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W3C  - WAP Forum Coordination Group Charter

Status of this document:

This document was reviewed by the W3C Director and domain leaders, July 21, 1999.

It was sent for review to the WAP Specification Committee and Executive Committee on August 18, 1999.

It was sent for review to the W3C Advisory Committee members on August 19, 1999.

It was approved by the W3C Director and the WAP Forum Board on November 30. Changes resulting from the review are included.

Table of Contents

Background
Mission statement
Scope of Activities
W3C groups with WAP dependencies
WAP Forum groups with W3C dependencies
Expected Duration
Participants
Appointment of Chair
Meetings and teleconferences
Voting mechanisms
Escalation and dispute resolution
Communication Mechanisms
Group Home Page
Mailing List
Support by the W3C Staff

Background

This group was formed to formalize the relationship begun with the introductory meeting in June 1998, described in the W3C Note "WAP Forum - W3C Cooperation White Paper".  It is formed within the WAP Forum process, and within the W3C Process.

Mission statement

The group will:

Scope of Activities

The purpose of this group is to identify technical areas where different working groups in the W3C and drafting committees in the WAP Forum may overlap, and to coordinate their work.

The group is also the forum where logistics and procedure issues of common interest can be discussed and coordinated. Such issues include:

The group will:

The coordination efforts include, but are not limited to, the following Working Groups, Coordination Groups, Expert Groups and Interest Groups:

In the W3C:

The W3C is organised in Working Groups, which develop specifications. The Working Groups are associated with Interest Groups, where the work can be discussed. Coordination Groups provide for coordination between Working Groups.

Cascading Style Sheets and Formatting Properties (CSS&FP) Working Group
Following the release of CSS2 as a W3C Recommendation, this Working Group seeks to extend and enhance CSS to provide greater accessibility, reusability, device independence and descriptive power for authors and users, and to track and maintain CSS implementations. The CSS&FP WG cooperates with the XSL WG to develop a joint formatting model. The current style sheet specifications contain provisions for a media type that is very similar to the client devices in the WAP technology, and the WAP forum has expressed interest in seeing how this could be developed further in the W3C formatting model.
HTML Working Group
This working group develops XHTML, the next generation of HTML as a suite of XML tag sets with a clean migration path from HTML 4.0. The WAP Forum has stated its goals to converge with XHTML.
Hypertext Coordination Group
The Hypertext Coordination Group coordinates the markup language related activities in the W3C. As the WAP Forum has designed an XML-based markup language, coordination of the future convergence with XHTML and other related issues should be discussed here.
Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL) Working Group
The XSL Working Group is chartered to specify a style sheet language for XML and other structured markup languages. The XSL WG cooperates with the CSS&FP WG to develop a joint formatting model. The current style sheet specifications contain provisions for a media type that is very similar to the client devices in the WAP technology, and the WAP forum has expressed interest in seeing how this could be developed further in the W3C formatting model.
Document Object Model (DOM) Working Group
The goal of this Working Group is to define an applications programming interface that allows active manipulation of the structure, presentation and content of documents. The WAP Forum has a scripting language which has functions similar to DOM, and its markup language contains elements which are similar to DOM.
Internationalization (I18N) Working Group
The goal of the I18N WG is to propose and coordinate any techniques, conventions, guidelines and activities within W3C that can help to make the Web more international. The WAP Forum is very active in enabling the use of WAP in countries that do not use the Latin-1 character set.
Metadata Coordination Group
This group manages dependencies between metadata-related groups in the W3C. This responsibility could easily be extended to the WAP Forum, should that organisation start concerning itself with metadata issues.
Mobile Access Interest Group
The purpose of this IG is to provide a forum for Members to discuss issues related to mobile Web access. The goal of this IG is to establish WG(s) for mobile access guidelines and/or specifications, or to describe guidelines within the IG itself. This working group has a natural position as a "first stop" for the W3C in the initiation of activities in the mobile area, before or conjunctionally with approaching the WAP Forum.
P3P Coordination Working Group
Privacy is one of the most contentious issues on the web, and likely to be so in the mobile area, too. The P3P Coordination Working Group coordinates the work between the P3P Working Groups, and could serve the same purpouse visavis the WAP Forum.
Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) Working Group
The working group is chartered to produce a specification for an SVG format, written as a modular XML tagset and usable as an XML namespace, which can be widely implemented in browsers and authoring tools and which is suitable for widespread adoption by the content authoring community as a replacement for many current uses of raster graphics. The WAP Forum is currently investigating other graphics formats than WBMP, which is a one-bit bitmap format.
Synchronized Multimedia (SYMM) Interest Group
This Interest Group is chartered as a discussion forum for preparing future work on the SMIL specification itself, as a forum to discuss integration of SMIL with other W3C Recommendations and as a forum for maintaining the SMIL 1.0 specification. The Multimedia Expert Group in the WAP Forum has already established a working relationship with this group.
Synchronized Multimedia (SYMM) Working Group
This Working Group is chartered to develop the new version of SMIL, the Synchronised Multimedia Integration Language. The Multimedia Expert Group in the WAP Forum has already established a working relationship with this group.
Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) Coordination Group
The WAI is in the process of presenting the first version of its specifications. As work progresses, the WAI should be enabled to review upcoming WAP Forum specifications through the WAI Coordination Group.
XML Coordination Group
The XML Coordination Group coordinates the work in the XML Working Groups. These groups will terminate in the near future, as they are producing their Proposed Recommendations for standards. The XML Coordination Group will be the forum for future cooperation and convergence with the XML Working Groups that may be formed in the future.
XML Signatures working group
The WAP Forum is quite active in the field of security, and is discussing signed documents as one of its security mechanism. Coordination with the XML Signatures working group would facilitate the progress in that field.

