Call for Review: RDFa in XHTML: Syntax and Processing Proposed Recommendation

2008-09-04: The Semantic Web Deployment Working Group and XHTML2 Working Group have published the Proposed Recommendation of RDFa in XHTML: Syntax and Processing. The modern Web is made up of an enormous number of documents that have been created using HTML. These documents contain significant amounts of structured data, which is largely unavailable to tools and applications. When publishers can express this data more completely, and when tools can read it, a new world of user functionality becomes available, letting users transfer structured data between applications and web sites, and allowing browsing applications to improve the user experience. RDFa is a specification for attributes to express structured data in any markup language. The groups have also published an implementation report as part of the Candidate Recommendation phase. Comments are welcome through 03 October. Learn more about the Semantic Web. (Permalink)

Efficient XML Interchange (EXI) Impacts First Public Draft

2008-09-03: The Efficient XML Interchange Working Group has published the First Public Working Draft of Efficient XML Interchange (EXI) Impacts. EXI defines a new representation for the Extensible Markup Language (XML) Information Set. The introduction of such a format may cause disruption in systems that have so far been able to assume XML as the only representation of XML Information Set data. This document reviews areas where the introduction of EXI may disrupt or otherwise have an impact on existing XML technologies, XML processors, and applications. It also describes EXI design features and steps that may be taken by implementors to reduce or eliminate disruption and impacts. Learn more about the Extensible Markup Language (XML) Activity. (Permalink)

W3C Talks in September

2008-09-01: Browse W3C presentations and events also available as an RSS channel. (Permalink)

• 1 September, Liverpool, United Kingdom: Web Accessibility and the Older Population.Andrew Arch presents at HCI and the Older Population 2008.
• 2 September, Amsterdam, The Netherlands: From pages to applications: Mobile Web Best Practices.François Daoust presents at Mobile Internet User eXperience (MIUX'08).
• 4 September, Erlangen, Germany: Senioren im Web: Barrierefreiheit für Ältere Menschen.Shadi Abou-Zahra presents at Webkongress 2008.
• 16 September, Yahoo!'s Mission College Campus, Santa Clara, California, USA: Introduction to the Protocol for Web Description Resources.Phil Archer, Matt Womer are at POWDER: More of what you want, when you want it.
• 17 September, Sophia-Antipolis, France: Mobile Web: Trust starts with a few Best Practices.François Daoust presents at Smart Mobility 2008.
• 23 September, York, United Kingdom: How web accessibility guidelines apply to design for the ageing population.Andrew Arch, Shadi Abou-Zahra present at Accessible Design in the Digital World.
• 23 September, London, United Kingdom: Standardisation vs. Openness vs. Proprietary Systems - Examining in which Direction the Mobile Web Industry is heading and why this really Matters.Dominique Hazaël-Massieux presents at Mobile Web Europe 2008.
• 24 September, Berlin, Germany: Auf dem Weg ins Semantische Web.Klaus Birkenbihl, Ivan Herman present at W3C-Tag.
• 24 September, Vienna, Austria: Introduction to the Semantic Web.Ivan Herman gives a tutorial at 2nd European Semantic Technology Conference.
• 24 September, Washington, DC, USA: Introducing the W3C eGovernment Interest Group.Kevin Novak presents at The Next Generation of Our Public Record:Many Voices, One Voice.
• 30 September, São Paulo, Brazil: On the Way to the Semantic Web.Klaus Birkenbihl, Ivan Herman present at W3C Brazil meeting.
• View upcoming talks by country
• More talks...

Last Call: SKOS Simple Knowledge Organization System Reference; Primer Updated

2008-08-29: The Semantic Web Deployment Working Group has published the Last Call Working Draft of SKOS Simple Knowledge Organization System Reference. This document defines the Simple Knowledge Organization System (SKOS), a common data model for sharing and linking knowledge organization systems via the Web. The SKOS data model provides a standard, low-cost migration path for porting existing knowledge organization systems to the Semantic Web. SKOS also provides a light weight, intuitive language for developing and sharing new knowledge organization systems. It may be used on its own, or in combination with formal knowledge representation languages such as the Web Ontology language (OWL). Comments are welcome through 03 October. The group has also published an update of the companion SKOS Primer. Learn more about the Semantic Web Activity. (Permalink)

Web IDL Draft Published

2008-08-29: The Web Applications Working Group has published the Working Draft of Web IDL. This specification defines a syntactic subset of OMG IDL version 3.0 for use by specifications that define interfaces. Web IDL is an IDL variant with a number of features that allow the behavior of common script objects in the web platform to be specified more readily. A number of extensions are given to the IDL to support common functionality that previously must have been written in prose. In addition, precise language bindings for ECMAScript 3rd Edition and Java are given. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity. (Permalink)

Best Practice Recipes for Publishing RDF Vocabularies Note Published

2008-08-29: The Semantic Web Deployment Working Group has published the Group Note of Best Practice Recipes for Publishing RDF Vocabularies. This document describes best practice recipes for publishing vocabularies or ontologies on the Web (in RDF Schema or OWL). It is intended for the creators and maintainers of vocabularies in RDFS and OWL (vocabulary and ontology are used interchangeably in the context of this specification). It provides step-by-step instructions for publishing vocabularies on the Web, giving example configurations designed to cover the most common cases. Learn more about the Semantic Web Activity. (Permalink)

The Power of Tests: New Licenses Promote Collaboration

2008-08-20: W3C announced today its new Licenses for W3C Test Suites. Two licenses promote two goals:

1. A 3-clause BSD License is designed to enable developers to use test cases easily, and promote software development and bugtracking.
2. A W3C Test Suite License is designed to enable a W3C Working Group to create a branded, "Authoritative W3C Test Suite" to reflect the group consensus process, and to promote interoperability and stability of performance claims.

