The following message was taken from an email sent to me from Andy Kelly (kelly_william@navsea.navy.mil). I had asked whether we were re-inventing the wheel.

Andy mentions a few CD certification issues in his second paragraph. My suggestion is that we produce a product that is certified to work in Navy standard CD Jukeboxes onboard ships, but Andy mentioned a few web sites that should be investigated for IT21 security and/or interoperability standards. bruce. ---------------------------------- Bruce,

NAVSEA 04L3 has many technical manuals that are being converted from raster TMs to some sort of Electronic Technical Manual. Most are being OCR scanned and SGML tagged. Once SGML tagged, there are a variety of SGML view packages that can be used for viewing the documents. Tagging to SGML will also allow for easy distillation according to Joe Garner at NSWC CD. I don't think NAVSEA 04 has been involved with converting any INSTRUCTIONS. One of the drawbacks about using SGML or HTML is typically you do not have a method for printing the entire document. NSTM CD produced by NAVSEA 04L3 has addressed this issue and included one version of the document for online viewing and a PDF version of the document for printing purposes.

NCTAMS LANT has done quite a bit with digitizing BUPERS instructions, TYCOM instructions and other directives. Unfortunately when we approached them 2 or 3 years ago about making their CDs ATIS compatible (putting IETM.NDX file on root directory and submitting to ATIS testing) they balked at the idea. I don't believe they even submit their CDs to SPAWAR SYSTEM CENTER Chesapeake for PPL certification (www.massolant.navy.mil/ppl/head.htm). As a result of this, the NCTAMS LANT CDs are not certified to operate on the NTCSS or IT-21 unclassified networks on ships. I approached John Undset of CINCLANTFLT N62 on the issue since he is a member of the NTCSS ESC. End result was one phone call from NCTAMS LANT to us regarding ATIS compatibility and no action ever resulted. I cannot get to either the massolant.navy.mil web site or the NCTAMS web site to check the PPL or to determine what NCTAMS produces on CDs. Andy

-- Anonymous, September 27, 1998