Internationalization (I18n) Core Working Group Charter
The mission of the Internationalization
Core Working Group, part of the Internationalization Activity, is
to enable universal access to the World Wide Web by proposing and coordinating
the adoption by the W3C of techniques, conventions, technologies, and designs
that enable and enhance the use of W3C technology and the Web worldwide, with
and between the various different languages, scripts, regions, and cultures.
Join the Internationalization Core Working Group.
End date |
31 December 2011 |
Confidentiality |
Proceedings are public |
Initial Chairs |
Addison Phillips |
Initial Team Contacts
(FTE %: 50) |
Richard Ishida |
Usual Meeting Schedule |
Teleconferences: Weekly
Face-to-face: Once Annually |
Scope
- Technical issues related to internationalization and universal access
across the globe. The Working Group provides advice and assistance related
to internationalization and encompassing work related to international,
linguistic, cultural, and writing system variations affecting W3C
technologies. This advice should be provided to W3C Working Groups as early
as possible in the development of specifications. The Working Group also
tracks developments outside the W3C which have a bearing on the
international Web, such as IDN/ICANN issues, language tag and IRI
developments at the IETF, etc .
- Reviews of W3C technologies for internationalization issues, as these
technologies develop. This encompasses a broad array of cultural,
linguistic, technical and accessibility concerns. Review work may also
include standards created by external standards bodies and organizations
related to internationalization, if it is thought to be relevant to W3C
technology. The Working Group maintains liaison relationships with these
groups to ensure coordinated, consistent development of these
standards.
- Outreach and inreach, in the forms of notes, articles, tutorials,
presentations, tests and other resources to help specification writers, web
masters, content authors, and others involved in developing and
implementing the Web understand the issues involved and the techniques
available with regard to supporting international use of Web technology.
This was formerly the work of the very successful I18n Guidelines,
Education & Outreach (GEO) Working Group, which is now being merged
into the Core Working Group.
Success Criteria
- Successfully complete reviews and provide assistance in a timely
manner.
- Maintain good levels of feedback for outreach materials.
Deliverables
Reviews
Review of specifications of other W3C Working Groups for issues related to
internationalization, global usage, and cultural sensitivity is an essential
deliverable of the Internationalization Core Working Group. This is not a
time-bound activity and the exact schedule of these reviews depends on the
progress of other Working Groups and the availability of resources in the
Internationalization Working Group. There is usually a constant supply of
review work to be done. In depth reviews are typically done at Last Call,
however additional early reviews are particularly useful and will be scheduled
where possible.
Web internationalization resources
The WG will continue the work of the I18n GEO WG to publish resources on the
Internationalization Activity
site to assist users of W3C and related Web technologies to internationalize
their approach. These will include articles,
notes and reference pages, articles based on frequently asked questions and tutorials.
The Working Group will also maintain the Internationalization Activity Web
presence, and develop and maintain ways for users of its resources to quickly
find the material they need, through a variety of means, including topic-based
and task-based indexing.
Best practices documents
The WG will build on existing work by the I18n GEO Working Group to create a
series of Working Group notes providing internationalization-related best
practices for users of Web technologies. These documents make the information
available in a task based fashion, at the point of need. The information in
these separate documents will be drawn together by higher level web pages,
targeted at specific user types and activities, that group together and link to
all relevant information in summary form, with an organization that aids their
use.
Internationalization tests
The WG will build on the existing foundation to create
additional test pages and a summary of results for major browsers. These tests
explore support by user agents for internationalization related features, but
also serve an educational role. They are initially intended to support the
development of techniques documents and articles, but are not limited to that.
The audience will be content authors as well as QA testers. In addition, other
W3C WGs have found these tests of interest for their own test suites, and user
agent development teams have found these tests valuable in terms of
identifying, fixing or enhancing internationalization features or bugs.
Outreach activities
The WG will seek to regularly present knowledge developed by the WG at
conferences and meetings where Web internationalization topics are relevant,
and to maintain a presence in internationalization and localization related
publications. It will also seek out key opportunities to present the
internationalization message to content authors and implementers, and to
encourage the provision of requirements for internationalization of W3C
technologies by in-country experts.
Milestones
WG deliverables are produced on an ongoing basis throughout the life of the
charter, and the specific topics to be addressed by the working group and
schedule information cannot be determined in far in advance, but are driven by
the needs of the Web community.
Plans for work on resource development and reviews can be tracked at:
Dependencies
W3C Groups
- Internationalization Interest Group
- The I18n Core WG maintains close contact with the I18N IG (charter).
Resources produced by this WG will be submitted to the I18N IG mailing
list for review. When needed to assure a broader base for decisions,
technical topics may be submitted to the I18N IG mailing list for
discussion. The I18N IG mailing list will also be used for sharing
information about the work of this WG, sending out information about the
progress of this WG at regular intervals, and soliciting feedback in
general. Members of this WG are expected to also become members of the
I18N IG to assure a smooth flow of information.
- ITS Working Group
- The I18n Core WG will maintain close contact with the ITS WG (charter).
Members of the ITS WG may collaborate with the Core WG to publish pages
on the Web site, and the Core WG will provide assistance to the ITS WG
for the development of techniques documents, eg. editorial guidance,
templates and the like.
- WAI (Web Accessibility Initiative)
- The I18N Core WG will coordinate with the relevant WAI groups on the
following points:
- Procedural coordination: Both the I18N Core WG and WAI are
reviewing W3C specifications.
- Technical coordination: There are parallels between the cultural
universality at the base of the Internationalization work and the
principle of universal access at the base of the WAI work. Common
issues resulting from such parallels will be coordinated.
