Information technology - Document description and processing languages - Minimum requirements for specifying document rendering systems

When a structured document is interchanged between an originator and a recipient, the recipient refers to the style specifications that the originator provides to reconstruct the presentation. However, when the recipient does not have sufficient rendering functionality, it may fail to reconstruct the presentation output as the originator expected. In order to preserve presentation output in the course of interchange, the originator and recipient need to negotiate over functionalities referring to the specifications of document rendering systems. To satisfy this requirement, this standard provides the minimum requirements for specifying document rendering systems. The document specification format shall have the same minimum requirements described here.

This International Standard can apply to the document processing environment, where a document is given in a logically structured format which is expressed by a structure markup language, and the visual representation of the document is described by means of the external style and layout specifications which a style and layout specifications language provides. The visual representation of the given document is generated when the style and layout specifications are applied to the logical structure by a document rendering system.

This International Standard provides an abstract list of the features that a rendering system for an authored document may have. The list provides a frame of reference, against which the user and implementor can compare the features of document rendering systems. However, this International Standard does not specify a concrete interchange syntax or direct how each document rendering system shall behave.

This International Standard provides the minimum requirements to specify the features that a document rendering system which transforms formatting objects to rendering output. It may be used as a frame of reference, against which the user, implementer, or software agent may compare the features of a document rendering system. According to these requirements, the user may express what he or she expects of a document rendering system, the implementer may describe the functionality and capability of the document rendering system that he or she implements, and the software agent may negotiate a minimum set of functionality and capability that are shared across different document rendering system implementations.