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Charter of the XML Linking Working Group

April 2002

Henry S. Thompson (Univ. of Edinburgh & W3C), staff contact, acting chair
$Id: xml-linking-wg-charter.html,v 3.7 2002/08/21 16:33:54 liam Exp $.

The XML Linking Working Group is a Working Group of the W3C and follows the working group process described in the Process Document. Except as outlined elsewhere in this charter, the Working Group follows the Common Procedures for XML Working Groups. This is an extension of the charter for this Working Group.   It extends the Working Group's previous charter until December 2002.

Contents

  1. Scope
  2. Deliverables and Schedule
  3. Relationship with Other Activities
  4. WG membership and decision process
  5. Communication
    1. Confidentiality
    2. Group Home Page
    3. Telephone and Face-to-Face Meetings
  6. W3C staff resource commitment

Scope

The objective of the XML Linking WG is to design advanced, scalable, and maintainable hyperlinking and addressing functionality for XML (XML 1.0 Recommendation). Such functionality includes the hyperlinking abilities of HTML, but extends them to include at least the following:

Specifically, the remaining XML Linking deliverable, XPointer, is intended to specify the fragment identifier syntax for use when pointing into resources with XML media types (text/xml, application/xml, etc.). XPointer syntax is based on XPath 1.0.

The XML Linking Working Group is part of the W3C XML Activity.

Deliverables and Schedule

These are subject to revision due to editorial needs and external scheduling issues; updates will be negotiated with the related groups and recorded on the XML Linking WG home page.

April - June 2002
Process CR comments on XPointer, address arising issues, secure commenter agreement to disposition wherever possible.
June 2002
Extension of Charter announced. Continue processing CR comments.
June - July 2002
Publication of XPointer Framework, xmlns() scheme, and element() scheme as Last Call Working Drafts and then as Proposed Recommendations; publication of xpointer() scheme as Working Draft
August - September 2002
Publication of XPointer Framework and of xmlns and element schemes as W3C Recommendations. Consideration of what to recommend to IETF as the fragment identifier syntax for the XML media types.
September - December 2002
Life after Recommendation for XPointer framework, xmlns scheme, and element scheme; continued work on xpointer scheme
June - December 2002
Life after Recommendation for XLink

If the expected trajectory outlined above proves accurate, the expected duration of the working group under this charter is through December 2002. If the expected trajectory outlined above proves significantly inaccurate, the working group does not expect to ask for another extension: further work in this area beyond the requested duration will likely require either a newly chartered working group or transfer of responsibilities to other working groups, depending on size.

The XML Linking Working Group has already seen XML Base and the XML Linking Language itself through to Recommendation status. Accordingly, it is also responsible for supporting the XML Linking Language Recommendation, maintaining it and its Errata document in response to reported errata and other comments, and if necessary preparing a second edition. However responsibility for maintenance of XML Base has been transferred to the XML Core Working Group.

Relationship with Other Activities

The XML Linking WG is responsible for collaborating with other W3C Activities that create XLink- and XPointer-related specifications in order to ensure that the requirements of other Activities are met by the relevant specifications maintained by the WG under the terms of this charter. Dependencies to and from other W3C Working Groups are as follows:

XML Linking IG
The XML Linking Interest Group consists of experts in XML and hypermedia who cannot commit to meeting participation requirements as for the XML Linking WG itself. The IG is considered to be a source of valuable technical expertise for the WG. In general members of the XML Linking WG are also members of the XML Linking IG. Communications with the XML Linking IG are carried out via the archived mailing list w3c-xml-linking-ig@w3.org
XSL and XML Query Working Groups
The XPath 1.0 language was jointly developed with the XSL Working Group. The XSL WG and the XML Query WG are currently collaborating to extend XPath 1.0 to an XPath 2.0 that covers common functionality.
HTML Working Group
The Director's Decision advancing XLink to REC summarized the outstanding need for accommodating existing W3C Recommendations which include hyperlinking functionality. More work is required to help these exploit XLink's definition of linking semantics in a maximally backward-compatible way.
Internationalization (I18N) WG
The Internationalization WG will review XPointer to ensure that principles developed by that group are consistently applied, as XPointer depends on the character model from the Internationalization WG.
XML Schema
The XML Linking and Schema WGs will consult with each other on the question of declaring element types and attributes as links or addresses.

When approved by the XML Coordination Group, liaison with other W3C Working Groups can be accomplished through joint task forces. It is expected that this may be required for liaison with the HTML Working Group.

WG membership and decision process

The rules for the participation and decision process in the XML Linking WG are regulated by the Common Procedures for XML Working Groups unless specified otherwise in this charter.

Participation in the XML Linking WG is expected to consume at least half-day per week of each WG member's time.

The initial chair of this WG is Henry S. Thompson, W3C.

Communication

The XML Linking WG (principals and alternates) shall communicate among its members using the w3c-xml-linking-wg mailing list and with the members of other XML WGs through the w3c-xml-plenary@w3.org mailing list. The WG technical mailing list is archived; the archive is visible to the public.

It shall communicate with the general public only through its Chair.

Confidentiality

Members must treat all Member-only documents as confidential within W3C and use reasonable efforts to maintain this confidentiality and not to release this information to the general public or press. Access to Member-only information may be extended by Advisory Committee representatives to fellow employees considered appropriate recipients. All recipients must respect the intended (limited) scope of Member-only information. For instance, Advisory Committee representatives and fellow employees should ensure that Member-only news announcements are distributed for internal use only within their organization

excerpt from section 1.1.3 - Member Confidentiality of the W3C Process

In particular, the XML Linking WG mailing list archive and the Group home page are accessible by members only. The proceedings of this working group are confidential to the W3C membership, subject to exceptions made by the chair. (N.B. published documents may of course be discussed publicly.)

The proceedings of this working group are member-confidential, subject to exceptions made by the chair.

W3C, and all W3C Working Groups, are accountable to the Web community as a whole for the quality of W3C technical work. In support of this public accountability, this working group will periodically (e.g. monthly) make public a summary of all technical decisions made since the last public summary, and the rationales for these decisions.

Group Home Page

The XML Linking WG has a home page that records the history of the group, provides access to the archives, meeting minutes, updated schedule of deliverables, membership list, and relevant documents and resources. It is maintained by the Chair in collaboration with the W3C staff contact.

Telephone and Face-to-Face Meetings

Telephone and Face-to-face meetings will be held as needed.

Participation in telephone and face-to-face meetings is limited to principal members, formally approved alternates, and individual experts invited by the WG Chair. Invited experts who have not been formally approved as WG members have observer status and may not take part in decision-making.

W3C staff resource commitment

To be successful, we expect the XML Linking WG to have approximately 10 to 15 active principal members for its 4 month duration.

The W3C will be represented by one principal and (optionally) one alternate WG member. The W3C staff resource commitment is no more than the minimum level of participation required of WG members in good standing by the W3C Process Document.

The W3C staff contact for this WG is Henry S. Thompson. It is expected that this WG would consume about 10% of the contact's time including administrative logistics.

Communications resources for press and media relations and speaking appearances or meeting planning resources are amortized across the working groups in the XML Activity, and concentrated in the XML Coordination Group.