Specification Template Task Force (STTF)

Purpose

The purpose of the STTF is to produce and maintain one or more templates for formal ToIP specifications. In addition it will develop and maintain a set of policies and directives for the structure, content, and formatting of these deliverables. Finally, it will develop or contribute to open source tooling to facilitate drafting and review of these deliverables.

While this TF will operate under the purview of the TSWG, it is expected to be a polyglot TF having participation and contributions across all ToIP Working Groups.

The STTF needs to provide policies and directives for:

Document Format:

  • Markdown (this is the format currently required for ToIP specifications)
  • Kramdown vs. Markdown-it
  • something else

Diagrams and images:

Research into a ToIP / WebofTrust diagrams directory:  Decentralized Diagrams Directory

  • Mermaid
  • D2
  • something else

Comparison site: https://text-to-diagram.com/

Differences Mermaid vs D2:

  • Images & Icons: What are the available options for including images and icons
  • Markdown: Use Markdown for text objects in the diagram
  • Code snippets: Render syntax-highlighted code snippets
  • Autoformat: Language tooling to autoformat a file
  • Responsive dark mode: Can the diagram render with both light and dark mode, - switching depending on user preference
  • PDF exports: Can the CLI export PDF output

Document rendering:

  • Spec-up (this is our primary specification authoring tool)
  • Respec
  • MKdocs
  • Docusaurus
  • something else

Document Structure:

What sections are required? Examples:

  • Introduction
  • Clauses (ISO) vs sections
  • Bibliography 
  • Appendix vs Annex (ISO)

What sections are required and should be pre-populated? Examples:

  • Foreword (ISO)
  • Status of This Memo (IETF)

  • Copyright Notice (IETF)

Document Style:

  • How should normative vs informative sections be distinguished?
  • Do we require any Internationalization and localization of specifications?
  • What format should references and citations have?
  • Format and capitalization of terms and definitions
    • iso lower cases all term definitions, but their usages can be capitalized, but not other formatting is applied
    • IETF capitalizes terms and definitions and their usages... and sometimes italics/bold are applied (cite)

Document versioning:

  • Method
  • Publication deliverable / permanent links
  • Spec-Up versioning and git/github strategy - see concern

Image versioning:

  • a sustainable way of storing and referencing source and (auto)generated results of diagrams
  • a layered structure - and overall maintenance of this documentation for different user groups and levels in a consistent way
  • Broken links checker

Tooling:

  • A set of GitHub actions that render publicly accessible:
    • Webpages?
    • Word documents?
    • PDFs?

Documentation for paths to further SDOs:

  • IETF
  • ISO
  • something else

(W3C is intentionally omitted as they have a well established feeder organization through the CCG)

Updates to spec-up:

add support for `[[bib: XYZ, (http://example.com)]]` or similar construct should render

Bibliography
XYZ

http://example.com

The original deliverable template for reference:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1LS8l5cv4ZVqpiqf39hU2KK5OpG5_ycZuLHGc6CumpfI/edit#heading=h.gjdgxs

Deliverables

The table below lists all deliverables of the ACDC Task Force:

AcronymFull Name of DeliverableDeliverable TypeLink to
Draft Deliverable
Lead AuthorsStatus/Notes
STSpecification TemplateTemplatehttps://github.com/trustoverip/specification-templateDraft
...Specification Style GuideGuidehttps://lf-toip.atlassian.net/wiki/display/HOME/Specification+Style+Guide



TGGTerminology Governance GuideGuidehttps://henkvancann.github.io/terminology-governance-guide/

@henkvancann

Draft


Proposed Chairs

Please add your name to this list if you wish to be a chair:

Meeting Schedule

Initial formal meeting then work is intended to be asynchronous using this wiki and GitHub Discussions and Issues. Zoom meetings will be called as needed.

Meeting Agendas and Notes

TBD

Intellectual Property Rights (Copyright, Patent, Source Code)

As a Task Force (TF) of the Technology Stack WG (TSWG), the STTF inherits the IPR terms from the TSWG JDF Charter.

Mailing List and Communications

This task force uses the following for communications

  • Slack: This TF has its own dedicated Slack channel: #tswg-sttf
  • Github: This TF will use GitHub issues for substantive conversations on topics, not Slack. This way the conversation is source controlled.