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12 Jul 2004 New Draft Charters available for review and comment
The Internationalization Working Group has made available draft charters for the next charter period beginning later this year. Note that these are still in development. There are two charters: one for the Internationalization Core WG, that will continue the work of the current Core and Web Services Task Forces; and a charter for a new Internationalization GEO (Guidelines, Education & Outreach) WG that will continue and expand the current work of the current GEO Task Force. Comments on these proposed charters should be sent to www-international@w3.org.
12 May 2004 New Working Draft: Web Services Internationalization Usage Scenarios
The Web Services Task Force of the Internationalization Working Group has released an updated Working Draft of Web Services Internationalization Usage Scenarios with additional guidance for implementers of Web service technologies. The document examines how language, culture and related issues interact with Web services architecture and technology. Comments are welcome on this draft.
10 May 2004 Authoring Techniques for HTML/XHTML Internationalization: 3 Working Drafts issued
The GEO Task Force of the Internationalization Working Group has published three First Working Drafts under the general title of Authoring Techniques for HTML/XHTML Internationalization. They are Characters and Encodings 1.0, Specifying the language of content 1.0 and Handling Bidirectional Text 1.0. These new documents have been separated out from what was previously a single document and updated. They provide HTML authors with techniques for developing internationalized HTML using XHTML 1.0, XHTML 1.1, or HTML 4.01, supported by CSS1, CSS2 and some aspects of CSS3.
9 May 2004 New IRI Draft published: Last Call issued
The Internationalization Working Group has published a new Internet Draft of Internationalized Resource Identifiers (IRIs). A two-week last call on the public-iri@w3.org mailing list was announced, which ends May 23, 2004. IRIs are similar to URIs, but with the restriction to US-ASCII removed, and with a mapping to URIs.
22 Apr 2004 Richard Ishida addresses UK Usability Professionals Association
Richard Ishida, team contact for the W3C Internationalization Working Group, presented as part of a panel discussion to a meeting of the UK Usability Professionals Association, 22 April, in London. Title of his talk: Don’t Blame the Localizers! [PDF 715Kb]. The talk presented some examples of how designers and developers shoulder much responsibility in enabling internationalization of products.
25 Feb 2004 Split Character Model published: Last Call issued
The Internationalization Working Group has published the Character Model for the World Wide Web 1.0 in two parts: Fundamentals in Last Call through 19 March, and Normalization. The documents address character encoding identification, early uniform normalization, string identity matching, string indexing, and URI conventions. They build on the Universal Character Set defined by Unicode and ISO/IEC 10646.
18 Dec 2003 Requirements Published: Internationalization of Web Services
The Web Services Internationalization Task Force of the Internationalization Working Group has published the first public Working Draft of Requirements for the Internationalization of Web Services. The document lists requirements for achieving worldwide usability for Web services. The group expects to republish the draft as a Working Group Note.
10 Dec 2003 Najib Tounsi to talk on Arabic and the Web in Rabat
Najib Tounsi, of the W3C Morocco Office, will give a talk at the CoPSTIC'03 conference, 11-13 December, in Rabat. Title of his talk: L'Utilisation de l'Arabe dans le Web: Les Standards (Usage of Arabic on the Web: the Standards).
3 Nov 2003 Addison Phillips becomes Internationalization Working Group Chair
Addison Phillips, Director of Globalization Architecture at WebMethods, has become Chair of the W3C Internationalization Working Group. Addison has been chairing the Internationalization Web Services Task Force since November last year, and will continue in that role. Richard Ishida will now replace Martin Dürst as Staff Contact for the Internationalization Working Group, but will continue in his role as chair of the GEO Task Force.
3 Nov 2003 GEO FAQs are available via an RSS feed
The Guidelines, Education & Outreach Task Force (GEO) of the Internationalization Working Group is now publishing information about weekly additions to its list of W3C Internationalization FAQs via an RSS feed. RSS ("RDF Site Summary") is an RDF Vocabulary that provides a lightweight multipurpose extensible metadata description and syndication format. In short, it is a means for describing news and events so that they can be shared across the web in a timely manner.
