Internationalization (I18n) Core Working Group Charter

The mission of the Internationalization Core Working Group, part of the Internationalization Activity, is to enable universal access to the World Wide Web by proposing and coordinating the adoption by the W3C of techniques, conventions, technologies, and designs that enable and enhance the use of W3C technology and the Web worldwide, with and between the various different languages, scripts, regions, and cultures.

Join the Internationalization Core Working Group.

End date	31 January 2009
Confidentiality	Proceedings are public
Initial Chairs	Addison Phillips
Initial Team Contacts (FTE %: 50)	Richard Ishida
Usual Meeting Schedule	Teleconferences: Weekly Face-to-face: Once Annually

Scope

Technical issues related to internationalization and universal access across the globe. The Working Group provides advice and assistance related to internationalization and encompassing work related to international, linguistic, cultural, and writing system variations affecting W3C technologies. This advice should be provided to W3C Working Groups as early as possible in the development of specifications. The Working Group also tracks developments outside the W3C which have a bearing on the international Web, such as IDN/ICANN issues, language tag and IRI developments at the IETF, etc .
Reviews of W3C technologies for internationalization issues, as these technologies develop. This encompasses a broad array of cultural, linguistic, technical and accessibility concerns. Review work may also include standards created by external standards bodies and organizations related to internationalization, if it is thought to be relevant to W3C technology. The Working Group maintains liaison relationships with these groups to ensure coordinated, consistent development of these standards.
Outreach and inreach, in the forms of notes, articles, tutorials, presentations, tests and other resources to help specification writers, web masters, content authors, and others involved in developing and implementing the Web understand the issues involved and the techniques available with regard to supporting international use of Web technology. This was formerly the work of the very successful I18n Guidelines, Education & Outreach (GEO) Working Group, which is now being merged into the Core Working Group.

Success Criteria

Successfully complete reviews and provide assistance in a timely manner.
Maintain good levels of feedback for outreach materials.

Deliverables

Reviews

Review of specifications of other W3C Working Groups for issues related to internationalization, global usage, and cultural sensitivity is an essential deliverable of the Internationalization Core Working Group. This is not a time-bound activity and the exact schedule of these reviews depends on the progress of other Working Groups and the availability of resources in the Internationalization Working Group. There is usually a constant supply of review work to be done. In depth reviews are typically done at Last Call, however additional early reviews are particularly useful and will be scheduled where possible.

Web internationalization resources

The WG will continue the work of the I18n GEO WG to publish resources on the Internationalization Activity site to assist users of W3C and related Web technologies to internationalize their approach. These will include articles, notes and reference pages, articles based on frequently asked questions and tutorials.

The Working Group will also maintain the Internationalization Activity Web presence, and develop and maintain ways for users of its resources to quickly find the material they need, through a variety of means, including topic-based and task-based indexing.

Best practices documents

The WG will build on existing work by the I18n GEO Working Group to create a series of Working Group notes providing internationalization-related best practices for users of Web technologies. These documents make the information available in a task based fashion, at the point of need. The information in these separate documents will be drawn together by higher level web pages, targeted at specific user types and activities, that group together and link to all relevant information in summary form, with an organization that aids their use.

Internationalization tests

The WG will build on the existing foundation to create additional test pages and a summary of results for major browsers. These tests explore support by user agents for internationalization related features, but also serve an educational role. They are initially intended to support the development of techniques documents and articles, but are not limited to that. The audience will be content authors as well as QA testers. In addition, other W3C WGs have found these tests of interest for their own test suites, and user agent development teams have found these tests valuable in terms of identifying, fixing or enhancing internationalization features or bugs.

Outreach activities

The WG will seek to regularly present knowledge developed by the WG at conferences and meetings where Web internationalization topics are relevant, and to maintain a presence in internationalization and localization related publications. It will also seek out key opportunities to present the internationalization message to content authors and implementers, and to encourage the provision of requirements for internationalization of W3C technologies by in-country experts.

Milestones

WG deliverables are produced on an ongoing basis throughout the life of the charter, and the specific topics to be addressed by the working group and schedule information cannot be determined in far in advance, but are driven by the needs of the Web community.

Plans for work on resource development and reviews can be tracked at:

the Resource development pipeline
the Review Radar.

Dependencies

W3C Groups

Internationalization Interest Group

The I18n Core WG maintains close contact with the I18N IG (charter). Resources produced by this WG will be submitted to the I18N IG mailing list for review. When needed to assure a broader base for decisions, technical topics may be submitted to the I18N IG mailing list for discussion. The I18N IG mailing list will also be used for sharing information about the work of this WG, sending out information about the progress of this WG at regular intervals, and soliciting feedback in general. Members of this WG are expected to also become members of the I18N IG to assure a smooth flow of information.

ITS Working Group

The I18n Core WG will maintain close contact with the ITS WG (charter). Members of the ITS WG may collaborate with the Core WG to publish pages on the Web site, and the Core WG will provide assistance to the ITS WG for the development of techniques documents, eg. editorial guidance, templates and the like.

