This charter has been replaced by the new charter of the group in January 2009.
This charter is written in accordance with section 6.2.6 of the W3C Process Document.
The mission of the MWI Test Suites Working Group is to help create a strong foundation for the mobile Web through the development of a set of test suites. The test suites should be more extensive than those typically produced by W3C Working Groups as exit criterion from Candidate Recommendation, and could be suitable for checking conformance of user agents to specifications in the mobile Web space.
Software providers need test suites to ensure that their products correctly implement the W3C technologies required for mobile Web access. The MWI Test Suites Working Group allows sharing the development cost of test suites within the mobile community.
The main objective of the MWI Test Suites Working Group is to enable the development of a rich mobile Web experience by providing test suites for user agents on mobile Web test suites.
These test suites can then be used by developers of user agents to increase the quality of their software, and by other actors in the market to set up a high-quality environment for the end users. This effort intends to be similar to the W3C XML Conformance Test Suite effort.
The scope of the MWI Test Suites Working Group includes:
Deliverables of the Working Group will include
This Working Group is scheduled to last until 31 December 2007.
T0 = Announcement of Working Group creation by W3C Director
* This schedule is meant to be indicative, depending on the timing of the contributions made by participants to this group. During the course of the work, the schedule an updated schedule may be made available on the Working Group's public Web page.
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, and to ease cooperation with external bodies, the Working Group makes early releases of its test suites publicly available.
Feedback and discussion on early drafts will be encouraged on the group's public mailing list (see communications). This charter is also public.
Other email discussions, such as those concerning administrative arrangements, discussions prior to releasing early releases and reviews of documents and test suites from other groups, are accessible to W3C Members only.
All documentation, test suites, and validating tools produced by this Working Group will be publicly available.
The MWI Test Suites Working Group provides an opportunity to share perspectives on test suites for mobile Web technologies. This Working Group is not chartered to produce Recommendations with associated licensing obligations as described by the W3C Patent Policy. W3C reminds Working Group participants of their obligation to comply with patent disclosure obligations as set out in Section 6 of the W3C Patent Policy. While this Working Group does not produce Recommendation-track documents, when Working Group participants review Recommendation-track specifications from other Working Groups, the patent disclosure obligations do apply.
See also Policies for Contribution of Test Cases to W3C.
The MWI Test Suites Working Group expects to maintain contacts with the following groups within W3C:
The MWI Test Suites Working Group exists within the framework of the Mobile Web Initiative, currently comprising the Mobile Web Best Practices WG and the MWI Device Description WG. The Chair of the MWI Test Suites Working Group will sit on the MWI Steering Council.
The MWI Test Suites Working Group could potentially work on a test suite for SVG Tiny, which would require close coordination with the SVG Working Group who is developing the specification.
The Hypertext Coordination Group ensures that all W3C Working Groups creating document specifications review each other's work. The MWI Test Suites Working Group expects to be represented on the Hypertext Coordination Group.
The Quality Assurance Interest Group hosts the cross-technologies discussions on test suites inside W3C and maintains several test-related documents from which this group will take inspiration. This group expects to request feedback from the QA IG on a regular basis.
The work of the following Interaction Domain Working Groups may also be relevant to the MWI Test Suites Working Group:
The MWI Test Suites Working Group expects to maintain contacts with the following groups external to W3C:
The Open Mobile Alliance (OMA) InterOperability Process (IOP) group has a sub-Working Group dedicated to browsing technologies, working on a set of interoperability test suites for mobile Web technologies in cooperation with the OMA Mobile Application Environment (BAC-MAE) sub-Working Group within the Browsing and Content (BAC) Working Group.
While the scope of the work done by the MWI Test Suites group and this OMA group differ (conformance vs interoperability test suites), the MWI Test Suites Working Group intends to develop a strong working relationship with OMA IOP Browsing by making use of the W3C-OMA liaison agreement which defines basic inter-working principles between the two bodies.
The Open SVG Test Suite is developing an SVG test suite as a community effort. In case work on an SVG test suite gets taken on, 6he Working Group will see how these two efforts can work together.
Test Suites developed by this group could be adopted by the GSMA Global Certification Forum.
A public, archived mailing list <public-mwts@w3.org> is used to announce the releases of documents and test suites, for discussing them, and for other public communications.
A Member-only mailing list, member-mwts@w3.org, is used to distribute Member-only versions of documents, for Member-only discussion on them, and for other Member-only communications.
The group maintains a public Working Group page. In addition, its Member-only Working Group page records the history of the group, provides access to the archives, meeting minutes, updated schedule of deliverables, participant list, and relevant documents and resources. The page is maintained by the W3C Team contact in collaboration with the Chair.
The MWI Test Suites Working Group plans to meet every week by phone for one hour.
Face to face meetings will be arranged 3 to 4 times a year, rotating location between USA west coast, east coast, Europe, and Asia/Pacific/Australia. Face-to-face meetings will be held on at least two separate continents during each year of the Working Group activity.
Participation in face-to-face meetings is limited to Working Group participants and individuals invited at the discretion of the Chair to specific meetings, as described in section 3.2 of the W3C Process Document.
Meeting details are made available on the W3C Member Calendar and on the Member-only Working Group page.
The MWI Test Suites Working Group home page is the primary way of communicating the group's progress to the public.
The Group works by consensus. In the event of failure to achieve consensus, the Group may resort to a vote, as described in the W3C Process Document in the section 3.4. All group participants in good standing are allowed to vote.
It is expected that this Working Group would consume about 0.5 FTE, including administrative logistics.
For participation in the MWI Test Suites Working Group, the requirements for meeting attendance and timely response are described in the W3C Process Document. This participation (attending meetings, reviewing documents, preparing drafts or tools) is expected to consume about one day per week.
Information about how to join the Working Group is available on a separate How-to-Join page.