The Quality Assurance (QA) Working Group has released the first published Working Draft of the QA Framework: Test Guidelines. The document defines a set of common guidelines for conformance test materials for W3C specifications. Visit the QA home page and read about the QA Activity.

The Web Services Task Force of the Internationalization Working Group has released the first Working Draft of Web Services Internationalization Usage Scenarios. This document will be used to generate requirements for Web services internationalization as well as best practices for implementers. The task force invites contributions of additional usage scenarios and use cases, and other comments. Visit the Internationalization home page.

The XML Linking Working Group has released an updated Working Draft of XPointer xpointer() Scheme. Used with the XPointer Framework Proposed Recommendation, the draft allows full addressing of portions of XML documents. It is based on XPath, and adds the ability to address strings, points, and ranges in accordance with definitions in DOM 2 Range. Read about the XML Activity.

W3C is pleased to announce the advancement of SOAP Version 1.2 to Candidate Recommendation. The specification is in three parts: Part 0: Primer, Part 1: Messaging Framework and Part 2: Adjuncts. Publicly developed, SOAP Version 1.2 is a lightweight protocol for exchanging structured information in a decentralized, distributed environment. Comments are welcome. Read about the Web Services Activity.

The Math Working Group has released a Working Draft of the Mathematical Markup Language (MathML) Version 2.0 (2nd Edition). MathML 2.0 is an XML application that allows mathematical notation and content to be served, received, and processed on the Web. The 2nd edition contains clarifications and errata corrections. Comments are welcome. Visit the Math home page.

Due to construction at MIT, on Friday, 27 December, power for W3C MIT-based systems will be turned off at approximately 23:00 UTC for about twenty-six hours. All services will be suspended and the W3C site will be accessible in a read-only state. Mail sent to W3C archives will be queued and posted when the power is restored. Power is expected to return on Sunday, 29 December at 01:00 UTC. We apologize for the inconvenience.

The HTML Working Group has released the third Working Draft of XHTML 2.0. XHTML 2.0 is a relative of the Web's familiar publishing languages, HTML 4 and XHTML 1.0 and 1.1, and is not intended to be backward compatible with them. The draft contains the XHTML 2.0 markup language in modules for creating rich, portable Web-based applications. Comments are welcome. Visit the HTML home page.

W3C is pleased to announce the advancement of Namespaces in XML 1.1 to Candidate Recommendation. Identified by IRI references, namespaces qualify element and attribute names in XML documents. Version 1.1 incorporates errata corrections and provides a mechanism to undeclare prefixes. Comments are welcome through 14 February. Read about the XML Activity.

The World Wide Web Consortium today released User Agent Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 as a W3C Recommendation. Written for software developers as part of the Web Accessibility Initiative, the guidelines explain how to design browsers and media players that lower barriers to the Web for people with disabilities (visual, hearing, physical, cognitive, and neurological) and improve usability for all users. Companion techniques are updated. Read the press release, FAQ and 23 testimonials.

The Device Independence Working Group has released the first public Working Draft of Delivery Context Overview for Device Independence. Delivery context is a term used to describe user preferences and the capabilities of user Web access mechanisms. Read about the W3C Device Independence Activity.

Richard Ishida of the W3C Team has become co-chair of the Internationalization & Unicode Conference. The event (renamed from "Unicode Conference" to more accurately reflect its content) is the premier technical conference worldwide for both software and Web internationalization. The W3C Internationalization Activity is pleased to be able to reaffirm in this way its longstanding and beneficial association with the event. The 23rd Internationalization & Unicode Conference (IUC23) is to be held on 24-26 March 2003 in Prague, Czech Republic.

Amaya is W3C's Web browser and authoring tool. Version 7.1 is a bug fix release with SVG, MathML, and printing enhancements. Download Amaya binaries for Solaris, Linux, and Windows, and Debian and RPM packages. Source code is available. If you are interested in annotations, visit the Annotea home page.

The HTML Working Group has released an updated Working Draft of XHTML 2.0. XHTML 2.0 is a relative of the Web's familiar publishing languages, HTML 4 and XHTML 1.0 and 1.1, and is not intended to be backward compatible with them. The draft contains the XHTML 2.0 markup language in modules for creating rich, portable Web-based applications. Comments are welcome. Visit the HTML home page.