In the WAP Forum:

The WAP Forum is organised in Working Groups, which appoint Drafting Committees to design specifications. Expert Groups provide discussion fora for specific issues.

WAP Security Working Group (WSG)
WSG is the working group for security issues in WAP. In WAP, the security concept covers a relatively long-lived security association between a client and a server. However, the group has recently started discussing digital signatures as a possible future mechanism.
WAP Applications Working Group (WAG)
The Wireless Applications Working Group (WAG) is chartered with the development of the Wireless Applications Environment (WAE), the user environment of WAP. WAG is organized around a number of officially chartered Drafting Committees and informally organized ad hoc committees. Several of those Drafting Committees touch upon areas where work is being conducted in the W3C, such as the WML drafting committee which already works with the HTML WG, and the UAPROF drafting committee which intends to work with the proposed CC/PP WG.
WAP Wireless Protocols Group (WPG)
The Wireless Protocols Group (WPG) is chartered with the development and maintenance of the WAP Forum protocols. It is organised in three subgroups, which in themselves consitute working groups: The Wireless Session Protocol (WSP) Working Group, the Wireless Transaction Protocol (WTP) Working Group, and the Wireless Datagram Protocol (WDP) Working Group. To the extent that the W3C develops HTTP further, these groups are appropriate speaking partners.
WAP Architecture Working Group (Arch)
The WAP Architecture Working Group (ArchWG) exists to ensure that current and future additions to the WAP Architecture are well defined and form a cohesive whole. There is no corresponding group in the W3C, but all issues which concern developments outside the current WAP specifications should be discussed here.
WAP Asian Expert Group (AEG)
The Asian Expert Group (AEG) is a WAP forum Expert Group. The objectives of AEG are to make requirements for Asian related issues from various view points and input a joint proposal to the related Working Group in order to contribute to the expansion of the WAP specification over the Asian region. This group is very active in the field that touches the W3C I18N group.
Marketing and Communications Experts Group (MCEG)
The Marketing and Communications Expert Group (MCEG) is chartered with the marketing and positioning of WAP technology to all interested constituents and stakeholders, including network operators, equipment manufacturers, content and tool developers, end-users, journalists, analysts and WAP Forum members. All public relations and marketing related issues should be discussed here, until a policy is established.
WAP Telematics Expert Group (TEG)
The Telematics Expert Group is tasked with the responsibility of providing a window for the WAP Forum to other organization involved in Telematics activites. The information flow should be used to ensure that WAP resources are not being used to accomplish Telematics related tasks that have or are already being addressed by other organizations. At the WAP Forum-W3C joint meeting on July 2, it was decided that the TEG and the W3C Mobile Access interest Group should hold a joint workshop around position dependency and location relevancy.
WAP Multimedia Expert Group (MEG)
The WAP Forum Multimedia Expert Group (MEG) is tasked with the responsibility of coordinating multimedia activities within the WAP Forum. It has already started to establish a working relationship with the W3C SYMM WG and IG.

