An outline proposal

[Francis Cave]

Hi Dennis

> Do we know why the proposal of a Zip-Lite failed?  Are there comments
> on the
> NWI ballot that we should be examining?  I say that because it might be
> the
> other aspects of making provisions for content that facilitate document
> packaging that might have been an issue?  And it just might have been
> that
> the value of a Zip lite scope was not well-understood.

Zip-Lite failed for a combination of political and technical reasons. It was
assumed in the proposal that we'd need to develop a standard, but many
National Bodies took the view (reflected in the ballot comments, as well as
in the discussions we had in Tokyo) that it was premature to assume that
this would be necessary, without first discussing the matter more widely,
and in particular bringing the likes of PKWare into the discussion. There
was also a clear view among several National Bodies that the scope of the
work was not sufficiently well-defined.

It may be that what we come up with in the end doesn't look much different
to what was originally envisaged, but it is also possible that some other
solution will be found that meets the technical requirements of 29500, 26300
and others but doesn't involve having to publish a standard.

To read more on why Zip-Lite failed, see the ballot results (SC 34 N 1461)
and the disposition of comments (SC 34 N 1494) - you'll need password access
to the SC 34 document repository to read these, as they're not a public
documents.

The Tokyo resolution initiating the Study Period doesn't constrain
discussions of scope in any way, but one would expect, given the background,
that the focus is going to be on what it is most likely can be agreed is
needed for document packaging in the sense used within existing standards
such as 26300 and 29500.

Francis