The World Wide Web Consortium today released XML Encryption Syntax and Processing and Decryption Transform for XML Signature as W3C Recommendations. The specifications have been reviewed by the W3C Membership, who favor their adoption by industry. Encryption makes sensitive data confidential for storage or transmission. Read the press release and testimonials.

W3C is pleased to announce the first Welcome Page Competition for Amaya, W3C's editor/browser. Design the start page using W3C technologies such as HTML, XHTML, CSS style sheets, MathML expressions, and SVG drawings. Enter as often as you wish. Deadline for submissions is 3 February 2003.

The HTML Working Group has released a Last Call Working Draft of Modularization of XHTML in XML Schema. Comments are welcome through 31 January. The document provides a complete set of XML Schema modules for XHTML, and allows document authors to modify and extend XHTML in a conformant way. Visit the HTML home page.

The Evaluation and Repair Tools Working Group has released the first public Working Draft of the Evaluation and Report Language (EARL) 1.0. The specification explains how to use EARL, a general-purpose language for expressing test results, and defines a basic vocabulary. Feedback is welcome. Read about the Web Accessibility Initiative.

W3C is pleased to announce a home page redesign and accompanying FAQ. Written for newer, standards-compliant user agents in XHTML 1.0 strict, the design features table-less columns and more navigation for accessibility, and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) for layout. W3C welcomes your comments.

The Multimodal Interaction Working Group has released Multimodal Interaction Use Cases as a W3C Note. Airline reservations, driving directions, and name dialing from mobile terminals are analyzed. They highlight device requirements, event handling, network dependencies, and user interaction. Read about the Multimodal Interaction Activity.

W3C is pleased to co-host XML 2002 to be held 8-13 December in Baltimore, MD, USA. Chris Lilley participates in a Town Hall panel on the W3C Technical Architecture Group on 10 December. Philippe Le Hégaret presents W3C Update on 11 December and DOM Level 3 on 12 December. Daniel Weitzner and Liam Quin, W3C XML Activity Lead, will attend.

Amaya is W3C's Web browser and authoring tool. New features in version 7.0 include user interface enhancements, migration to the Raptor parser, and improved support for XML, SVG, and CSS. Download Amaya binaries for Solaris, Linux, and Windows. Source code is available. If you are interested in annotations, visit the Annotea home page.

On 3 December, Hugo Haas presents at Iliatech Club Day on Web Services at INRIA Rocquencourt, Le Chesnay, France, and Charles McCathieNevile presents at LexiPraxi (in French) at the Agence universitaire de la Francophonie in Paris, France. On 5 December, Kazuhiro Kitagawa gives a keynote at Internet World Asia in Tokyo, Japan. Several Team members attend XML 2002 in Baltimore, MD, USA held 8-13 December. On 10 December, C. M. Sperberg-McQueen participates in a panel at the CNET Building a Web Services Foundation conference in San Francisco, CA, USA. Daniel Dardailler presents at Internet: un diritto per tutti (in Italian) in Venice, Italy on 16 December. Browse upcoming W3C appearances and events.

The Quality Assurance (QA) Working Group has released Operational Examples & Techniques as a W3C Note. Part of the QA Framework and developed in tandem with Operational Guidelines, the latest version is now maintained at the QA Activity until it stabilizes. The document gives examples and techniques of quality practices within W3C Working Groups.

The Multimodal Interaction Working Group released the first publication of the W3C Multimodal Interaction Framework as a W3C Note. The framework identifies markup languages required by components and for data flowing among components. It describes input and output modes widely used today and can be extended. Read about the Multimodal Interaction Activity.

The Voice Browser Working Group has released a Last Call Working Draft of the Speech Synthesis Markup Language Version 1.0. Comments are welcome through 15 January 2003. With this XML-based language, content authors can generate synthetic speech on the Web, controlling pronunciation, volume, pitch, and rate. Read about the Voice Browser Activity.

