New Vendor Products for REC WebCGM Interoperability
Vendor Offering -- XML 2001

Presenters

This Vendor Offering will be presented by vendor members of the CGM Open Consortium.

Autotrol Technologies, Kevin O'Kane
Ematek, Ulrich Laesche
ITEDO, Dieter Weidenbrueck
Larson Software, Don Larson
System Development Inc, Forrest Carpenter

For more about these companies and their WebCGM products, please see CGM Open Consortium web site, and follow the links to "Members". In addition to these presenters, the session will be introduced and moderated by:

Lofton Henderson, CGM Open Program Director

Purpose

Key vendors of WebCGM Technology, an emerging standard for delivering high quality technical graphics over the Web, will team to present a sampling of their product offerings, and demonstrate the interoperable potential for WebCGM.

The basic message is: the WebCGM standard is here now, a stable and mature standard; it's the right solution for technical Web graphics; the products are here; and it works -- the products interoperate.

Synopsis

WebCGM is a stable and mature W3C Recommendation for technical graphics on the Web. Besides having functionality accurately targeted at its functional niche, a standard needs several other things to succeed. The most obvious need is a critical mass of implementations which interoperate successfully. Five vendors of the CGM Open Consortium are now releasing WebCGM products, whose functionality spans the categories of WebCGM content generators, format transcoders, viewers and browser plugins, editors, and validators. These products are being built with the aid of a new WebCGM Conformance Test Suite, which adds the critical component of verifiability. After a brief introduction and pointer to additional WebCGM resources and information, we will present three brief sub-scenarios that simulate snippets of workflow, in which the five vendors will (pair-wise) apply their products and functionality, to demonstrate the interoperable potential of WebCGM and the products.

Presentation

The demo will be organized into three 10-minute sub-scenarios:

First sub-scenario

An initial 5 minute orientation will briefly present:

What is WebCGM, who uses it, and why:
- a W3C Recommendation for...
- high end technical graphics on the Web
- aerospace, commercial aviation, defense
- binary, efficient, richly expressive, tech features
- tightly constrained to maximize interoperability
Criteria for success
- verifiability, which requires...
- validators and test-suite.
- and, a critical mass of interoperable implementations
About the WebCGM Conformance Test Suite
- full Basic Effectivity coverage
- adapated static graphics (~230 tests)
- new dynamic Web tests (~25)
- first public release
See Thursday technical sessions for lots more detail!
See CGM Open Consortium web site
- resources
- white papers
- extensive bibliography (incl business case for WebCGM)
- test suites

After the brief introduction, Don Larson (Larson Software Technology) will spend 5 minutes illustrating some introductory points with his company's software.

Verifying a WebCGM Viewer using the WebCGM Conformance Test Suite.
Step though a few selected test files illustrating WebCGM capabilities and viewer behavior, e.g.
- linking,
- selection,
- regions,
- screen-tips.
WebCGM Test Suite as learning tool for Web graphics authors and programmers.
Use a CGM editor to
- open a couple of WebCGM example files,
- show the attributes of WebCGM objects,
- revise an object then show effects in viewer.

Second Sub-scenario

This will be a 10-minute interoperability scenario, using the WebCGM products of two other vendors.

Presented by and using the products of:

Autotrol Technologies (Kevin O'Kane)
Ematek GmbH (Ulrich Laesche)

Theme: integration of technical graphics into Web pages (no further detail available).

Third Sub-scenario

This will be a 10-minute interoperability scenario, using the WebCGM products of a final vendor-pair.