W3C appreciates the support of those who suggested these changes, who provided use cases, and who patiently reviewed drafts. (Permalink)

Pronunciation Lexicon Specification (PLS) 1.0 Is a Proposed Recommendation

2008-08-18: The Voice Browser Working Group has published the Proposed Recommendation of Pronunciation Lexicon Specification (PLS) Version 1.0. PLS provides the basis for describing pronunciation information for use in speech recognition and speech synthesis, for use in tuning applications, e.g., for proper names that have irregular pronunciations. Changes from the previous Working Draft can be found in Appendix D of the specification. Comments are welcome through 18 September. Learn more about the Voice Browser Activity. (Permalink)

Five POWDER Documents published; three Last Call Drafts

2008-08-18: The Protocol for Web Description Resources (POWDER) Working Group has published five Working Drafts. The purpose of the Protocol for Web Description Resources (POWDER) is to provide a means for individuals or organizations to describe a group of resources through the publication of machine-readable metadata.

• Description Resources (Last Call); which details the creation and lifecycle of Description Resources (DRs), which encapsulate metadata
• Grouping of Resources (Last Call); which describes how sets of IRIs can be defined such that descriptions or other data can be applied to the resources obtained by dereferencing IRIs that are elements of the set.
• Formal Semantics (Last Call); which describes how the relatively simple operational format of a POWDER document can be transformed for processing by Semantic Web tools
• Primer (First Public Draft)
• Test Suite (First Public Draft)

Last Call comments are welcome through 14 September. Learn more about the Semantic Web Activity. (Permalink)

Last Call: XProc: An XML Pipeline Language

2008-08-14: The XML Processing Model Working Group has published the Last Call Working Draft of XProc: An XML Pipeline Language. This specification describes the syntax and semantics of XProc: An XML Pipeline Language, a language for describing operations to be performed on XML documents. A pipeline consists of steps. Like pipelines, steps take zero or more XML documents as their inputs and produce zero or more XML documents as their outputs. Comments are welcome through 26 September. Learn more about the Extensible Markup Language (XML) Activity. (Permalink)

W3C Takes Steps to Make Video "First-Class" Web Citizen

2008-08-15: Web-based video is exploding, for advertising, enterprise collaboration, entertainment, product reviews, and other applications. As prices drop for consumer electronics, amateur and professionals alike are creating increasingly high quality videos. Social networks are sprouting up around Web-delivered media. W3C today launched a new Video in the Web Activity to make video a "first-class citizen" of the Web. The initial scope of work, determined as a result of a successful W3C Workshop on Video will be conducted by three groups:

• Media Annotations, which will provide an ontology designed to facilitate cross-community data integration of information related to media objects in the Web, such as video, audio and images.
• Media Fragments, which will address temporary and spatial links (i.e., into a particular moment of a multimedia track, or location in two visual dimensions) using Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs).
• Timed Text, which will work on a standard for online captioning.

W3C continues to investigate the important topics of audio and video codecs on the Web. Learn more about the new Video in the Web Activity. (Photo credit: Bob Freund. Permalink)

W3C Invites Implementations of Element Traversal Specification (Candidate Recommendation)

2008-08-13: The Web Applications Working Group invites implementation of the Candidate Recommendation of Element Traversal Specification. This specification defines the ElementTraversal interface, intended to provide a more convenient alternative to existing Document Object Model (DOM) navigation interfaces, with a low implementation footprint. It does so by allowing script navigation of the elements of a DOM tree, excluding all other nodes in the DOM, such as text nodes. It also provides an attribute to expose the number of child elements of an element. See the disposition of Last Call Comments and learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity. (Permalink)

Voice Extensible Markup Language (VoiceXML) 3.0 Requirements

2008-08-08: The Voice Browser Working Group has published the First Public Working Draft of Voice Extensible Markup Language (VoiceXML) 3.0 Requirements. VoiceXML 2.0 is designed for creating audio dialogs that feature synthesized speech, digitized audio, recognition of spoken and DTMF key input, recording of spoken input, telephony, and mixed initiative conversations. VoiceXML 3.0 is the next major release of VoiceXML. Its purpose is to provide even more powerful dialog capabilities that can be used to build advanced speech applications and to provide these capabilities in a form that can be easily and cleanly integrated with other W3C languages. Learn more about the Voice Browser Activity. (Permalink)

Accessible Rich Internet Applications (WAI-ARIA) Working Draft Published

2008-08-06: The Protocols and Formats Working Group published an updated Working Draft of Accessible Rich Internet Applications (WAI-ARIA). WAI-ARIA defines a way to make Web content and Web applications more accessible to people with disabilities. It especially helps with dynamic content and advanced user interface controls developed with Ajax, HTML, JavaScript, and related technologies. WAI-ARIA is introduced in the WAI-ARIA Overview and the WAI-ARIA FAQ. Read the updated WAI-ARIA Specification announcement that requests feedback on host language embedding, and about the Web Accessibility Initiative. (Permalink)

W3C Invites Implementations of XQuery Update Facility 1.0 (Candidate Recommendation)

2008-08-07: The XML Query Working Group has published the Candidate Recommendation of XQuery Update Facility 1.0. This document defines an update facility that extends the XML Query language, XQuery. The XQuery Update Facility provides expressions that can be used to make persistent changes to instances of the XQuery 1.0 and XPath 2.0 Data Model. This document incorporates changes made against the Candidate Recommendation of 14 March 2008. Learn more about the Extensible Markup Language (XML) Activity. (Permalink)