W3C is pleased to announce its European host will change on 1 January 2003 from INRIA to the European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics (ERCIM). MIT in North America, Keio University in Asia and now ERCIM in Europe are W3C's three global partners and physical headquarters called "hosts." The move allows W3C to foster research relationships throughout Europe, while maintaining ties to INRIA, one of the ERCIM founders. Read the press release in eighteen languages and the testimonials.

W3C is pleased to announce an upgrade to the W3C Markup Validation Service. Changes include improved result pages, accessibility fixes, restructured code and design, and more MathML, XHTML and SVG support. Feedback is welcome. The announcement names contributors and has release notes.

W3C is pleased to co-sponsor Internet World Asia 2002 (in Japanese) to be held 4-6 December in Tokyo, Japan. Kazuhiro Kitagawa, W3C Device Independence Activity Lead, gives the keynote New services based on the Semantic Web on 5 December. Registration is open.

W3C held its semiannual Advisory Committee Meeting on 18-20 November in Cambridge, MA, USA. W3C Member organizations participated in two days of talks and discussion on the range of W3C Activities. If your organization would like to join W3C, please refer to the Membership page. The next Advisory Committee Meeting will be held 18-20 May 2003, colocated with WWW2003 on 20-24 May in Budapest, Hungary.

In the past 6 months, W3C Working Groups released a record 137 publications, 36 during 2 weeks in November. Find them linked to the index of technical reports. W3C thanks our Webmaster Henri Fallon and the W3C SysWeb team for making this possible. SysWeb supports the needs of the W3C Membership, the Team and the public. Currently, they serve 680,000 Web pages and 796,000 pages of mailing list archives on machines in the USA, Japan, and France.

The XML Query, XSL, and XML Schema Working Groups have released a number of documents through joint efforts. Please see the status section of each document for authorship and the change history. The documents are part of the XML and Style Activities.

• XSL Transformations (XSLT) Version 2.0
• XML Path Language (XPath) 2.0
• XML Query Use Cases
• XQuery 1.0: An XML Query Language
• XQuery 1.0 and XPath 2.0 Formal Semantics
• XQuery 1.0 and XPath 2.0 Data Model
• XQuery 1.0 and XPath 2.0 Functions and Operators

W3C is pleased to announce the advancement of Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) 1.1 and Mobile SVG to Proposed Recommendations. Comments are welcome through 20 December. SVG delivers vector graphics, text, and images to the Web in XML. SVG 1.1 separates the SVG language into reusable building blocks. Mobile SVG re-combines them into two profiles optimized for cellphones and pocket computers.

The W3C Technical Architecture Group (TAG) has released an updated Working Draft, Architecture of the World Wide Web. Comments are welcome. With technical issues organized around identification, representation, and interaction, the document also addresses some non-technical social issues that contribute to the shared information space. Visit the TAG home page.

The SVG Working Group has released the first public Working Draft of Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) 1.2. Potential areas of new work identified in SVG 1.2 include integration with other XML formats, and text wrapping, printing, streaming, painting, rendering model, and DOM enhancements. Visit the SVG home page.

The Patent Policy Working Group has released the Royalty-Free Patent Policy as a Last Call Working Draft. The draft governs the handling of patents in the process of producing and implementing W3C Recommendations. Comments are welcome through 31 December. Read more in the press release and visit the patent policy home page.

The Open Research Forum (in Japanese) is the yearly open house extending research and development at Keio University SFC (Shonan Fujisawa Campus) to interested companies and the general public. On 22 November, W3C holds a tutorial seminar (in Japanese) at ORF: Masayasu Ishikawa, W3C HTML Activity Lead, chairs and introduces XHTML 2.0 and its Family including XForms. Invited speakers are Toshihiko Yamakami of ACCESS who speaks on mobile access, and Yuichi Koike of NEC who speaks on privacy and P3P.

The Web Services Architecture Working Group has updated Web Services Architecture Requirements. The draft contains the Web services reference architecture and the constraints used to determine implementation conformance. The group also published the first public Working Draft of the Web Services Glossary. Comments are welcome. Read about the Web Services Activity.

The Web Services Architecture Working Group has released the first public Working Draft of Web Services Architecture. Software applications can communicate using Web services to present dynamic context-driven information to the user. The reference architecture identifies Web services components, defines relationships among those components, and establishes constraints upon them. Comments are welcome. Read about the Web Services Activity.

