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TC46

Open XML Paper Specification (OpenXPS®)

The ECMA-388 Standard defines OpenXPS, the Open XML Paper Specification. The Standard was completed in April 2009 and published as a standard in June 2009.

A presentation introducing the XML Paper Specification, as of June 2009, is downloadable in PPT format and in XPS format. A White Paper with a more complete introduction and a summary of the committee work is available in PDF format and in XPS format.

TC46 had set up four ad hoc working groups to address specific areas of the standard:

  • Color – working on issues around color management
  • Print Tickets – working on issues around the disconnection of XPS and PrintTickets
  • 3D – working on issues around the inclusion of 3D design data within XPS files
  • Visibility – working on issues around naming of the format, file extensions, icons and logos

Liaisons:

TC46 maintains liaisons with the following standards bodies:

Activities:

Highlights from the 1st meeting of TC46, July 23rd, 2007, Cambridge, UK

The meeting was attended by 26 people, made up of Ecma staff and representatives from 17 members. Ecma staff explained some of the technicalities of standards development, and the committee reviewed its scope and work items as approved by the Ecma General Assembly.

A technical editor was appointed for the development of the XPS standard, and several decisions about working process were made. A meeting schedule was also defined for the next year, with hosts, locations and dates set as accurately as possible.

The committee also discussed potential liaisons with other standards groups, including Ecma TC45 (the Office Open XML standard includes the Open Packaging Conventions used by XPS) and ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29 (recently announced as considering standardisation of HD Photo as JPEG XR).

Highlights from the 2nd meeting of TC46, September 27-28, 2007, Tokyo, Japan

A framework for the requirements around Print Ticket handling was worked out, and an ad hoc working group created to address the specific issues arising as a result. A second ad hoc working group was created to address those issues where specific colour expertise was required. Both ad hoc WGs held their first meetings to establish action plans for further work.

The committee improved their issues tracking list, and reviewed all issues raised to date, ensuring that all are allocated to committee members to develop proposed resolutions. The schedule for development of the text and submission for approval as an Ecma standard was set out.

Highlights from the 3rd meeting of TC46, January 16-18, 2008, Las Vegas, USA

Both the Colour and Print Ticket ad hoc working groups met and made progress on their specific areas of interest. The Print Ticket WG has formulated a strategy for resolving the current need for a normative reference to the PrintSchema documentation.

A third ad hoc working group was created to explore the business case for the association of 3D data with graphical elements in an XPS document, and to develop a proposal for technical mechanisms to deliver that association.

The committee made good progress in resolving a number of issues that had been identified.

Highlights from the 4th meeting of TC46, April 16-18, 2008, Oxford, UK

Mr. Bailey of Global Graphics and Mr. Hashizume of Fuji Xerox were formally re-approved as chair and vice chair of TC46 respectively.
The committee made good progress in resolving a number of issues that had been identified. The delivery schedule for an XPS standard, however, is dependent on that for JPEG XR (developed from HD Photo) in ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29.
All of the Color, Print Ticket and 3D ad hoc working groups met and made progress on their specific areas of interest.
A fourth ad hoc working group, to be known as the Visibility working group, was created to address issues around naming, file name extensions, icons, logos and other publicly visible aspects of the XPS standard.

Highlights from the 5th meeting of TC46, July 8-11, 2008, Redmond, WA, USA

Progress was made in understanding committee members’ requirements around the amount of validation that an XPS consumer must perform; TC46 will try to achieve consensus on the representation of those requirements in the standard at a future meeting.
In the same way, some progress was made on a decision regarding the use of the XPS namespace URLs based on ‘microsoft.com’. There are many independent XPS implementations in the field that would likely reject a file using a different namespace, but there is some discomfort at carrying the ‘microsoft’ name forward. A formal decision will be taken at the next face-to-face meeting.
All of the Color, Print Ticket, 3D and Visibility ad hoc working groups met and made progress on their specific areas of interest.
The committee made good progress in resolving a number of technical issues that had been identified.
The delivery schedule for an XPS standard is still dependent on that for JPEG XR in ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29. TC46 spent some time during the week in liaising with SC 29 (meeting concurrently) to ensure that both groups understand each other’s requirements.
The committee plans to release the next public draft of XPS after the next face-to-face meeting in September 2008.

Highlights from the 6th meeting of TC46, September 9-12, 2008, Yokohama, Japan

TC46 passed the milestone of having more closed issues than open ones in August, and continued that trend by closing a number of additional issues during the Yokohama meeting itself. The Color working group, in particular, made great progress on the list of color-related issues.

The Print Ticket working group has now identified the overall approach to be used in removing XPS dependencies on Microsoft’s PrintSchema specification while retaining the advantages of a standardized method for controlling aspects of page rendering.

The text for a normative annex describing the inclusion of 3D content (based on X3D;  ISO/IEC 19775) was approved, and will be included in the next XPS draft.

TC46 discussed the needs of very high volume print and archiving use cases and will research models for an XPS variant that does not require that all fonts be embedded in every XPS file. This variant will be explicitly defined for use in closed, highly-controlled environments.

