CALS (Continuous Acquisition and Life-cycle Support) is a
United States Department of Defense
The United States Department of Defense (DoD, USDOD or DOD) is an executive branch department of the federal government charged with coordinating and supervising all agencies and functions of the government directly related to national sec ...
initiative for electronically capturing military documentation and linking related information.
The initiative has developed a number of standard specifications
(protocols) for the exchange of electronic data with commercial suppliers. These standards are often referred to as simply "CALS". CALS standards have been adopted by several other allied nations.
The CALS initiative has endorsed
IGES
The Initial Graphics Exchange Specification (IGES) is a vendor-neutral file format that allows the digital exchange of information among computer-aided design (CAD) systems. It's an ASCII-based textual format.
The official title of IGES is ''D ...
and
STEP as formats for digital data.
CALS includes standards for
electronic data interchange, electronic technical documentation, and guidelines for process improvement.
* The
CALS Table Model is a DTD standard for representing tables in SGML/XML. (see also
DocBook
DocBook is a semantic markup language for technical documentation. It was originally intended for writing technical documents related to computer hardware and software, but it can be used for any other sort of documentation.
As a semantic languag ...
)
* The
CALS Raster file format The CALS Raster file format is a standard for the interchange of graphics data. It was developed by the United States Department of Defense (DoD) as part of the Continuous Acquisition and Life-cycle Support (CALS) initiative. It defines a standard s ...
was developed in the mid-1980s to standardize on graphics data interchange for electronic publishing for the federal government.
CALS was known formerly as ''Computer-aided Acquisition and Logistic Support''.
References
Sources and references that need formatted properly:
* CALS homepage at: (deprecated url) https://web.archive.org/web/19990209043448/http://www.acq.osd.mil/cals/
* Department of Defense office responsible for CALS raster file format:
* CALS Management Support Office (DCLSO)
Office of the Assistant Director for Telecommunications
and Information Systems
Headquarters Defense Logistics Agency
Cameron Station
Alexandria, VA 22314
* File format is defined by MIL-STD-1840 and MIL-R-28002A
Overview articles
* Dawson, F., and F. Nielsen, "ODA and Document Interchange," UNIX Review, vol. 8, no. 3, 1990, p. 50.
* Hobgood, A., "CALS Implementation--Still a Few Questions," Advanced Imaging, April 1990, pp. 24-25.
* Details of the file format is available at: https://www.fileformat.info/format/cals/egff.htm
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Markup languages
Technical communication