The Web Ontology Working Group has released an updated Working Draft of the Language Reference for the Web Ontology Language (OWL) 1.0. Automated tools can use common sets of terms called ontologies to power services such as more accurate Web search, intelligent software agents, and knowledge management. OWL is used to publish and share ontologies on the Web. Read about the W3C Semantic Web Activity.

The CSS Working Group has released two modules of Cascading Style Sheets Level 3 (CSS3). A first public draft, Border extends border styles, colors and images. Lists enhances the styling of lists and their markers. Comments are welcome. Visit the CSS home page.

The RDF Core Working Group has released updated Working Drafts of the RDF Primer, RDF Test Cases, and RDF Semantics (formerly named RDF Model Theory). The Resource Description Framework (RDF) is a general-purpose language for representing information in the Web. The primer is an introduction for all readers. The test cases correspond to technical issues the Working Group is addressing. Semantics specifies precise semantics for RDF and RDFS, with some entailment results. Read about the Semantic Web Activity.

The RDF Core Working Group has released an updated Working Draft of RDF Vocabulary Description Language 1.0: RDF Schema. The specification describes how to use RDF to describe RDF vocabularies, and defines a basic vocabulary and conventions that can be used by Semantic Web applications. Read about the Semantic Web Activity.

W3C is pleased to announce the advancement of the XPointer Framework to Proposed Recommendation. The XPointer Framework is an extensible system for XML addressing and underlies additional schemes. The element() scheme allows basic addressing of XML elements. The xmlns() scheme is used for interpreting namespace prefixes in pointers. Comments are welcome through 13 December. Read about the XML Activity.

W3C is pleased to announce the advancement of XForms 1.0 to Candidate Recommendation. Comments are welcome through 5 March 2003. More flexible than previous HTML and XHTML form technologies, the new generation of Web forms separates purpose, presentation, and data. Read the press release and testimonials and visit the XForms home page.

The RDF Core Working Group has released a Working Draft of the Resource Description Framework (RDF) Concepts and Abstract Syntax (formerly named Concepts and Abstract Data Model). The draft defines the abstract graph syntax on which RDF is based. It discusses design goals, the meaning of RDF documents, key concepts, character normalization and handling of URI references. Read about the Semantic Web Activity.

The RDF Core Working Group has released a Working Draft of RDF/XML Syntax Specification (Revised). The document updates the Resource Description Framework (RDF) Model and Syntax Specification in terms of XML, XML Namespaces, the XML Information Set with new support for XML Base. Read about the Semantic Web Activity.

W3C is pleased to co-sponsor 2002 XML Japan to be held 28 November (Mobile XML Day), 29 November (Web Services / Document Day), and 30 November (Developers Day) at Aoyama TEPIA in Tokyo, Japan. Masayasu Ishikawa, W3C HTML Activity Lead, presents on 28 November, Kazuhiro Kitagawa, W3C Device Independence Activity Lead, gives the keynote on 29 November, and Yasuyuki Hirakawa serves on the Program Committee. Registration is open. Read the XML Japan program.

The Euroweb 2002 Conference will be held at St Anne's College, Oxford, UK, on 17-18 December. Euroweb 2002 is an international forum of research presentations on the GRID, Web services, the Semantic Web, and the future computing infrastructure. Invited speakers include Brian McBride of Hewlett-Packard on the Semantic Web, Domenico Laforenza of CNR on the Grid, and John Ibbotson of IBM on Web services. Early registration at a reduced fee ends 15 November.

The Web Ontology Working Group has released an updated Working Draft of OWL Abstract Syntax and Semantics. The draft is a high-level description of the OWL Web Ontology Language 1.0 and its subset OWL Lite. Automated tools can use common sets of terms called ontologies to power services such as more accurate Web search, intelligent software agents, and knowledge management. OWL is used to publish and share ontologies on the Web. Read about the W3C Semantic Web Activity.

The Quality Assurance (QA) Working Group has updated three Working Drafts in its seven-part QA Framework: the Introduction, Process and Operational Guidelines; and Specification Guidelines. Learn more about the QA Activity and the roadmap for ensuring that W3C technologies are well implemented.

