RE: Notes from September 9th Teleconference

September 9, 
2003: Notes from the EM GIS SC Conference Call

 

In attendance: Carl, Rex, Art, Eliot, Tom M., Gary H.

 

There will not be a GIS SC Conference call on the 
14th of October.

 

The majority of the discussion focused on the EM 
Symbology requirements document. The following guidance was 
provided:

 

·       
Separate requirements into 2 bins: art work and 
interoperability.

·       
There is one crossover requirement that comes to mind: 
Accessibility requirements for screen readers which implies a requirement to 
have access to the symbols associated database 
record.

·       
Start with a minimum set of requirements. There will be 
both a high priority and a lower priority set of 
requirements.

·       
Agreed with suggestion that a couple more use cases would 
be good to have in the document. Rex volunteered to provide the one being 
developed for the Conference demonstration.

·       
There was agreement that some level of intelligence needs 
to be associated with a symbol. A purely “dumb” symbol has minimal utility. 
Examples of intelligence are associated text and 
voice.

·       
Reiteration that creating a normative vocabulary of 
symbol names is very high priority.

·       
Internationalization (level 2) is a requirement but 
initial focus will be on US requirements.

·       
Associated with internationalization is Versioning. Need 
to be able to deal with symbol versions. There will be updates, additions, etc 
to the normative EM Symbol set.

·       
A potential future area of requirements is the ability to 
use pen and tablet devices (part of the larger requirement to allow field entry 
and edit using EM Symbols).

·       
What about things other than visual symbols, such as 
audio alerts.

·       
Artwork should be available in multiple files sizes as 
well as black and white and color. Some feel that rules are not appropriate 
because the client then needs to interpret these rules and support some 
rendering technology such as SVG. (Chair’s note: I believe we need more 
discussion in this area. Many hand held devices now support multiple rendering 
technologies as well as j2me.)