of this article is suggested to employ a browser which can support the Japanese character codes.
From the development process's point of view, JIS can be classified into the three types:
A JIS/TR is, basically, intended to publish the preliminary technical information for standardization prior to its completion as a JIS and to promote active discussions on it and associated technology to obtain a technical consensus for its standardization.
We have three types of JIS/TR, i.e., Type 1, Type 2 and Type 3. They are similar to Type 1, Type 2 and Type 3 of ISO/TR respectively. Their development process classifies them into:
The actual discussion and drafting of JIS and JIS/TR are carried out in meetings and email communication by the members of committees established by MITI (Ministry of International Trade and Industry) responding to the industries requirements.
In some meetings too much number of documents are distributed to be dealt with as hardcopies. The softcopy documents were distributed, at first, by email, but then the distribution was changed into Web application. The meeting documents are in several forms, e.g., plain text, HTML, SGML, PDF, TeX, etc. For the Web distribution, I prepare an agenda of HTML form for a meeting, which includes hyperlinks to all other documents for the meeting.
All the documents for the meeting are submitted to the web just before holding the meeting. Members of the committee access to the web to review and obtain the documents. After the meeting a minute is submitted to the web.
An example of the web[5] for meetings of an INSTAC committee is shown in Table 1.
Table 1 - Meetings of INSTAC/EPW1NOTE: This example contains hyperlinks only in meeting No.5.
| No. | Date | Time | Agenda(Doc. No.) | Minutes(Doc. No.) |
| 1 | 1998-05-06 | 10:00〜12:00 | EPW1-1-0 | EPW1-2-1 |
| 2 | 1998-06-10 | 14:00〜17:00 | EPW1-2-0 | EPW1-3-1 |
| 3 | 1998-07-08 | 10:00〜12:00 | EPW1-3-0 | EPW1-4-1 |
| 4 | 1998-08-05 | 14:00〜17:00 | EPW1-4-0 | EPW1-5-1 |
| 5 | 1998-08-21 | 14:00〜17:00 | EPW1-5-0 | EPW1-6-1 |
| 6 | 1998-09-16 | 10:00〜12:00 | EPW1-6-0 | EPW1-7-1 |
| 7 | 1998-10-23 | 10:00〜12:00 | EPW1-7-0 | EPW1-8-1 |
| 8 | 1998-11-25 | 14:00〜17:00 | ||
| 9 | 1998-12-25 | 14:00〜17:00 |
Complicated international standards, e.g., ISO/IEC 10180, are translated and described in SGML with 2 language DTD in their corresponding JIS drafting. After completion of translation, Japanese elements are extracted. An example of description using the 2 language DTD is shown below:
**************** Draft of JIS X 4154 (ISO/IEC 10180) ********************
<c1> <e>6 Document Structure and Structuring Processing <j>6. 文書構造及び構造処理 <p><e>The SPDL document structure is the result of the division and repeated subdivision of an SPDL document into increasingly smaller parts. This process results in a hierarchical structure. <j>SPDL文書をより小さな部分に繰り返し分割していった結果得られる階層的な構造を, SPDLの文書構造とする。 <p><e>The notation employed to specify the SPDL structure is declarative in nature, as opposed to the content notation, which takes the form of a procedural language. <j>内容の表記法が手続き型言語の形式をとるのとは反対に, SPDL構造の指定に用いる表記法は, 本質的に宣言的なものとなる。
Comparatively simple standards or TRs written in HTML are translated just on the source document preserving original tags. An example is shown below:
**************** original source (from W3C Rec. CSS1) *******************
<H4>
<A NAME="background-image">5.3.3 'background-image'</A>
</H4>
<P>
<EM>Value:</EM> <url> | none<BR>
<EM>Initial:</EM> none<BR>
<EM>Applies to:</EM> all elements<BR>
<EM>Inherited:</EM> no<BR>
<EM>Percentage values:</EM> N/A<BR>
<P>
This property sets the background image of an element. When setting a background
image, one should also set a background color that will be used when the
image is unavailable. When the image is available, it is overlaid on top
of the background color.