WAI (Web Accessibility Initiative)

The I18N Core WG will coordinate with the relevant WAI groups on the following points:

Procedural coordination: Both the I18N Core WG and WAI are reviewing W3C specifications.
Technical coordination: There are parallels between the cultural universality at the base of the Internationalization work and the principle of universal access at the base of the WAI work. Common issues resulting from such parallels will be coordinated.
Internationalization review of WAI work, and WAI review of work of the I18N Core WG: Different countries have different traditions and different needs and rules for making content accessible, and some languages may be harder to deal with than others. For example, Japanese text-to-speech systems may need extra information compared to, say, English ones.

TAG

The Technical Architecture Group is responsible for the principles of Web Architecture. The I18N Core WG will coordinate architectural issues related to internationalization with the TAG where necessary.

Device Independence Activity

The I18N Core WG will stay in contact with these WGs with respect to review work, and issues of horizontal activities in general. Similar considerations to those given for WAI apply.

Other W3C Working Groups

The I18n Core WG will work with all W3C Working Groups to ensure that their deliverables support international use. The list includes the WGs in the following Activities, in particular, but is not limited to them:

HTML: HTML is one of the main formats for storing and delivering information on the Web. The I18N Core WG will help the HTML WGs keep HTML and XHTML language- and culture-neutral, and to make the international components of HTML broadly available.
XML: XML is the base format for many Web applications. The I18N Core WG will help the XML CG and the various XML WGs to create and ensure an appropriate base for the internationalization needs of these applications.
Style (CSS) , XSL WG: Formatting varies widely in different cultures, and different writing systems need different stylesheet support. The I18N Core WG will help these working groups address international formatting needs by providing requirements, proposals, and advice.
Web Services: The I18N Core WG will follow developments in the area of Web services and will coordinate with the Web Services Activity.
Mobile Web Initiative: The I18N Core WG will monitor the work of the Mobile Web Initiative, to ensure their specifications and best practices are internationalized, and to integrate their best practices in internationalization deliverables.
Voice Browser, and Multimodal Interaction: Spoken language has different requirements from written forms of a language, raising internationalization issues that have to be carefully considered. Also, new forms of interaction, such as cross-language interaction (e.g. a speaker responding with the French pronunciation of a name to an English prompt), need to be reviewed with respect to internationalization.
Semantic Web: I18N Core will collaborate to make sure that Semantic Web technologies are appropriately internationalized.
Math: I18N Core has assisted the Math WG in the past and will continue to help with internationalization of Math markup.
XML Schema: I18N Core will continue their collaboration with the XML Schema WG to ensure that Schema technologies, and especially datatypes, are as international as possible.

External Groups

IETF

IETF working groups and other IETF activities that define technology with impact on Web Internationalization.

Unicode Technical Committee (UTC)

A liaison has been established.

Supra-national and national standards bodies

The work of bodies such as ISO, ISO/IEC JTC1, JIS, CEN, and ECMA, at the appropriate level (working group, subcommittee, technical committee,...), especially in so far as they work on general standards relevant to the internationalization of W3C technology or on national profiles of W3C specifications. Informal or formal contacts will be used as appropriate. The main groups, and corresponding areas for liaison, currently are:

ISO/IEC JTC1/SC2 (character encoding, sorting): A formal liaison has been approved to track the evolution of ISO/IEC 10646 and to input W3C requirements.
ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG20 (characters in identifiers): A formal liaison has been approved to track developments and to input W3C requirements. The work program of this WG has recently been reduced considerably, and so this liaison may expire naturally.

Localization Industry Standards

The WG will seek to forge contacts with the Localization industry, in particular OASIS XLIFF, and LISA, to ensure representation of the needs of these communities in the work of the WG.

Conference and publication organizers

The WG will maintain contacts with the major conference providers in the internationalization and localization fields, and will seek to place articles in publications in this area.

Participation

To be successful, the Internationalization Core Working Group is expected to have 5 or more active participants for its duration. Effective participation to Internationalization Core Working Group is expected to consume one work day per week for each participant; one and a half days per week for editors.

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

Communication

This group primarily conducts its work on the public mailing list public-i18n-core@w3.org. This is a publicly archived list, writable only by Group members.

The Member-confidential list member-i18n-core@w3.org can be used for administrative purposes and for discussion of any member-confidential aspects of specification reviews and liaison activities.

In addition the publicly archived Interest Group mail list, www-international@w3.org , will be used for the public discussion of technical and general interest internationalization issues. This list is writable by list subscribers (the Interest Group).

Information about the group (deliverables, participants, face-to-face meetings, teleconferences, etc.) is available from the Internationalization Core 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 is not chartered to produce Recommendations with associated licensing obligations as described by the W3C Patent Policy. W3C reminds Working Group participants of their obligation to comply with patent disclosure obligations as set out in Section 6 of the W3C Patent Policy. While this Working Group does not produce Recommendation-track documents, when Working Group participants review Recommendation-track specifications from other Working Groups, the patent disclosure obligations do apply.

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

About this Charter

This charter for the Internationalization Core 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.

Charter author: Richard Ishida

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