INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION FOR STANDARDIZATION


ISO/IEC JTC1/SC29/WG12

Multimedia and Hypermedia information coding
Expert Group (MHEG)

MHEG 98/N1172
Date: January 1999
Source: Sub-group on New Work Items
Title: Proposal to develop TR 13522-8 XML Notation for MHEG-5
Status:
Requested Action:
Distribution: MHEG Members,  Mail list reflector and
http://www.mheg.org
Title: XML Notation for MHEG-5
No:
Target Dates:

WD

PDTR

DTR

TR

7-99

12-99

3-2000

7-2000
Editors: Korean National Body will submit editor by Feb 15th
Supporting National Bodies UK, Japan, Germany, Finland (to be confirmed), Korea, Netherlands (to be confirmed)

Outline
The proposal is for WG 12 to establish a sub-group to produce a Technical Report, TR 13522-8, on the representation of MHEG-5 notation in the XML markup language, in addition to the Text and ASN.1 formats that already form part of the standard.

An XML document consists of two parts: a Document Type Definition (DTD), in which the format of the document is expressed; and a second component, a Style Sheet (SS) set out in the (e)Xtended Style Language (XSL). An XML capable browser, such as Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.0, will incorporate a DTD parser and an XSL processor, and thus will be able to combine and render the two components into a final displayed document. The situation is   summarised in the following diagram:

The working group believes that the expression of objects of the standard MHEG-5 classes should be a fairly straightforward matter and that it will be possible to produce specifications of such objects in XML that are isomorphic to specifications in Text Notation and in ASN.1.

The work would produce the following outcomes:

  1. an XML definition of the MHEG-5 external representation
  2. software tools for conversion between XML, Text Notation and ASN.1
  3. extensions to MHEG-5editing tools to output XML format object definitions

Justification
WG12 believe that this work will have the effect of raising awareness of the MHEG-5 standard among the Internet community, as XML is being widely adopted as a means of encoding electronic documents and users are familiar with tagged formats. It will constitute a valuable first step towards the wider aim of integrating MHEG-5with existing Web technologies. Successful conclusion of the works may have an impact on the question of MHEG-5Engine construction, as any XML-capable browser would have the capacity to render MHEG-5 objects.

As we are proposing an alternative notation, no modifications to the MHEG-5 standard will be necessary.