22 Oct 2003 I18N WG at China International Forum on WWW Development
The China International Forum on WWW's Development 2003 will be held in Beijing, China on 12-13 November. W3C Team members Ivan Herman, Philipp Hoschka, Richard Ishida, Shi Zhongzhi, Judy Brewer, and Matthew May present keynotes and tutorials. Attendees will discuss the future of the Web, accessibility, SVG, the mobile Web, the Semantic Web and Internationalization. Registration is open. The event is co-organized by the China Computer Federation and the W3C Office in Hong Kong. Read the press release.
10 Oct 2003 1st Working Draft of Authoring Techniques for XHTML & HTML Internationalization Published
The Guidelines, Education & Outreach Task Force (GEO) of the Internationalization Working Group has published the first public Working Draft of Authoring Techniques for XHTML & HTML Internationalization 1.0. Written for Web content authors, the document will provide techniques for developing internationalized HTML and XHTML supported by Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). Comments are welcome.
30 Sep 2003 I18N Core Task Force has begun an Internationalization Review of CSS 2.1
The CSS 2.1 specification is currently in Last Call until 10th October, and the I18N WG is reviewing it. For information about other upcoming reviews, see the Review Radar.
29 Sep 2003 ISO Responds Regarding Fee Proposal for ISO Codes
ISO has issued a response regarding expressions of concern over a Commercial Policies Steering Group (CPSG) proposal to charge for the use of certain ISO codes, including those for languages (ISO 639) and countries (ISO 3166). In summary, " ISO is to continue with its established practice of allowing free-of-charge use of its country, currency and language codes from, respectively, the ISO 3166, ISO 4127 and ISO 639 standards, in commercial and other applications."
19 Sep 2003 W3C Letter Regarding Fee Proposal for ISO Codes
W3C has written to ISO President Oliver Smoot to express deep concerns regarding a Commercial Policies Steering Group (CPSG) proposal to charge for the use of certain ISO codes, including those for languages (ISO 639) and countries (ISO 3166). The Unicode Technical Committee has issued a similar public position. ISO (International Organization for Standardization) is the largest standards developer with 97 national member bodies. W3C's letter is archived on the public mailing list of the W3C Internationalization Activity.
24 Aug 2003 "Character Model for the World Wide Web 1.0" Interim Working Draft Published
The Internationalization Working Group has released an interim Working Draft of the Character Model for the World Wide Web 1.0. The document addresses character encoding identification, early uniform normalization, string identity matching, string indexing, and URI conventions, building on the Universal Character Set defined by Unicode and ISO/IEC 10646. Read about the W3C Internationalization Activity.
15 Aug 2003 Unicode Technical Note #10, "An Introduction to Indic Scripts" Published
A paper by Richard Ishida called "An Introduction to Indic Scripts" has been published as Unicode Technical Note #10. This paper provides an introduction to the major Indic scripts used on the Indian mainland. Those addressed in this paper include specifically Bengali, Devanagari, Gujarati, Gurmukhi, Kannada, Malayalam, Oriya, Tamil, and Telugu.
13 Jun 2003 Unicode in XML and other Markup Languages Republished
Updated for The Unicode Standard, Version 4.0, Unicode in XML and other Markup Languages has been republished as a Unicode Technical Report and a W3C Note. These guidelines cover the use of Unicode with markup languages such as XML. They are published jointly by the Unicode Technical Committee and the W3C Internationalization Working Group and Interest Group. Read about the W3C Internationalization Activity.
16 May 2003 Web Services Internationalization Usage Scenarios Updated
The Web Services Task Force of the Internationalization Working Group has released an updated Working Draft of Web Services Internationalization Usage Scenarios. The document examines how language, culture, and related issues interact with Web services architecture and technology. The task force invites comments.
12 May 2003 W3C Translation Index Based on RDF
Volunteers have contributed thousands of hours translating W3C publications into more than 30 languages. Showcasing W3C Semantic Web, XML and internationalization technologies, data for volunteer translations of W3C technical reports and related documents is now maintained in RDF encoded in XML. Combining this metadata with other RDF, the translation index makes extensive use of Unicode, links to official versions, and can be viewed according to language or technology. Read the project description and please visit Translations at W3C.
17 Apr 2003 Working Draft of Framework Document for i18n Guidelines 1.0 published
The GEO Task Force of the Internationalization Working Group has released the first Working Draft of Framework Document for i18n Guidelines. This describes plans for producing guidelines on internationalization of W3C technologies. The Task Force encourages feedback about the content of this document as well as participation in the development of the guidelines by people who have experience creating Web content that conforms to internationalization needs.
