Subject: A potential XHTML 1.0 Transitional template for minutes?

From: Pekka Nikander <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 8 Dec 2003 14:14:12 +0200

Since we are now asked to provide the minutes preferably
in HTML, I coded a fairly simple but flexible XHTML
template, with embedded minimal CCS1, that could be
used for recording the minutes.  I also used the instructions
Margaret and Thomas have been handing at the INT area as
the bases for the contents.

The result, in the form of tentative SEND WG minutes,
is available at

http://www.tml.hut.fi/~pnr/SEND/ietf58_send_minutes.html

Feel free to use it if you like it.  If there are better
CSS formats provided by the secretariat (I didn't check),
I'd be happy to include them and to revise the divs/other
formatting structures to use them instead.

--Pekka Nikander

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From: Spencer Dawkins <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 8 Dec 2003 04:46:02 -0800 (PST)

This actually looks pretty nice, but brought a few thoughts to
(my) mind:

- I also used HTML for minutes for the first time this IETF (see
http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/03nov/minutes/plenary.htm), and
my HTML looks nothing like this, of course. I'd like to put (one
or more) templates out where someone can find them easily,
because anyone can be taking minutes at these meetings. No
reason everyone's minutes have to look alike, but no reason
every wg chair should be coming up with a format from scratch,
either.

- The open items status is starting to look like it wants to be
better-integrated into an ongoing reporting mechanism (that gets
updated more often than three times per year). We update charter
milestones, but nothing more week-to-week, and some of us are
using issue trackers, but issues aren't exactly action items.
How tied are we to the current WG home page format? I remember
that we generate these pages programatically, but we've had some
items (like additional WG home pages) added for some groups, for
instance.

- I can't find a link that takes us to the preliminary IETF 58
proceedings pages yet (I guessed at the URL for the plenary,
based on the IETF 57 url). Maybe if this was easier to find,
there would be more of a shame factor in not producing minutes
during the first month after a meeting (after that, no one could
remember what happened, anyway).

But thanks for putting this together!

Spencer

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From: Jari Arkko <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 08 Dec 2003 17:28:50 +0200

> every wg chair should be coming up with a format from scratch,

This is probably a good idea. Maybe the WG chairs page
could have a pointer to a few candidate templates.

By the way, I like Pekka's format though I would probably
insert some structure into the "Discussion" section. Say, each
presentation treated separately. Now its hard to see which
discussion belongs to what subject.

I've also been using the WG summary format from Thomas and
Margaret and found it useful to add two new sections: "Events"
which would list the recent event such as the WG LCs or the
publication of RFCs, and "Input to the WG" which shows the
external input to the WG from other SDOs or WGs.

I support the idea of including the WG summary in the minutes
sent to the  proceedings; its good to have both a high-level summary
and the detailed minutes.

> items (like additional WG home pages) added for some groups, for

Good point. The action items are one level down from the charter
milestones. Chairs need to manage progress at the action point
level. And other folks often need information about what's going
on. Certainly at least the people responsible for the APs need
to know about them ;-)

Its probably a general need for WGs to have a page which
would provide information about current action points,
issue tracker URLs, interim meeting agendas, editor's web
pages -- quite often the editors of bigger specifications
keep their own sites with up-to-the-day versions of the
drafts, diff files, etc. The separate page approach is
probably easier for most folks than something that the
secretariat would maintain through automated tools. But what
about the action items -- I think it would be great
if there was some issue-tracker -like support for tracking
action items. Or perhaps the secretariat could extend
their WG milestone tracking software for this too.

--Jari

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From: Harald Tveit Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 08 Dec 2003 08:14:01 -0800

The current WG charter page format isn't sacrosanct, but since it applies 
to *all* WGs, and has to be reproduced in both HTML and ASCII at various 
times, I'm loath to experiment with it.

I do consider that WG-specific and chair-managed "WG pages" are useful 
enough and easy enough to add that we should make a STRONG recommendation 
that WGs have them (and keep them updated!)

                    Harald