The Web Ontology Working Group has published its first Working Draft of the Web Ontology Language (OWL) Guide. The OWL Guide demonstrates the use of OWL to formalize a domain by defining classes and properties of those classes; define individuals and assert properties about them, and reason about these classes and individuals to the degree permitted by the formal semantics of the OWL language. Read about the Web Ontology Working Group.

The Document Object Model (DOM) Working Group has published DOM Level 2 HTML as a W3C Proposed Recommendation. DOM Level 2 HTML is a platform- and language-neutral interface that allows programs and scripts to dynamically access and update the content and structure of HTML 4.01 and XHTML 1.0 documents. The Call for Review closes 6 December. Read about the DOM Activity.

W3C is pleased to announce that the XML-Signature XPath Filter 2.0 has become a W3C Recommendation. The XML-Signature XPath Filter 2.0 defines a new XML Signature transform to provide a more efficient method for computing a portion of a document to be signed. The Implementation and Interop report includes two Open Source implementations. Read more about XML Signature technologies.

Browse upcoming W3C appearances and events.

• Karl Dubost, Marja-Riitta Koivunen, Matt May, Steven Pemberton, and Richard Ishida present at the W3C/NIST Usability Workshop at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Gaithersburg, MD, USA on 4-5 November.
• Daniel Dardailler presents at IST 2002 on 4-6 November in Copenhagen, Denmark.
• On 7 November, Wendy Chisholm presents a hands-on session at the Assistive Technology and Accessible Media in Higher Education Conference at the University of Colorado in Boulder, Colorado, USA.
• On 12 November, Ivan Herman presents at SURFnet Relatiedagen 2002 in Egmond aan Zee, The Netherlands.
• On 13 November, Yves Lafon presents and Marie-Claire Forgue runs a booth at Intégration 2002 Forum XML & Web Services in Paris, France.
• Vincent Quint gives a keynote at IHM 2002 on 26-29 November in Poitiers, France.
• At 2002 XML Japan in Tokyo, Japan, Masayasu Ishikawa presents on 28 November, Kazuhiro Kitagawa gives the keynote on 29 November, and Yasuyuki Hirakawa serves on the Program Committee.
• On 29 November, Daniel Dardailler participates in a panel at DocForum - Rencontres "S@voirs, réseaux, partage" in Lyon, France.

W3C Director Tim Berners-Lee was a 1 November guest on National Public Radio (NPR) Talk of the Nation: Science Friday. Host Ira Flatow and callers from the United States discussed inventions, the Semantic Web, privacy, patents, broadband, "always on" connections, openness, trust, and spam. NPR provides a three-quarter hour audio archive of the show, as well as Mr. Berners-Lee's previous visit to Science Friday in 1999.

The Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines Working Group has released an update to the W3C Note Techniques for Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines 1.0. The document provides references, techniques and strategies to authoring tool developers who wish to satisfy ATAG 1.0 checkpoints. Read about the Web Accessibility Initiative.

The Web Services Description Working Group has released a Last Call Working Draft of Web Services Description Requirements. The document describes definitions and requirements for specifying application to application communication. Comments are welcome through 31 December. Read about the Web Services Activity.

The Device Independence Working Group has released the first public Working Draft of Authoring Challenges for Device Independence. The draft describes the considerations that Web authors face in supporting access to their sites from a variety of different devices. It is written for authors, language developers, device experts and developers of Web applications and authoring systems. Read about the Device Independence Activity

The first public Working Draft of Web Ontology Language (OWL) Test Cases has been released. The draft illustrates correct OWL usage, the formal meaning of OWL constructs, and resolution of issues considered by the Web Ontology Working Group. OWL is used to publish and share sets of terms called ontologies, providing accurate Web search, intelligent software agents, and knowledge management. Read about the W3C Semantic Web Activity.

The CSS Working Group has released two Last Call Working Drafts and welcomes comments on them through 27 November. CSS3 module: text is a set of text formatting properties and addresses international contexts. CSS3 module: Ruby is properties for ruby, a short run of text alongside base text typically used in East Asia. CSS3 module: The box model for the layout of textual documents in visual media is also updated. Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a language used to render structured documents like HTML and XML on screen, on paper, and in speech. Visit the CSS home page.