- Internationalization review of WAI work, and WAI review of work of
the I18N Core WG: Different countries have different traditions and
different needs and rules for making content accessible, and some
languages may be harder to deal with than others. For example,
Japanese text-to-speech systems may need extra information compared
to, say, English ones.
- TAG
- The Technical Architecture Group is responsible for the principles of
Web Architecture. The I18N Core WG will coordinate architectural issues
related to internationalization with the TAG where necessary.
- Device Independence Activity
- The I18N Core WG will stay in contact with these WGs with respect to
review work, and issues of horizontal activities in general. Similar
considerations to those given for WAI apply.
- Other W3C Working Groups
- The I18n Core WG will work with all W3C Working Groups to ensure that
their deliverables support international use. The list includes the WGs
in the following Activities, in particular, but is not limited to them:
- HTML: HTML is one of the main formats for
storing and delivering information on the Web. The I18N Core WG will
help the HTML WGs keep HTML and XHTML language- and culture-neutral,
and to make the international components of HTML broadly
available.
- XML: XML is the base format for many Web
applications. The I18N Core WG will help the XML CG and the various
XML WGs to create and ensure an appropriate base for the
internationalization needs of these applications.
- Style (CSS) , XSL
WG: Formatting varies widely in different cultures, and different
writing systems need different stylesheet support. The I18N Core WG
will help these working groups address international formatting needs
by providing requirements, proposals, and advice.
- Web Services: The I18N Core WG will follow
developments in the area of Web services and will coordinate with the
Web Services Activity.
- Mobile Web Initiative: The I18N Core WG will
monitor the work of the Mobile Web Initiative, to ensure their
specifications and best practices are internationalized, and to
integrate their best practices in internationalization
deliverables.
- Voice Browser, and Multimodal Interaction: Spoken language has
different requirements from written forms of a language, raising
internationalization issues that have to be carefully considered.
Also, new forms of interaction, such as cross-language interaction
(e.g. a speaker responding with the French pronunciation of a name to
an English prompt), need to be reviewed with respect to
internationalization.
- Semantic Web: I18N Core will collaborate to
make sure that Semantic Web technologies are appropriately
internationalized.
- Math: I18N Core has assisted the Math WG
in the past and will continue to help with internationalization of
Math markup.
- XML Schema: I18N Core will continue their
collaboration with the XML Schema WG to ensure that Schema
technologies, and especially datatypes, are as international as
possible.
External Groups
- IETF
- IETF working groups and other IETF activities that define technology
with impact on Web Internationalization.
- Unicode Technical Committee
(UTC)
- A liaison has been established.
- Supra-national and national standards bodies
- The work of bodies such as ISO, ISO/IEC JTC1, JIS, CEN, and ECMA, at
the appropriate level (working group, subcommittee, technical
committee,...), especially in so far as they work on general standards
relevant to the internationalization of W3C technology or on national
profiles of W3C specifications. Informal or formal contacts will be used
as appropriate. The main groups, and corresponding areas for liaison,
currently are:
- ISO/IEC JTC1/SC2 (character encoding, sorting): A formal liaison
has been approved to track the evolution of ISO/IEC 10646 and to
input W3C requirements.
- ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG20 (characters in identifiers): A formal
liaison has been approved to track developments and to input W3C
requirements. The work program of this WG has recently been reduced
considerably, and so this liaison may expire naturally.
- Localization Industry Standards
- The WG will seek to forge contacts with the Localization industry, in
particular OASIS
XLIFF, and LISA, to ensure
representation of the needs of these communities in the work of the
WG.
- Conference and publication organizers
- The WG will maintain contacts with the major conference providers in
the internationalization and localization fields, and will seek to place
articles in publications in this area.
Participation
To be successful, the Internationalization Core Working Group is expected to
have 5 or more active participants for its duration. Effective participation to
Internationalization Core Working Group is expected to consume one work day per
week for each participant; one and a half days per week for editors.
Participants are reminded of the Good
Standing requirements of the W3C Process.
Communication
This group primarily conducts its work on the public mailing list public-i18n-core@w3.org.
This is a publicly archived list, writable only by Group members.
The Member-confidential list member-i18n-core@w3.org
can be used for administrative purposes and for discussion of any
member-confidential aspects of specification reviews and liaison activities.
In addition the publicly archived Interest Group mail list, www-international@w3.org
, will be used for the public discussion of technical and general interest
internationalization issues. This list is writable by list subscribers (the
Interest Group).
Information about the group (deliverables, participants, face-to-face
meetings, teleconferences, etc.) is available from the Internationalization Core Working Group home
page.
Decision Policy
As explained in the Process Document (section 3.3),
this group will seek to make decisions when there is consensus. When the Chair
puts a question and observes dissent, after due consideration of different
opinions, the Chair should record a decision (possibly after a formal vote) and
any objections, and move on.
This charter is written in accordance with Section 3.4, Votes
of the W3C Process Document and includes no voting procedures beyond what the
Process Document requires.
Patent Policy
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.
For more information about disclosure obligations for this group, please see
the W3C Patent Policy
Implementation.
About this Charter
This charter for the Internationalization Core Working Group has been
created according to section 6.2 of the Process Document. In the event of a conflict between this
document or the provisions of any charter and the W3C Process, the W3C Process
shall take precedence.
This charter has been extended:
Charter author: Richard Ishida
Copyright© 2006
W3C ® (MIT , ERCIM
, Keio), All Rights
Reserved.
$Date: 2009/12/22 18:37:44 $