X3T9.2/92-173 R0 TO: Kathleen McMillan Manager Standards Processing X3 Secretariat CID: 75300,2667 DATE: August 20, 1992 SUBJECT: Electronic Documents & E-mail Following our telephone conversation today John Lohmeyer (Chair X3T9.2), Gene Milligan (Chair X3T9.5), and I discussed the electronic communications issue during lunch time and offer the following comments: 1) The initial goal is to be able to meet legal requirements for meeting notices, distribution of agendas, and dissemination of meeting minutes via electronic means (e-mail or facsimile). 2) The short term goal is to require standards committee participants to provide an e-mail address to the committee if they wish to receive electronic documents. We will still accept paper documents and prepare paper mailings of current revisions of documents. However, those people without an electronic address will not receive all versions of the committee documents. 3) The long term goal should be the ability to conduct an electronic standards development effort without resorting to paper until final publication. Participants will be required to submit documents in electronic format and documents will only be distributed via an electronic means. 4) We suggest that the X3 Secretartiat provide and maintain an internet file archiver and file server to both meet the legal requirements of keeping an archive of committee documents and to make committee documentation available to anyone with internet access (internet is widely available through gateways to other networks including Compuserve, MCImail, FIDOnet, etc.). 5) The focus of the electronic distribution effort should be on the distribution and archiving of ASCII information and not get side-tracked on issues of the format of the information (e.g., text editor formats and graphics formats). 6) We were informed today that IEEE has chosen FRAMEMAKER as their software for development of standards. FRAMEMAKER is available on MAC, WINDOWS, and UNIX platforms. The IEEE plans to use CD-ROMs for distribution media. Regards, Lawrence J. Lamers Principal Member X3T9 CID: 71540,2756