The DOM Working Group has released an updated Working Draft of the Document Object Model (DOM) Level 3 Core Specification. The Document Object Model (DOM) allows programs and scripts to update the content and style of documents dynamically. The draft introduces two new interfaces: TypeInfo and DOMConfiguration. Read about the DOM Activity.

W3C is pleased to announce the advancement of User Agent Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 to Proposed Recommendation. Comments are welcome through 14 November. Written for developers of user agents, the guidelines lower barriers to Web accessibility for people with disabilities (visual, hearing, physical, cognitive, and neurological). The companion Techniques Working Draft is updated. Read about the Web Accessibility Initiative.

The Voice Browser Working Group has published the second public Working Draft of Voice Browser Call Control: CCXML Version 1.0. CCXML, the Call Control eXtensible Markup Language, provides telephony call control support for VoiceXML and other dialog systems. Comments are welcome. Visit the Voice Browser home page.

The Web Services Architecture Working Group has updated Web Services Architecture Requirements. Software applications can communicate using Web services to present dynamic context-driven information to the user. The draft contains the reference architecture and the constraints used to determine implementation conformance. Comments are welcome. Read about the Web Services Activity.

W3C is pleased to announce the advancement of XML 1.1 to Candidate Recommendation. Comments are welcome through 14 February 2003. The specification addresses Unicode, control character, and line ending issues. Visit the XML home page.

W3C is pleased to announce the launch of the W3C Finnish Office (in Finnish) based at the Digital Media Institute of the Tampere University of Technology in Tampere, Finland. The opening ceremonies are 11 October, and are open to the public (free registration required). Read the press release and more about W3C Offices.

The DOM Working Group has released a Last Call Working Draft of the Document Object Model (DOM) Level 3 Validation Specification. The Document Object Model (DOM) allows programs and scripts to update the content and style of documents dynamically. This module of DOM3 ensures that documents remain or become valid. Comments are welcome through 27 November. Read about the DOM Activity.

Responding to implementer feedback and test suite results, the DOM Working Group has released an updated Document Object Model (DOM) Level 2 HTML Candidate Recommendation. Comments are welcome through 16 October. The sixth component of DOM Level 2, DOM2 HTML is a set of interfaces used to manipulate the structure and contents of HTML and XHTML documents. Read more about the DOM Activity.

Browse upcoming W3C appearances and events.

• 8 October - Janet Daly, Hugo Haas, and Joseph Reagle speak at W3C Day at the Evolve 2002 conference in Sydney, Australia.
• 8 October - Charles McCathieNevile speaks at the Ecole Mohammadia d'Ingénieurs in Rabat, Morocco.
• 11 October - Daniel Dardailler, Marie-Claire Forgue, Ivan Herman, Yves Lafon, and Marja-Riitta Koivunen present at the W3C Finnish Office Opening Event in Tampere, Finland.
• 16 October - Ivan Herman speaks at a W3C Office in Germany and Austria event in Sankt Augustin, Germany.
• 16 October - Eric Miller gives the keynote and a tutorial at the DC-2002 Dublin Core conference in Florence, Italy.
• 16-17 October - Dan Brickley, Charles McCathieNevile, Eric Miller, and partners from SWAD-E give workshops at DC-2002.
• 24 October - Charles McCathieNevile speaks at Las VI Jornadas del SIDAR in Tenerife, Spain.
• 24-25 October - Steven Pemberton gives a keynote at the ERCIM workshop User Interfaces for All in Paris, France.
• 27 October - Daniel Dardailler speaks at the Middle East Webmaster Forum in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
• 30 October - Charles McCathieNevile presents at the Maturity Matters conference in Perth, Australia.

The WAI Protocols and Formats Working Group has released an updated Working Draft of XML Accessibility Guidelines. The draft is a guide for tools designers and authors of XML formats. It explains how to design accessible XML applications that lower barriers to Web accessibility for people with disabilities. Comments are welcome. Read about the Web Accessibility Initiative.

