Draft Report for SC 34

[Alex Brown]

Dear all,

Please find below a draft of what I propose to send to SC 34 as a convenor's report on the Zip study work. My intention is to keep it brief and factual - but any thoughts, comments, suggestions for improvement etc. gratefully received.

- Alex.

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At its plenary meeting in Tokyo on 2010-09-10, SC 34 initiated a preliminary stage activity to investigate the basis on which the "Zip" file format might be standardized.

The activity, taking place in SC 34/WG 1, has been progressed in three meetings to date, two teleconference meetings (see SC 34 N 1545 and N 1552), and during WG 1's face-to-face meeting in Beijing on 2010-12-09. Additionally, discussions have taken place on a mailing list[1] - which has 21 subscribers - and a Wiki page is live containing some further points of discussion[2].

The principal output of this work had been a draft NWIP (see SC 34 Nxxxx) proposing how Zip may be standardized as a multi-part International Standard. The essence of the proposal is that Part 1 of this Standard should describe the core Zip format by normatively referencing documentation (the "appnote") from PKWare, Inc. using a Referencing Explanatory Report (RER) mechanism as described in the JTC 1 Standing Document on normative referencing. PKWare, Inc. have indicated that they will be happy to work on revising their existing documents to maximise their suitability for this purpose.

[1] http://mailman.vse.cz/pipermail/sc34wg1study/

[2] http://www.xmlopen.org/wg1-wiki/index.php/Zip_Study

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