With the best wishes to each and all in the TC3 Community for a Happy New 2001

/Per-Åke Svensson

Documents from the IEC TC3 Meeting in Stockholm

The meeting documents are available on the Meeting document page for TC3.

/Per-Åke Svensson

IEC General Meeting in Stockholm has started

The agendas for the meetings of TC3 and Sub-Committees can be downloaded from  the TC3 meetings home page.

A meeting folder that contains also green meeting documents is downloadable from the Meeting document page for TC3.

See you in Stockholm!

/Per-Åke Svensson

Questionnaire on the use of IEC TC3 standards

IEC Central Office is now via the National Committees of IEC circulating a questionnaire, document 3/565/Q, to end users of IEC TC3 standards and to tool providers, i.e. suppliers of electrotechncial Computer Aided Systems, Document Management Systems and Process Control Systems.

The questionnaire is initiated by a decision of IEC TC3 and SC3B at the last plenary meeting in Kyoto. The goal is to get a better picture of the implementation of the standards than we presently have. Of special interest is how existing tools support the standards, since that to a large extent decides what the users do. 

We hope for a good response on the questionnaire. If your company or organisation does get the it from your National Committee or other organisation, you can download it directly from this site: 

• Questionnaire document (pdf)
• Form 1 for end users (doc)
• Form 2 for tool providers (doc)

/Per-Åke Svensson

Three new International Standards published by Subcommittee 3B

Please go to the SC3B home page to read more.

/Per-Åke Svensson

Information structures, documentation and graphical symbols is the new name for TC3

At the meeting of TC3 in Kyoto last year, among a lot of other things, also the name of the techncial committee was discussed. It was felt that the existing one conveyed a too limited message to people reading and using it. 

The committee therefore decided to propose a new one: "Information structures, documentation and graphical symbols". The opinion was that this name would give a more correct impression of the work being done, especially in SC3B and SC3D. 

This name has now been approved by the Committee of Action of IEC.

/Per-Åke Svensson

Call for program ideas for the TC3 Workshop in Stockholm

IEC TC3  with Sub-committees will have their plenary meetings in Stockholm this year in connection with the IEC General Meeting 11th - 22nd September.

As earlier a TC3 Workshop will be held in conjunction with these meetings. This year it is to be held 18th September.

These workshops are usually very appreciated, since they allow for a both deeper and broader discussion than what is possible to manage at the plenary meetings. It is also possible to make demonstrations. The list of topics so far is quite wide: early demonstrations of the symbols databses, demonstration of the new standardization procedures for graphical symbols, discussion of marketing issues, presentation of the status of the STEP standardisation, presentation and discussions of new project proosals, etc.

The program for the workshop in Stockholm  is not yet fixed. At the workshop in Kyoto last year, it was decided that we should ask the potential participants for proposals for program items, in order to get a more active involvement by  all present.

You are therefore invited to suggest  program items. Send an e-mail with your ideas to per-ake.svensson@se.abb.com , before the middle of March. We will then have them available for discussion at a planned co-ordination meeting.

/Per-Åke Svensson

Search functionality added on the TC3 site home page

To facilitate access to the information two search facilities have been added:

Search the TC3 site! - FreeFind: This is a search engine that offers free indexing of a site in order to allow free text search within it. A search robot from FreeFind has visited the TC3 site, analyzed it, and created and stored an index on the content. This index is then used for search within the site and also for the presentation of an automically generated Site Map. 

So far only the web pages in html code are being indexed. It would be nice to get access to a free ware search engine that could index also the pdf files, but I have not found any yet.

Search the WWW! - Google: This is a search engine that like most of the others tries to index the total content of the World Wide Web. A difference is that its search page looks as in the "old days" when the web was new, i.e. it is not cluttered with advertisments and moving banners. Also, it provides a very good search result, said not to be possible to manipulate by the advertisers.

The search engines can be accessed directly by links from their names on the "powered by .." line. If you need about how to use the search engines, visit those pages. 

Of course, those who run these two search engines need also something that covers their cost, so the advertisments and banners appear also here, but first on the search result pages.

/Per-Åke Svensson

Minutes from the Kyoto meeting now available

The unconfirmed minutes for the meetings of SC3B, SC3C, SC3D and TC3 are now available from the Kyoto meeting page.

/Per-Åke Svensson