W3C Day is being held on 8 October as part of the Evolve 2002 Conference in Sydney, Australia from 8-11 October 2002. Janet Daly, Hugo Haas, Dean Jackson, and Joseph Reagle of the W3C Team will be on hand, focusing on the W3C Privacy, Web Services, XML Signature, XML Encryption and XML Key Management Activities. Read the W3C Day programme.

W3C is pleased to announce the advancement of XML Encryption Syntax and Processing and Decryption Transform for XML Signature to Proposed Recommendations. Encryption makes sensitive data confidential for storage or transmission. Comments are welcome through 31 October. Read about the XML Encryption Activity.

W3C is pleased to announce the launch of the W3C Hungarian Office (in Hungarian) based at the Computer and Automation Research Institute (SZTAKI) of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (MTA) in Budapest, Hungary. Daniel Dardailler, Marie-Claire Forgue, Max Froumentin, Ivan Herman, László Kovács, and Vincent Quint are among those attending today's opening ceremonies. Read the press release and about W3C Offices.

The XML Protocol Working Group has released a Last Call Working Draft of the SOAP 1.2 Attachment Feature. The draft can be used as the basis for defining SOAP bindings that support the transmission of messages with attachments. Comments are welcome through 15 October. Read more on the Web services home page.

W3C is pleased to co-support XML Days that are underway in Europe. Klaus Birkenbihl of the W3C Office in Germany and Austria, and Oreste Signore of the W3C Office in Italy have participated, and Steven Pemberton, Bert Bos, Rigo Wenning, and Ivan Herman of the W3C Team will give keynotes.

• Munich, Germany - 18 September
• Zurich, Switzerland - 19 September
• Milan, Italy - 20 September
• Brussels, Belgium - 2 October
• Amsterdam, the Netherlands - 3 October
• Helsinki, Finland - 7 October
• Stockholm, Sweden - 8 October
• Oslo, Norway - 9 October
• Copenhagen, Denmark - 10 October

Responding to feedback, the XML Core Working Group has released an updated Candidate Recommendation of XML Inclusions (XInclude) Version 1.0. XInclude introduces a generic mechanism for merging XML documents using elements, attributes, and URI references. Comments are welcome through 1 November. Read about the XML Activity.

The Twelfth International World Wide Web Conference (WWW2003) is to be held in Budapest, Hungary, on 20-24 May 2003. A day of tutorials and workshops is followed by a three-day technical program. Proposals for tutorials and workshops are due 15 October, papers are due 15 November, and posters are due 15 January. Visit the conference Web site.

Amaya is W3C's Web browser and authoring tool. Among the changes, version 6.4 features Finnish dialogs by Tisza Daniel and a new revision of German pages and dialogs by Rudolf Troeller. Download Amaya binaries for Solaris, Linux, and Windows. Source code is available. If you are interested in annotations, visit the Annotea home page.

The HTML Working Group has published the first public Working Draft of HLink. The draft gives the XHTML Family the ability to specify which attributes represent hyperlinks, and how those hyperlinks should be traversed. Comments are welcome. Visit the HTML home page.

Registration is open through 29 October for the W3C Workshop on the Future of P3P to be held in Dulles, VA, USA on 12-13 November 2002. Participants will discuss Platform for Privacy Preferences (P3P) technology and policy. Position papers are due 30 September. Visit the P3P home page.

In collaboration with W3C, NIST is holding a workshop on Web usability in Gaithersburg, Maryland, USA (near Washington, DC) on 4-5 November. Participants will discuss the usability of W3C specifications, how they affect usability of software based on them, and how to improve the overall usability of the Web. The extended deadline for position papers is 30 September. Please refer to the workshop page for details.

Amaya is W3C's Web browser and authoring tool. New features in version 6.3 include control over whether images are loaded; new preference options; more SVG, MathML, and Unicode support; and support for annotations described with Dublin Core 1.1. Download Amaya binaries for Solaris, Linux, and Windows. Source code is available. If you are interested in annotations, visit the Annotea home page.

W3C is pleased to announce the opening of the W3C Finnish Office in Tampere, Finland, hosted by the Digital Media Institute of the Tampere University of Technology. Tarja Systä is Office Manager, and Ossi Nykänen is coordinator. The opening ceremony takes place 11 October in Tampere. Read about W3C Offices.

