<html><head><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body dir="auto">I don’t have any insider knowledge on what specific steps the current ISO process is comprised of, but the results it generates are absolutely dreadful and practically unusable for any substantive document.<div><br></div><div>Among many deficiencies of the ISO XML tools - two have stood out the most:<div>1) The inability to support internal document’s hyperlinks. Yes, even the entries in the table of content were not hyperlinked - one had to scroll all the way to a desired page number. And,</div><div>2) All color images and illustrations ended up being converted to CMYK color space - good luck providing proper illustrations e.g. for various blending modes. </div><div><br></div><div>There were many other bugs and issues we encountered when preparing OFF 4th edition for publication - so many that in the end we had to give up completely. The auto-generated PDF file was so horrendous that even ISO editor gave up trying to fix it and simply stepped over the required process by generating output PDF directly from Word. </div><div><br></div><div>TBH, I still do not understand why using ISO XML tools is even necessary when “Save as PDF” directly from Word does a much better job! </div><div><br></div><div>I get it that ISO invested a lot into developing their own tool - it took a long time to get it running and to get it adopted internally. The irony of the situation is that the XML tools development began when ISO main product / output format was selling printed copies of standards they produced. I suspect the limitations of printed copies is what was informing their product features (no links, rigidly defined CMYK printing process) but in the next many years it took them to develop and implement their own tools the whole world moved on to electronic publishing, and they were still stuck in the past (and not willing to fix it). </div><div><br></div><div>FWIW, I have zero trust in their tools - neither old nor new. Until years of good user experience prove me wrong - I refuse to be a guinea pig and am not touching ISO tools with a 10 ft. pole. </div><div><br id="lineBreakAtBeginningOfSignature"><div dir="ltr"><div>Thank you,</div>Vladimir </div><div dir="ltr"><br></div><div id="AppleMailSignature" dir="ltr">P.S. As an exercise, one might want to look at the differences between 2nd, 3rd, and 4th editions PDF files. Second edition was published in 2009 (before ISO XML tools were implemented); third edition was published in 2015 (using XML tool). When proofing the final Word file, it didn’t even occurred to me to check PDF for major deficiencies, and we ended up angering *many* users as a result. The fourth edition was published in 2019 after I stood my ground and withdrew my approval for publication until all PDF issues were fixed. I only learned it years later that “fixing the issues” involved a simple bypassing of XML tools by using “Save as PDF” directly from Word. </div><div id="AppleMailSignature" dir="ltr"><br></div><div dir="ltr"><br><blockquote type="cite">On Sep 16, 2024, at 8:02 PM, MURATA via mpeg-otspec <mpeg-otspec@lists.aau.at> wrote:<br><br></blockquote></div><blockquote type="cite"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div><br><br><br>Just a thought. Is the "iso's kind of XML" version of the spec available anywhere?<br></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>STS. See <a href="https://www.niso.org/standards-committees/sts">https://www.niso.org/standards-committees/sts</a></div><div><br></div><div>Internally, they use neither OOXML nor ODF. They convert Word to STS using eXtyles.</div><div><br></div><div>Regards,</div><div>Makoto</div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div><br>Regards,<br>Hin-Tak<br> </div> <div style="margin:10px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"> <div style="font-family:"Helvetica Neue",Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px;color:rgb(38,40,42)"> <div> On Monday 16 September 2024 at 14:14:01 BST, Liam R. E. Quin via mpeg-otspec <<a href="mailto:mpeg-otspec@lists.aau.at" target="_blank">mpeg-otspec@lists.aau.at</a>> wrote: </div> <div><br></div> <div><br></div> <div><div dir="ltr">On Sun, 2024-09-15 at 20:23 -0700, Ken Lunde via mpeg-otspec wrote:<br clear="none">> Murata-san,<br clear="none">> <br clear="none">> Another consideration is the extent to which the toolchain of ISO/CS<br clear="none">> can handle characters outside of basic Latin. <br clear="none"><br clear="none">I would expect it to be able to handle the needs of the Open Font<br clear="none">Format specification just fine.<br clear="none"><br clear="none">They gave a talk on their new system at an XML confernce, i think maybe<br clear="none">Balisage last year.<br clear="none"><br clear="none">Obviously it won't handle fonts with more than 65535 glyphs or using<br clear="none">avar2, but neither will Word right now :-)<br clear="none"><br clear="none">Having said that, i don’t see a reason to switch when the document is<br clear="none">nearly ready to publish - it sounds like a lot of work for the editor<br clear="none">with unclear benefits and possible delays.<br clear="none"><br clear="none">The new ISO system uses XML behind the scenes, and if they made XML<br clear="none">import available, it'd maybe be possible to use XSLT to take the Word<br clear="none">file and produce their XML, given a suitable blob of funding. Or they<br clear="none">may have a suitable Word input system working themselves. But even if<br clear="none">it’s entirely automated it would need a careful proofreading for sure.<br clear="none"><br clear="none">For a future version of the document, starting out again as a draft, i<br clear="none">think it would make a lot of sense.<br clear="none"><br clear="none">Kind regards,<br clear="none"><br clear="none">liam<br clear="none"><br clear="none">-- <br clear="none">Liam Quin, <a href="https://www.delightfulcomputing.com/" target="_blank">https://www.delightfulcomputing.com/</a><br clear="none">Available for XML/Document/Information Architecture/XSLT/<br clear="none">XSL/XQuery/Web/Text Processing/A11Y training, work & consulting.<br clear="none">Barefoot Web-slave, antique illustrations: <a href="http://www.fromoldbooks.org" target="_blank">http://www.fromoldbooks.org</a><div id="m_-4468028281223212197yqtfd59419"><br clear="none">_______________________________________________<br clear="none">mpeg-otspec mailing list<br clear="none"><a shape="rect" href="mailto:mpeg-otspec@lists.aau.at" target="_blank">mpeg-otspec@lists.aau.at</a><br clear="none"><a shape="rect" href="https://lists.aau.at/mailman/listinfo/mpeg-otspec" target="_blank">https://lists.aau.at/mailman/listinfo/mpeg-otspec</a><br clear="none"></div></div></div> </div> </div></blockquote></div><br clear="all"><div><br></div><span class="gmail_signature_prefix">-- </span><br><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"> --<div>慶應義塾大学政策・メディア研究科特任教授</div><div>村田 真</div></div></div></div>
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