24-26 Mar 2003 W3C Co-Sponsors 23rd Internationalization & Unicode Conference
Registration is open for the 23rd Internationalization & Unicode Conference to be held 24-26 March in Prague, Czech Republic, near most major cities in Europe. Come and meet W3C Team members Martin Dürst, Richard Ishida, and Chris Lilley who are presenting. The event is the premier technical conference worldwide for software and Web internationalization. Read about Unicode and the W3C Internationalization Activity.
6 Feb 2003 W3C RDF Validation Service internationalization improvements made
The W3C RDF Validation Service has been updated to deal correctly with a wide range of characters and character encodings for better internationalization and to support Last Call Working Drafts issued by the RDF Core Working Group. The RDF Validator is based on the ARP parser in Jena 1.6.1. Graphs are generated using GraphViz 1.8.9. The service runs under Jigsaw.
16 Jan 2003 Internationalization Activity moves to a new domain
To manage related Activities, the W3C Team groups them into four Domains. Starting in 2003, Document Formats is merged into the Interaction Domain led by Philipp Hoschka. As a result, the Internationalization Activity has moved to the Architecture Domain. Read about W3C Activities.
20 Dec 2002 Working Draft of Web Services Internationalization Usage Scenarios published
The Web Services Task Force of the Internationalization Working Group has released the first Working Draft of Web Services Internationalization Usage Scenarios. This document will be used to generate requirements for Web services internationalization as well as best practices for implementers. The task force invites contributions of additional usage scenarios and use cases, and other comments.
20 Dec 2002 Embedding Glyph Identifiers in XML Documents (EGIX) Submission acknowledged
W3C acknowledges the Submission of Embedding Glyph Identifiers in XML Documents (EGIX) by GLOCOM, Infoteria, and Media Fusion. From the W3C Team Comment: EGIX proposes a new XML namespace with a single attribute containing a glyph identifier. This allows distinguishing different glyph variants of the same character, or to identify glyphs where the corresponding character has not yet been encoded. This is of importance in particular for East Asian Ideographs (漢字), but also for other areas. Acknowledgement of a Submission does not imply any endorsement or commitment by W3C (Process Document).
16 Dec 2002 Misha Wolf's resignation as I18N WG Chair announced
Misha Wolf has retired from his role as Chair of the W3C Internationalization Group. Misha was one of the original
founders of the working group in February 1998, and has chaired it since then. His "years of ardent, often animated and always enthusiastic service
to the Internationalization community" were recognised by Tim Berners-Lee. Tim added his personal "thanks to Misha for all he has done, and to
Reuters for supporting his excellent work". Misha's energy and dedication will be missed.
Richard Ishida will take over as chair.
25-26 Nov 2002 Core Task Force FTF, Boston MA, USA
22-23 Nov 2002 Web Services Task Force FTF, Boston, MA, USA
22-23 Nov 2002 GEO Task Force FTF, Boston, MA, USA
9-13 Sep 2002 22nd International Unicode Conference, San Jose, CA, US
The International Unicode Conference is a key venue for the discussion of topics related to the Internationalization Activity.
6 Sep 2002 Internationalization Activity renewed through August 2004
The new Working Group Charter outlines three main areas of activity proposed during the Internationalisation Workshop of February 2002. In addition to the ongoing work of reviewing specifications from other working groups and completing current document deliverables, new areas include Web services internationalization, and guidelines, education and outreach. Three task forces are proposed to manage the work: a Core task force, a Web Services task force, and a Guidelines, Education, Outreach (GEO) task force. There is also a new charter for the Interest Group.
5 Aug 2002 New Web Site look and feel
This web site has been given a new look and feel to allow for significant, ongoing expansion as a web internationalization resource over the coming months. The initial adaptation of the web site adds very little new material but aims to help people find existing information more easily. As the work of the Internationalization Activity develops over the coming months, it is hoped that the current information will be refined, and new material will be added. We welcome your comments and suggestions about the new design.
24 - 26 Jul 2002 Character Model Editorial Mtg, Montreal
1 Jul 2002 Richard Ishida joins W3C team to work on Internationalization Activity
1 Feb 2002 W3C Internationalization Workshop, Washington DC
Events up to 1999 .
