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ISO Certification

Dave Cramer edited this page Nov 13, 2018 · 35 revisions

ISO Standardization

About ISO, IEC, JTC 1, and SC 34

ISO is the International Organization for Standards. It collaborated with the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) to form a joint technical committee (JTC) to develop standards around information technology. That committee is ISO/IEC JTC 1.

JCT 1 has many subcommittees (SC). SC 34 is devoted to document description and processing languages, and thus has jurisdiction over things like EPUB, Office Open XML, and OpenDocument Format. Hence we speak of ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 34. Francis Cave is the chair of the subcommittee.

For Americans, there is a Technical Advisory Group (TAG) that represents U.S. interests to SC 34. Todd Carpenter of NISO is the chair of this TAG (not to be confused with W3C TAG). George Kerscher is a member of this TAG.

The subcommittee has four working groups. One of these working groups is (of course) a joint working group (JWG) with ISO/TC 46/SC 4 and IEC/TC 100/TA 10 WG, devoted to EPUB. So now we have ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 34/JWG 7.

In ISO, working groups have conveners rather than chairs. The conveners of ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 34/JWG 7 are Mr. Yong-Sang Cho and Professor Sam Gyun Oh.

Directives

The ISO/IEC Directives define the basic procedures to be followed in the development of International Standards and other publications. See JTC1 supplement and ISO/IEC Directives Part 2.

Types of ISO Documents

  • IS = International Standard
  • DIS = Draft International Standard

An International Standard provides rules, guidelines or characteristics for activities or for their results, aimed at achieving the optimum degree of order in a given context. It can take many forms. Apart from product standards, other examples include : test methods, codes of practice, guideline standards and management systems standards.

  • TS = Technical Specification.
  • PDTS = Preliminary Draft Technical Specification.

A Technical Specification addresses work still under technical development, or where it is believed that there will be a future, but not immediate, possibility of agreement on an International Standard. A Technical Specification is published for immediate use, but it also provides a means to obtain feedback. The aim is that it will eventually be transformed and republished as an International Standard.

  • FT = Fast-Track JTC1 member bodies have the right to submit standards (typically their national standards) via the fast-track procedure. Such submissions become Draft International Standards. For example, Korea had approved a national ebook standard based on EPUB 3.0, which was fast-tracked to become a Technical Standard (ISO/IEC TS 30135-1/7).

  • PAS = Publicly Available Specification. W3C is already approved as a PAS submitter, and thus has the right to submit W3C recommendations to JTC1 as Draft International Standard (DIS).

Note: EPUB 3.0, 3.0.1, or 3.2 cannot be PAS-submitted since they are not W3C recommendations.

Current status of EPUB-related standards in ISO

EPUB 3.0.1

Korea submitted EPUB 3.0.1 as Draft International Standard (DIS) via fast track.

EPUB 3.0

ISO/IEC TS 30135-1/7 is a Technical Specification (TS). Note that International Standards cannot normatively reference a Technical Specification. This is one reason that EPUB 3.0.1 is being submitted as an IS, so that EPUB A11Y can normatively reference it.

EPUB Accessiblility

New work item proposed for EPUB Accessiblility 1.0 to eventually become an International Standard. Ballot is open from 2018-10-01 to 2018-12-01. The proposal document is ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 34 N 2535.

We find the following statement in the proposal interesting:

But there are no plans to create W3C recommendations for EPUB Accessibility.

We are also concerned that this is described as applying to EPUB 3.0.1, when the original intent was for the A11Y guidelines to apply to any version of EPUB 3.X.

The proposed project leader is Makoto Murata.

EPUB 3 Preservation/Archiving

ISO/IEC PDTS 22424-1 Information technology -- Digital publishing -- EPUB3 Preservation -- Part 1: Principles

ISO/IEC PDTS 22424-2 Information technology -- Digital publishing -- EPUB3 Preservation -- Part 2: Metadata requirements

EPUB DRM

ISO/IEC AWI TS 23078 Specification of DRM technology for e-book content in EPUB format. Apparently this is an effort by Korea to standardize Readium’s LCP spec in ISO.

Emails about ISO Certification