Metanorma: Aequitate Verum

One-step ISO figure submission with Metanorma Tools

Author’s picture Ronald Tse on 03 Jul 2025

ISO standards development with Metanorma Tools: Figure submission process

The story

I spent a stressful weekend renaming figures for the submission of ISO/FDIS 19135 for ballot. 60 of them. An exaggeration nonetheless, renaming image files once isn’t hard but doing it multiple times felt like a monumental task tracking filenames of this set of images.

As project leaders for the ISO 19135 project at ISO/TC 211, Reese Plews (GitHub link) of Plews Consulting and I had to submit the FDIS package to SIS for ISO/CS processing.

This step included ensuring that the ISO DIS Word file is properly generated and that the figures were correctly named and ordered according to the ISO DRG directives.

While Reese kindly provided the order of figures, and I renamed the files for submission, once a figure moved around, it was all over again. Not good.

Note

Some would ask: why not just name the image files according to their appearance order in the document? If you did that from the start then this is a non-issue.

My answer is: I prefer naming image files according to their context and meaning. I also do not want to rename the files multiple times when they are moved around in the document.

The challenge

If you’ve ever worked on ISO standards development, you know the drill. The process is methodical, thorough, and absolutely essential for creating world-class standards.

Yet the process is fraught with repetitive, manual tasks that consume hours of valuable time that could be better spent on standards development. Or a sip of coffee. Or a swim in the hot summer sun or a stroll in the park.

And definitely not renaming files. Renaming 60 figures to comply with ISO DRG’s filename rules, in face of a ballot deadline, was definitely not one of the most favorite ways to spend time.

The solution

Good news is that we’ve had enough of that…​ here’s the Metanorma Tools toolkit that helps you streamline development.

Introducing Metanorma Tools

Metanorma, thanks to the warm embrace of the community, is now an indispensable standards development suite for anyone involved in the creation of standards.

With users ranging from ISO/TCs to national standards bodies to industry consortia, Metanorma has become the go-to solution for streamlining the standards development process.

As standards authors ourselves, we understand that the key in standards development is not just about authoring standards, but how to spend time more wisely.

The time sink is in the processes, repetitive manual tasks, administrative interfacing and communicating. The devil is in workflow management.

To better assist our users in streamlining their workflows around authoring documents in Metanorma, we have decided to start a new initiative: Metanorma Tools.

Metanorma Tools is precisely a tool designed to support the standards development workflows, focusing on individual SDO processes, as a command-line interface. We start off with supporting ISO document workflows.

The goal is to minimize the tedious, error-prone tasks that bog down standards development, letting you focus on what really matters: creating excellent standards.

The tool provides two main capabilities that address critical pain points in the ISO workflow:

  1. Automated figure extraction with ISO DRG-compliant naming

  2. Streamlined comment management with GitHub integration

Today we will explore figure extraction, and streamlined comment management will follow in a future post.

Bridging gaps in your ISO workflow

The ISO standards development process follows a well-defined progression through these multiple stages (optional ones in parentheses).

The stage progression of the most common document types are shown below:

Table 1. ISO document stage progressions by document type
Document Type Stage Progression

International Standards

PWI → NP → AWI → WD (→ WDS) → CD (→ CDS) → DIS (→ FDIS) → IS

Technical Specifications

PWI → NP → AWI → WD (→ WDS) → CD (→ CDS) → DTR → TR

Technical Reports

PWI → NP → AWI → WD (→ WDS) → CD (→ CDS) → DTR → TR

Publicly Available Specifications

PWI → NP → AWI → WD (→ WDS) → CD (→ CDS) → DPAS → PAS

Amendments

PWI → NP → AWI → WD (→ WDS) → CD (→ CDS) → DAM (→ FDAM) → Amd

Corrigendum

PWI → NP → AWI → WD (→ WDS) → CD (→ CDS) → DCOR (→ FDCOR) → Cor
Note
 Optional stages are shown in parentheses.

Every stage transition (every "→") requires specific deliverables that involve significant manual work.

Metanorma Tools aims to plug in the proverbial gap at these junctures, automating the preparation of submission packages and enabling modern collaborative workflows for comment resolution.

Figure extraction…​ magic

General

Actually there’s no magic. This can all be deterministicly derived from the output Metanorma XML file.

