Forms Working Group Charter

The mission of the Forms Working Group, part of the XForms Activity, is to develop specifications for binding data, logic and user interface on the web, producing a system that scales from low-end devices through to the enterprise level.

Join the Forms Working Group.

End date	31 March 2012
Confidentiality	Proceedings are Public
Initial Chairs	Leigh Klotz, Steven Pemberton
Initial Team Contacts (FTE %: 25)	Steven Pemberton
Usual Meeting Schedule	Teleconferences: Weekly Face-to-face: 2-3 per year Virtual meetings: 1-2 per year

Scope

During the production of XForms 1.0 and XForms 1.1, the working group has kept a wiki of future features for adoption in later versions. These features have been roughly divided into 'low-hanging fruit' features that can easily be adopted into a new version, and requirements that need more work to find suitable solutions.

An example of the first type is the ability to read and write other data formats than just XML-based ones. An example of the second type is the ability to keep parallel data structures in sync using the XForms constraint system.

Based on these requirements, the Working Group will:

Advance (modules of) XForms 1.2 along the Recommendation Track.
Work on a new deliverable, XForms 2.0.
Work on alignment with XPath 2.0 and XML Schema 1.1
Maintain the XForms 1.1 specification, manage errata, and publish revisions as appropriate.
Further develop the XForms for HTML specification as a specification of how XForms is now used with HTML as the host language.
Gather further use cases and requirements.
Create and maintain test suites for all deliverables on the Recommendation track.
Provide schemas in XML Schema, Relax and NVDL for wider integration of XForms technologies.
Monitor implementations and produce interoperability reports in support of the W3C process.
Possibly organize workshops or interoperability meetings as appropriate.

The scope includes liaison with other related W3C groups and activities, as described below, for instance to ensure that XForms meets W3C goals for accessibility and internationalization, and to show how XForms can be effectively integrated with other W3C specifications.

Success Criteria

The success of the Forms Working Group will be judged on how well it fulfills the above objectives in terms of the deliverables and milestones set out below, and the deployment of its deliverables.

Production of stable documents addressing the work items listed in the Deliverables section.
Test suites for each deliverable with conformance criteria
Availability of multiple, independent, interoperable implementations of each deliverable with conformance criteria, as demonstrated by an implementation report (summarizing implementation status against the relevant test suite) for each testable class of product, including user agents
Availability of authoring tools and validation tools.
User community and industry adoption of the group deliverables.

Deliverables

XForms 1.1 (Recommendation): maintenance
XForms 1.2: Recommendations
XForms for HTML: Note
XForms 2.0: Requirements
XForms 2.0: Last call
XML Events 2.0: Recommendation

Other Deliverables

The Group will develop a set of test suites and may look into developing tutorials.

Milestones

Timeline View Summary

March 2010: First face-to-face meeting
March 2010: FPWD XForms 1.2
September 2010: Last call XForms 1.2, XML Events 2
December 2010: Requirements and Use Cases for XForms 2.0, XForms for HTML (Note)
March 2011: FPWD XForms 2.0
June 2011: XForms 1.2 CR, XML Events 2 CR
March 2012: XForms 1.2 PR, XML Events 2 PR
June 2012: XForms 1.2 Rec, XML Events 2 Rec
September 2012: XForms 2.0 last call.

Liaisons

W3C Groups

Internationalization Activity: To ensure effective support for internationalization.
XML Schema Working Group: XForms builds on XML Schema for data validation. W3C's work on XML Schemas aims to provide a general solution for XML, while XForms is focussed on the specific requirements for forms. This places a stronger emphasis on representing constraints on data than is generally needed for other applications of XML.
CSS Working Group: Coordination on presentation issues.
XSL Working Group: Coordination on XPath.
Hypertext Coordination Group: The Hypertext Coordination Group has the responsibility for ensuring that reviews between Working Groups are planned and carried out so as to meet requirements for deliverables and deadlines. The Hypertext Coordination Group includes representatives for the XML Coordination Group and for the Web Accessibility Initiative, as well as the Working Groups in the Interaction and Ubiquitous Web Domains.
Voice Browser Working Group: Many applications of interactive voice response systems can be considered in terms of filling out forms. It is therefore of interest to ensure XForms provides effective support for the foundation needed for Voice Browsers.
Web Accessibility Initiative: The Forms Working Group cooperates with the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) to ensure XForms meets W3C accessibility goals.
Web Apps Working Group: For coordination on event and DOM architectures, in particular for XML Events 2.

Furthermore, Forms Working Group expects to follow these W3C Recommendations:

External Groups

OASIS Open Document Format for Office Applications (OpenDocument) TC: Coordination on the integration of XForms in ODF
ISO SC 34: which is in charge of maintaining ODF and OOXML and is also a resource for having Relax NG and NVDL schemas

Participation

To be successful, the Forms Working Group is expected to have 8 or more active participants for its duration. Effective participation to Forms Working Group is expected to consume one to two days per week for editors, co-chairs, and team contacts. There is no minimum participation requirement for other members. The Forms Working Group will also allocate the necessary resources for building Test Suites for each specification.

Participants are reminded of the Good Standing requirements of the W3C Process.

Communication

This group primarily conducts its work on the public mailing lists public-forms@w3.org (archive) and www-forms@w3.org (archive) for public feedback and discussion.

Information about the group (deliverables, participants, face-to-face meetings, teleconferences, etc.) is available from the Forms Working Group home page.

Decision Policy

As explained in the Process Document (section 3.3), this group will seek to make decisions when there is consensus. When the Chair puts a question and observes dissent, after due consideration of different opinions, the Chair should record a decision (possibly after a formal vote) and any objections, and move on.

This charter is written in accordance with Section 3.4, Votes of the W3C Process Document and includes no voting procedures beyond what the Process Document requires.

Patent Policy

This Working Group operates under the W3C Patent Policy (5 February 2004 Version). To promote the widest adoption of Web standards, W3C seeks to issue Recommendations that can be implemented, according to this policy, on a Royalty-Free basis.

For more information about disclosure obligations for this group, please see the W3C Patent Policy Implementation.

About this Charter

This charter for the Forms Working Group has been created according to section 6.2 of the Process Document. In the event of a conflict between this document or the provisions of any charter and the W3C Process, the W3C Process shall take precedence.

Please also see the previous charter for this group.

Steven Pemberton, Activity Lead and Team Contact

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