Metanorma now supports IEC standardization deliverables

Ronald Tse on 02 Sep 2019

IEC authors rejoice! From today onwards, you can write IEC content using Metanorma.

Metanorma now fully supports authoring of International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) standardization deliverables, via the Metanorma-IEC processor.

With the addition of IEC, Metanorma now supports all of the three largest international standards bodies, namely ITU, ISO and IEC.

IEC document types covered

Metanorma-IEC covers the following document types:

• International Standard (ISO/IEC DIR 1:2019 + IEC SUP:2019, Clause 2)

• Technical Specification (ISO/IEC DIR 1:2019 + IEC SUP:2019, 3.1)

• Technical Report (ISO/IEC DIR 1:2019 + IEC SUP:2019, 3.3)

• Publicly Available Specification (ISO/IEC DIR 1:2019 + IEC SUP:2019, 3.2)

• Guide (ISO/IEC DIR 1:2019 + IEC SUP:2019, Annex A)

• Interpretation sheet (ISO/IEC DIR 1:2019 + IEC SUP:2019, 2.10.5)

Figure 1. The wizard conjuring forth the IEC processor

Differences between Metanorma-IEC and Metanorma-ISO

The noteworthy differences are:

• The IEC flavour uses the stage codes specific to the IEC, as listed in IEC Processes & Procedures — Stage Codes and IEC Processes & Procedures — Workflow. The IEC also recognizes ISO International Harmonized Stage Codes, which are mapped to IEC stage codes.

• The IEC flavour processes part and subpart numbers for documents, entered in the :partnumber: attribute as {nnn}-{mmm}.

• The IEC flavour uses the IEC template for Word documents, including equivalent Word paragraph styles where applicable. (The names used for paragraph styles are named consistently with the rest of Metanorma.)

• The IEC flavour injects IEC-specific predefined text into the XML source (in English or French), and displays it at the appropriate location in Word and HTML output.

Usage of Metanorma-IEC

Metanorma-IEC support has been released in form of a Ruby gem metanorma-iec.

You can run it in the Metanorma command-line interface as simple as:

$ metanorma -t iec document.adoc

Origin

Actually, core IEC support has always been around — the syntaxes of ISO and IEC documents are identical (ISO/IEC Directives, Part 2:2018 IEC version (PDF link)). But since most of our users were not concerned with IEC, the need wasn’t there.

Thanks to the strong encouragement from Hiroshi Murayama and support of Gernot Rossi, both hailing from the IEC SC3D, we have completed IEC support.

IEC SC3D is the committee who created and responsible for the IEC 61360 Common Data Dictionary (CDD), a concept database used in all sorts of industrial and manufacturing industries, from circuit breakers to aerospace.

Conclusion

Make life easier for your IEC Editor!