When a project reaches ballot or review stages, the project leader ("you"…​) need to provide a figure package that complies with ISO DRG guidelines.

The ISO DRG guidelines specify a particular file name pattern for the document, which means each figure must be renamed to a document-specific string with the Figure number in the document.

Here’s the sample set given by the DRG guidelines:

Table 2. File naming examples from ISO DRG Section 3.2
Where used Filename Description

Normal figure

12345-1_ed1fig1.dwg

File for figure 1

Normal figure

12345-1_ed1fig2.dwg

File for figure 2

Normal figure, subfigure

12345-1_ed1fig1a.dwg

File for figure 1, subfigure a

Normal figure, subfigure

12345-1_ed1fig1b.dwg

File for figure 1, subfigure b

Normal figure, key file

12345-1_ed1fig1_key1.dwg

File for figure 1, first key file

Normal figure, key file

12345-1_ed1fig1_key2.dwg

File for figure 1, second key file

Table

12345-1_ed1figTab1.dwg

File for the single figure in Table 1

Table

12345-1_ed1figTab1a.dwg

File for the first figure in Table 1

Table

12345-1_ed1figTab1b.dwg

File for the second figure in Table 1

Annex

12345-1_ed1figA1.dwg

File for the first figure in appendix A

Annex

12345-1_ed1figA2.dwg

File for the second figure in appendix A

Annex

12345-1_ed1figA1a.dwg

File for first figure in appendix A, subfigure a

Annex

12345-1_ed1figA1b.dwg

File for first figure in appendix A, subfigure b

Language

12345-1_ed1fig1_f.dwg

File for figure 1, French translation

Amendment

12345-1_ed1amd1fig1.dwg

File for figure 1 of amendment 1

Inline

12345-1_ed1figText1.dwg

File for graphical element inline with text

Special Layout

SL12345-1_ed1figTab1.dwg

File for table 1 which does not have a figure

The pattern looks simple but it is not entirely straightforward.

There are several factors to consider, such as:

  • figure numbers (1, 2, 3 or A.1, B.2, C.3…​)

  • subfigure numbers ("a)", "b)", etc.)

  • key files (if you use images in a figure/table key)

The manual way (before)

Assume that your image files are named according to what they mean, instead of the order of appearance in the document.

  1. Know the figure number (1, 2, 3,…​ A.1, B.2, C.3…​)

  2. Create a map between the image filenames and the figure number.

  3. Rename each file following the ISO DRG pattern

  4. Create a ZIP package of these images

  5. Hope you didn’t make any typos…​

The Metanorma Tools way (now)

$ metanorma-tools extract-images <document.presentation.xml> --zip

Where,

document.presentation.xml

is the Metanorma Presentation XML file generated by Metanorma.

That’s it. A single command extracts all figures, applies ISO DRG-compliant naming automatically, and creates a submission-ready ZIP package.

$ metanorma-tools extract-images 19135_fdis_ed2.presentation.xml --zip

# Output directory structure:
├── 19135_fdis_ed2.zip
└── 19135_fdis_ed2/            # after extracting
    ├── 19135_fdis_ed2fig1.svg
    ├── 19135_fdis_ed2fig2.png
    ├── 19135_fdis_ed2fig3.jpg
    ├── ...
    ├── 19135_fdis_ed2figA1.svg
    └── 19135_fdis_ed2figE1.svg

The tool automatically:

  • Extracts document metadata (number, stage, edition) from the document

  • Generates compliant filenames

  • Preserves original image formats

  • Creates organized directory structures

  • Packages everything for submission

Getting started

And this is how to get started with Metanorma Tools!

Installation

$ gem install metanorma-tools

Quick start: figure extraction

# Extract figures with ISO DRG naming
$ metanorma-tools extract-images your-document.presentation.xml [OUTPUT_DIRECTORY]

# Create submission package
$ metanorma-tools extract-images your-document.presentation.xml --zip

What’s next?

Metanorma Tools represents our commitment to making standards development more efficient and collaborative.

The tool is open source, and available right now.

Try it out on your next ISO project and let us know how it works for you!

And stay tuned for our upcoming article regarding comment management with Metanorma Tools…​

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