The committee plans to release the next public draft of XPS (and its associated issues list) in November 2008.

Highlights from the 7th meeting of TC46, December 9-12, 2008, Geneva, Switzerland

The four day main TC46 meeting was preceded by a one day editing meeting in which the current draft was reviewed for minor errors. The Print Ticket and Color working groups each met and provided proposals to the TC46 plenary.

Resolutions were reached on a number of significant and long-term discussions, including disentangling PrintTicket requirements from XPS and a decision to change the name-space used in XML components within the XPS package. In all the number of open issues was reduced by over 50%, even though a small number of new issues were also opened.

The high volume print and archiving variant of XPS that was proposed in Yokohama has been deferred to a later version of the XPS standard in the interests of stability.

The committee plans to release the next public draft of XPS (and its associated issues list) in January 2009.

Highlights from the 8th meeting of TC46, March 10-12, 2009, Lexington, KY, USA

The three day main TC46 meeting was preceded by a one day editing meeting in which the final set of specification edits was reviewed and corrected. As a result of progress at that meeting the main meeting was reduced from four to three days.

At the start of the main meeting, TC46 members expressed their keen appreciation to Mr. Martin Bailey (Global Graphics) and Mr. Takashi Hashizume (Fuji Xerox), the outgoing officers, for their successful leadership over the past two years.  The newly elected officers are Ms. Ann McCarthy (Lexmark International, Inc.), Chairman, and Mr. Fumihito Akiyama (Konica Minolta Holdings, Inc.), Vice-Chairman.

The technical discussions of the meeting included final approval of the normative references and portions of the informative annexes.

Happily, at the close of the day on March 12th, TC46 members celebrated reaching the milestone of zero open issues. In the course of its two year OpenXPS work program, TC46 accepted and incorporated changes into the OpenXPS Standard in response to 180 technical issues, and also considered and resolved 53 others.

Next steps for the committee center on progressing the final draft through the Ecma standardization process, and supporting the Ecma General Assembly discussion with a white paper and an overview OpenXPS slide set.

Development overview:

Working draft 1.0.1 (September 2007)

This working draft 1.0.1 “XML Paper Specification” submitted to Ecma TC46 by Microsoft in September 2007 is available in PDF format and XPS format (© Ecma International 2008 – All rights reserved).

This document is “a work in progress”. It is the starting point of discussions within Ecma Technical Committee TC46. It was adapted from the original XPS specification as published by Microsoft, to match standards editing style guidelines more closely, especially in the area of distinguishing between normative and informative text.

A number of formatting and textual issues remain to be addressed, as well as the bulk of the work of TC46 in amending the text to meet the scope and goals of the committee. Comments on this draft are very welcome; this early version is provided to enable the consistent use of clause and subclause references in those comments.

Working draft 1.1 (February 2008)

This working draft reflects the current state of development as at the close of the 3rd TC46 meeting at Las Vegas in January 2008.  It is available in PDF format and XPS format (© Ecma International 2008 – All rights reserved). These drafts include tracking of substantive changes from the 1.0.1 draft.

The TC46 issues list, setting out the deficiencies identified in the standard and the status of any corrective action at the time of publication of draft 1.1, is also available in PDF format and XPS format.

Working draft 1.2 (June 2008)

This working draft reflects the current state of development; it is available in PDF format and XPS format (© Ecma International 2008 – All rights reserved). These drafts include tracking of substantive changes from the 1.1 draft.

The TC46 issues list, setting out the deficiencies identified in the standard and the status of any corrective action at the time of publication of draft 1.2, is available in XLS format.

Working draft 1.3 (November 2008)

This working draft reflects the current state of development; it is available in PDF format and XPS format (© Ecma International 2008 – All rights reserved). These drafts include tracking of substantive changes from the 1.2 draft.

The TC46 issues list, setting out the deficiencies identified in the standard and the status of any corrective action at the time of publication of draft 1.3, is available in XLS format.

Working draft 1.4 (January 2009)

This working draft reflects the current state of development; it is available in PDF format and XPS format (© Ecma International 2009 – All rights reserved). These drafts include tracking of substantive changes from the 1.3 draft.

The TC46 issues list, setting out the deficiencies identified in the standard and the status of any corrective action at the time of publication of draft 1.4, is available in XLS format.

Working draft 1.5 (March 2009)

This working draft reflects the current state of development; it is available in PDF format and XPS format (© Ecma International 2009 – All rights reserved). These drafts include tracking of substantive changes from the 1.4 draft.

The TC46 issues list, setting out the deficiencies identified in the standard and the status of any corrective action at the time of publication of draft 1.5, is available in XLS format.

Final draft 1.6 (April 2009)

This final draft 1.6 reflects the version of the Standard which will be submitted to the June 2009 Ecma General Assembly for vote; it is available in PDF format and XPS format (© Ecma International 2009 – All rights reserved).

Members of TC46:

The following member companies of Ecma have been active participants in the development of the XPS standard:

You can register online to Ecma TC46 external contribution.