Subject: [WIDEX] WG Action: Widget Description Exchange Service (widex)

From: IESG Secretary <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 24 Oct 2005 16:04:34 -0400

A new IETF working group has been formed in the Application Area. 
For additional information, please contact the Area Directors or the WG Chairs.

+++

Widget Description Exchange Service (widex)
============================================

Current Status: Active Working Group

Chair(s):
Dean Willis <[email-masked]>

Applications Area Director(s):
Ted Hardie <[email-masked]>
Scott Hollenbeck <[email-masked]>

Applications Area Advisor:
Scott Hollenbeck <[email-masked]>

Mailing Lists:
General Discussion: [email-masked]
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Archive: http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/remoteui/index.html

Description of Working Group:
With the Internet reaching out to more and more devices, people are
increasingly expecting to have access to services at anytime, from
anywhere and using any device. Such services are being developed using
Web technologies such as XML and distributed across the network rather
than resident on any one device.

An example is a service to access flight arrival times, where the user
interface expressed in XHTML is rendered on a client device, the
application logic runs on a remote server and a technique as user
interface remoting is used to keep the user interface synchronized with
the application logic. What is currently lacking is a convenient means
for continous fine grained synchronization rather than the one provided
by a request/response protocol (e.g. HTTP) for Web pages, which occurs
in between page loads. This would allow the user interface to reflect
changes in application state and offer greater flexibility for
applications to respond to user input events.

The WiDeX (Widget Description Exchange Service) Working Group seeks to
define a light weight mechanism used in an IP-based network for remoting
user interfaces where the user interface is represented in XML, and
synchronization involves XML DOM events and XML DOM mutation/update
operations.

The WG will strive to preserve an extensible architecture so that the
work possibly be useful in the future with other types of descriptive
user interfaces beyond those specifically considered by the group.

Specific topics that are NOT goals of this WG are:

- XML representation of user interface objects.
- Means to establish sessions and support for device coordination.

The WiDeX service definition will define:

- A mechanism for synchronizing distributed XML DOM objects by
propagating DOM mutations/updates and DOM events.
- A set of parameters that need to be negotiated by a service discovery
and session setup mechanism in order to start the UI remoting session.
- A framework that enables a mechanism for remoting user interfaces
represented in XML format by using distributed XML DOM synchronization,
and a service discovery and session setup mechanism as building blocks.

Deliverables:

- Requirements document.
- Document specifying the framework for remoting user interfaces
represented in XML format.
- Document specifying the message formats for XML DOM events and updates
using XML in a way that is independent of the transport protocol.
- Document(s) specifying normative binding(s) to at least one transport
protocol.

It is possible that work undertaken in other working groups and even
other standards bodies (e.g. W3C) will be referenced by this working
group. It is even possible that entire deliverables could be satisfied
by the work of other working groups (e.g. discovery protocols). This
working group will seek to maximize the use of existing specifications
where applicable.

Goals and Milestones:
Nov 05    Charter Working Group  
Feb 06    Working Group Last Call on Requirements draft  
Mar 06    Discuss Last Call comments on Requirements draft  
Apr 06    Submit Requirements draft to IESG for publication as Informational RFC
  
Jun 06    Working Group Last Call on Framework, Message Formats and Transport
Bindings drafts  
Aug 06    Discuss Last Call comments on Framework, Message Formats and Transport
Bindings drafts  
Nov 06    Submit Framework, Message Formats and Transport Bindings drafts for
publication as Proposed Standard  

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