2.1.9 Widget Description Exchange Service (widex)

NOTE: This charter is a snapshot of the 66th IETF Meeting in Montreal, Quebec Canada. It may now be out-of-date.
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

Chair(s):

Dean Willis <dean.willis@softarmor.com>

Applications Area Director(s):

Ted Hardie <hardie@qualcomm.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:

  • draft-ietf-widex-requirements-03.txt

    No Request For Comments

    Meeting Minutes


    Slides

    Agenda
    Requirements
    Framework
    BEEP Bindings
    HTTP Bindings and REX by Dave Raggett