<PRE>
BODY { background-image: url(marble.gif) }
P { background-image: none }
</PRE>
************* translated source (from JIS/TR X 0011: CSS1) **************
<H4>
<A NAME="background-image">5.3.3 'background-image'</A>
</H4>
<P>
<EM>値:</EM> <url> | none<BR>
<EM>初期値:</EM> none<BR>
<EM>適用対象:</EM> すべての要素<BR>
<EM>継承:</EM> no<BR>
<EM>パーセント値:</EM> N/A<BR>
<P>
この特性は，要素の背景画像を設定する。背景画像を設定するときには，
その画像が使用不可能なときに使用する背景色も設定するほうがよい。
画像が使用可能なときには，背景色の上に画像を重ねる。
<PRE>
BODY { background-image: url(marble.gif) }
P { background-image: none }
</PRE>
We have already published JIS/TR X 0004[4], a DTD for documents of JISs and other standards. The TR is Japanese translated version of ISO/IEC TR 9573-11 and provides DTD with JIS specific modification. Responding to user requirements for interchanging JIS documents with their formatting information for printing, we introduced the DSSSL into our prototype system for electronic JIS publishing. This clause shows the overview of the system and developed DSSSL specification of JIS formatting. The system employs the JADE, a free DSSSL processor.
The three forms of documents are required for document interchange:
In the distributed development of standardization documents, in particular, the interchange of forms (1) and (2) documents are indispensable. The SGML (ISO 8879) can enough support the requirements for the interchange of form (1) documents.
There have been employed some file formats of major word processors, e.g., MS-Word, for interchanging form (2) documents. However, those formats are sometimes suffered from an evolution so called "version-up". They result in a number of incompatible documents. Besides, we have experience of miserable interchange of documents between the systems of the same number of revision but different language versions, for example, Japanese version and English version.
We require, therefore, a stable standardized interchange format for form (2) documents. A candidate could be DSSSL (ISO/IEC 10179[1] or JIS X 4153[2]).
The JADE[3], a free DSSSL processor, has been updated and supports today a number of languages. Using the JADE, we constructed a prototype system for interchanging JIS documents preserving formatting information for printing. Its major purpose is to examine the capability of DSSSL specification for JIS formatting.
A part of the formatting specification to all the elements for JIS documents were described by DSSSL according to JIS Z 8301 "Rules for the drafting and presentation of Japanese Industrial Standards".
The DSSSL specification conforming to JIS Z 8301 is described as follows.
<!doctype style-sheet PUBLIC "-//James Clark//DTD DSSSL Style Sheet//EN">
(define debug
(external-procedure "UNREGISTERED::James Clark//Procedure::debug"))
; font-names & font-sizes
(define JIS-logo-size 42mm)
(define text-size 10.5pt)
(define header-size 8pt)
(define major-title-size (* minor-title-size 1.2))
(define minor-title-size (* text-size 1.2))
.......
.......
; Spacing for lines
;
(define paragraph-line-spacing
(* text-size 2) )
;
; Spacing for Titles
;
(define (title-spacing lines title-size ratio pri)
(display-space
(* (- (* lines paragraph-line-spacing) title-size) ratio)
priority: pri ))
(define h0t-space-before
(title-spacing 2.5 major-title-size (/ 3 4) 100) )
.......
.......
; Styles
;
(define default-paragraph-style
(style
;
; initial values for paragraph
;
; lines: wrap ; default
; asis-truncate-char: #f ; default
; asis-wrap-char: #f ; default
; asis-wrap-indent: #f ; default
; first-line-align: #f ; default
.......
.......
; SGML document root
;
(root
(make display-group
use: default-style
(process-children) ))
;
; <![ IGNORE [
; <!ENTITY % doctype "standjis" -- 文書型名 -->
;
; <!ELEMENT %doctype; O O (bibinfo*,%fm.d;,genwarn?,body,
; %annxs;,index*,backm?)
; -(%main.ex;) +(%ix;|%i.float;|revmark) >
; ]]>
(element standjis (process-children))
Existing activities for JIS and JIS/TR development, i.e., discussion in meetings, drafting/translation of standards, and interchanging documents with formatting information, encouraged in IT/Web environment are reported.
In the prototype system for DSSSL processing, we recognized the style specification functionality of DSSSL and style processing capability of JADE required for JIS documents, particularly for the following formatting elements: