Today, W3C published W3C Highlights – November 2013, a survey of select recent work and upcoming priorities. In this report we examine the forces of Web innovation through the lens of industry, and how the Open Web Platform is transforming digital publishing, automotive, television, entertainment. This report was prepared for discussion during TPAC 2013.

W3C announced today a Workshop, Linking Geospatial Data, 5-6 March 2014, in London (UK). The event is hosted by Google.

Many of the best data-driven Web applications have geospatial information at their core. Very often the common factor across multiple data sets is the location data, and maps are crucial in visualizing correlations between data sets that may otherwise be hidden. It’s this desire to work with multiple data sets in different formats about different topics and link those with the powerful technologies used in geospatial information systems that is behind the linking geospatial data workshop.

How can geographic information best be integrated with other data on the Web? How can we discover that different facts in different data sets relate to the same place, especially when ‘place’ can be expressed in different ways and at different levels of granularity? W3C membership is not required to participate. The event is open to all. All participants are required to submit a position paper by 19 January 2014.

The CSS Working Group and the SVG Working Group have published two Working Drafts today.

• A Working Draft of Filter Effects Module Level 1. Filter effects are a way of processing an element’s rendering before it is displayed in the document. Typically, rendering an element via CSS or SVG can be conceptually described as if the element, including its children, are drawn into a buffer (such as a raster image) and then that buffer is composited into the elements parent. Filters apply an effect before the compositing stage. Examples of such effects are blurring, changing color intensity and warping the image. Although originally designed for use in SVG, filter effects are a set a set of operations to apply on an image buffer and therefore can be applied to nearly any presentational environment, including CSS. They are triggered by a style instruction (the filter property). This specification describes filters in a manner that allows them to be used in content styled by CSS, such as HTML and SVG. It also defines a CSS property value function that produces a CSS <image> value. CSS is a language for describing the rendering of structured documents (such as HTML and XML) on screen, on paper, in speech, etc.
• A Working Draft of CSS Transforms Module Level 1. CSS transforms allows elements styled with CSS to be transformed in two-dimensional or three-dimensional space. This specification is the convergence of the CSS 2D transforms, CSS 3D transforms and SVG transforms specifications. CSS is a language for describing the rendering of structured documents (such as HTML and XML) on screen, on paper, in speech, etc.

Learn more about the Style Activity, and the Graphics Activity.

The Audio Working Group has published a Working Draft of Web MIDI API. This specification defines an API supporting the MIDI protocol, enabling web applications to enumerate and select MIDI input and output devices on the client system and send and receive MIDI messages. It is intended to enable non-music MIDI applications as well as music ones, by providing low-level access to the MIDI devices available on the users’ systems. The Web MIDI API is not intended to describe music or controller inputs semantically; it is designed to expose the mechanics of MIDI input and output interfaces, and the practical aspects of sending and receiving MIDI messages, without identifying what those actions might mean semantically. The Web MIDI API is also expected to be used in conjunction with other APIs and elements of the web platform, notably the Web Audio API. This API is also intended to be familiar to users of MIDI APIs on other systems, such as Apple’s CoreMIDI and Microsoft’s Windows MIDI API. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity.

The Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Working Group has published a Last Call Working Draft of CSS Writing Modes Level 3. This specification defines CSS support for various international writing modes, such as left-to-right (e.g. Latin or Indic), right-to-left (e.g. Hebrew or Arabic), bidirectional (e.g. mixed Latin and Arabic) and vertical (e.g. Asian scripts). CSS is a language for describing the rendering of structured documents (such as HTML and XML) on screen, on paper, in speech, etc. Comments are welcome through 24 December. Learn more about the Style Activity.