Widget Description Exchange Service (widex)

In addition to this official charter maintained by the IETF Secretariat, there is additional information about this working group on the Web at:

       Additional WIDEX Web Page

Last Modified: 2006-06-15

Additional information is available at tools.ietf.org/wg/widex

Chair(s):

  • Dean Willis <dean.willis@softarmor.com>

    Applications Area Director(s):

  • Chris Newman <chris.newman@sun.com>
  • Lisa Dusseault <lisa@osafoundation.org>

    Applications Area Advisor:

  • Lisa Dusseault <lisa@osafoundation.org>

    Mailing Lists:

    General Discussion: widex@ietf.org
    To Subscribe: https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/widex
    Archive: http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/widex/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:

    Done  Charter Working Group
    Done  Working Group Last Call on Requirements draft
    Done  Discuss Last Call comments on Requirements draft
    Apr 2006  Submit Requirements draft to IESG for publication as Informational RFC
    Jun 2006  Working Group Last Call on Framework, Message Formats and Transport Bindings drafts
    Aug 2006  Discuss Last Call comments on Framework, Message Formats and Transport Bindings drafts
    Nov 2006  Submit Framework, Message Formats and Transport Bindings drafts for publication as Proposed Standard

    Internet-Drafts:

    Widget Description Exchange Service (WIDEX) Requirements (21736 bytes)

    No Request For Comments

    IETF Secretariat - Please send questions, comments, and/or suggestions to ietf-web@ietf.org.

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