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| XML
| Plenary IG/p>
C. M. Sperberg-McQueen, W3C, co-chair
Dave Hollander, Contivo, co-chair
Liam Quin, staff contact,
for Tim Berners-Lee, Director
The XML Plenary Interest Group provides a forum for communication among the members of the Working Groups of the XML Activity, and between the XML Activity and other parts of W3C.
The Interest Group itself has no required deliverables; those are produced by working groups. The Interest Group may produce documents addressing technical questions as part of its work on problems of general interest to the XML Activity; these will not be Recommendation-track specifications.
The function of the Plenary is two-fold. First, the Plenary is intended to improve communication across Working Groups within the XML Activity and other Working Groups working on XML-related topics, and to help flatten the structure of the XML Activity.
Second, where there are large questions which cut across the areas of responsibility of several XML-related Working Groups, the Plenary has the responsibility of discussing and attempting to reach consensus on those questions. Questions of fundamental XML architecture and questions relating to the requirements to be met by various specifications fall into this area. Such questions may be referred to the Plenary by the XML Coordination Group.
The Common Procedures for XML Working Groups, assign to the Plenary the task of pre-publication review of all documents.
The chair of the plenary may appoint ad hoc Task Forces, drawing on the resources of the XML Plenary, to study questions before the Plenary, identify issues, guide discussion, and propose positions for consideration by the Plenary.
The expected duration is the lifetime of the XML Activity: through September 2003.
XML Plenary IG membership is available to the W3C Membership and experts invited by the chair. Members of this group are expected to be active members of one of the XML Activity Working Groups or one of the related W3C Working Groups. For purposes of this charter, the 'related' Working Groups are those represented on the XML Coordination Group; at the time this charter was written, these are:
Members of Working Groups in the XML Activity will automatically be members of the Plenary; members of related Working Groups may be members of the Plenary if they wish. Only members in good standing of an active XML Working Group or a related Working Group can participate in formal votes of the Plenary as specified in the W3C Process for interest groups (http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Process/Overview.html#GroupsIG).
The initial chairs of the XML Plenary Interest Group are C. M. Sperberg-McQueen, W3C, and Dave Hollander, Contivo. Later chairs, if any, will be named by the Director.
The term chair in this document refers to either co-chair.
The initial staff contact for the XML Plenary is Liam Quin.
The Plenary may from time to time meet face to face; it is not expected that this will happen more than once or twice a year.
Meeting records include members present, the results of group decisions, and significant action items.
In between meetings, business is conducted via an archived mailing list.
The home page of this group, maintained by the chair and staff contact, provides further details and access to related resources.
The proceedings of the XML Plenary Interest Group are member-confidential, subject to exceptions made by the chair.
W3C, and all W3C Working Groups, are accountable to the Web community as a whole for the quality of W3C technical work. In support of this public accountability, on the occasions when the XML Plenary Interest Group is called upon to consider questions which cut across the responsibility of several Working Groups, it will make public a summary of the question, the consensus, if any, reached by the Plenary, and the rationale for the position reached.