Expected Duration

This coordination group is expected to last through November 2000. At that point, a re-evaluation of the group and its activities, as well as the cooperation and convergence between the two organisations in general, will be conducted.

Participants

Coordination Group participants are appointed by the WAP Forum Specification Committee and the W3C Director.

The group consists of twelve members, six appointed by the WAP Forum Specification Committee and six appointed by the W3C Director. Each liaison may nominate an alternate representative that must be confirmed by the CG chair. The list of members and alternates is to be published on the CG home page.

Appointment of Chair

The group chair is appointed for a period of six months from the group participants, alternately by the W3C and the WAP Forum, with the W3C appointing the chair initially.

Meetings and teleconferences

During the first three months of its existence, the group will schedule a face-to-face meeting. It can then decide to schedule meetings every three months, should this be required. See also the W3C Process document, section 3.2.3 Meetings.

The coordination group holds a bi-weekly one-hour phone conference. The chair is responsible for producing an agenda at least 24 hours in advance, and participants are responsible to send regrets to the chair in advance if they chose not to attend. This also applies to face-to-face meetings.

Before each teleconference, each group member must send to the coordination group a short report on the activity in the groups he or she represents, since the previous teleconference.

Minutes from both teleconferences and meetings should be posted on the server and linked from the home page no later than 24 hours after the conference or meeting. Minutes should be accessible only by W3C and WAP Forum members. Minutes should reflect any decisions taken, any actions that are to be conducted on behalf of the group, and a summary of discussions. That minutes are taken are the responsibility of the chair, but this may be delegated to one of the meeting participants.

Voting mechanisms

Consensus is the default rule for this group, and members should recognise that consensus may involve compromise. In case issues cannot be resolved in consensus, the chair may call a vote. Voting is by simple majority. Each member of the group has one vote. In case of a tie, the chair has a breaking vote. See also the W3C Process document on voting.

Escalation and dispute resolution

The function of this group is to resolve issues and enable the continued cooperation and convergence between the WAP and W3C architectures. The group must make its utmost to resolve any disputes with a solution that is acceptable to all parties.

If agreement cannot be found between this Coordination Group and other groups involved, in an issue which potentially would damage the future relations between the organisations, a request for resolution of the dispute can be sent to the W3C Director and the CEO of the WAP Forum. Each group member can send such a request. The Director and the CEO will then resolve the issue.

If the W3C Director and the WAP Forum CEO cannot find an amicable solution to the dispute, the organisations will agree to disagree.

See also the W3C Process document on arbitration.

Communication Mechanisms

Coordination group members are expected to participate in an electronic mailing list and periodic teleconferences.

Group Home Page

The chair maintains a group web page on the W3C server that allows group members to share context and provides W3C and WAP Forum membership with access to the proceedings of the group. This page is accessible only by W3C and WAP Forum members.

The group maintains a calendar of the most significant events in each coordinated group, such as face-to-face meetings or release of deliverables. Where possible, they should be linked from existing calendars.

Mailing List

Participants must subscribe to and participate in the wapw3c@w3.org mailing list, responding to issues in a timely fashion. This list is archived and access reserved to W3C members. A reflector of the list is archived at the WAP Forum site, making the discussion archives available to the WAP Forum members. For public discussion, a list called www-wap@w3.org is maintained. It is publicly accessible, and archived in the public area of the W3C web site.

Support by the W3C Team

W3C staff provide the working environment for the group. The W3C systems team maintains web server for the group page as well as the mailing lists and archives. The W3C administrative team organizes teleconferences and meetings. The W3C communications team coordinates public relations activities with its peers in the WAP Forum. 

The effort for this is estimated at no more than 5 % of one man year per work year.

Johan Hjelm