W3C is pleased to announce the renewal of the Internationalization Activity through August 2004. In keeping with W3C's goals, the Internationalization Activity makes it easy to use W3C technology worldwide, with different languages, scripts, and cultures. Visit the Internationalization home page.

The XML Core Working Group has released a Last Call Working Draft of Namespaces in XML 1.1. Identified by IRI references, namespaces qualify element and attribute names in XML documents. Version 1.1 incorporates errata corrections and provides a mechanism to undeclare prefixes. Comments are welcome through 28 September. Read about the XML Activity.

The HTML Working Group has released XHTML 1.0 in XML Schema as a W3C Note. This work in progress provides informative XML schemas corresponding to the XHTML 1.0 Strict, Transitional, and Frameset DTDs. Comments are welcome. Visit the HTML home page.

W3C Team members will attend the Twenty-second International Unicode Conference on 9-13 September in San Jose, CA, USA. Chris Lilley gives the keynote address, SVG: Vector Graphics meets Unicode. Richard Ishida moderates a panel on Web Internationalization featuring Martin Dürst, Chris Lilley, and Michel Suignard. Martin Dürst and Richard Ishida present Web Internationalization - An Update from the W3C, and Richard Ishida presents the paper, Introduction to Indic Scripts.

Ivan Herman speaks at HKUST and the Web Services Conference 2002 in Hong Kong on 2 and 3 September. On 10 September, Steven Pemberton speaks at BayCHI in Palo Alto, CA, USA. On 24 September, Péter Inzelt, László Kovács, Daniel Dardailler, Marie-Claire Forgue, Éva Megyaszai, Ivan Herman, Vincent Quint, and Max Froumentin speak at the W3C Hungarian Office Opening Event in Budapest. On 26 September, Chris Lilley speaks at the Applied Visualization Laboratory in Knoxville, TN, USA. Philipp Hoschka gives a keynote at Informatik 2002 in Dortmund, Germany. Browse upcoming W3C appearances and events.

The RDF Core Working Group has released a Working Draft of the Resource Description Framework (RDF): Concepts and Abstract Data Model. The draft defines the abstract graph syntax on which RDF is based, and other technical aspects of RDF. Read about the Semantic Web Activity.

The W3C Technical Architecture Group (TAG) has released its first public Working Draft, Architectural Principles of the World Wide Web. Comments are welcome. This document establishes a reference set of principles and good practice for Web architecture, including identifiers, formats, and protocols. Visit the TAG home page.

W3C is pleased to announce the advancement of XML-Signature XPath Filter 2.0 to Proposed Recommendation. Comments are welcome through 24 September. The specification defines a means to digitally sign a document subset using XPath, the language for addressing parts of an XML document. Visit the XML Signature home page.

The Quality Assurance (QA) Working Group has released a Working Draft of the QA Framework: Specification Guidelines. The guidelines are designed to help W3C Working Groups write clearer, more implementable, and better testable technical reports. This is a major revision and comments are welcome. Visit the QA home page.

W3C is pleased to announce the rechartering of the HTML Working Group through August 2004. The group seeks to fulfill the promise of XML for applying XHTML to a wide variety of platforms. It supports rich Web content, combining XHTML with W3C work in areas such as math, scalable vector graphics, synchronized multimedia, and forms. Read the group's work items in its charter and visit the HTML home page.

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) Working Group has released a Working Draft of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0. Following WCAG checkpoints makes Web content accessible to people with disabilities, and to a variety of Web-enabled devices, such as phones, handhelds, kiosks, and network appliances. Read about the Web Accessibility Initiative.

The XForms Working Group has released a Working Draft of XForms 1.0 incorporating all issues received during Last Call. Comments are welcome through 4 September. More flexible than previous HTML and XHTML form technologies, the new generation of Web forms separates purpose, presentation, and data. Visit the XForms home page.

The User Agent Accessibility Guidelines Working Group has released User Agent Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 as a Last Call Working Draft. Comments are welcome through 18 September. Written for developers of user agents, the guidelines lower barriers to Web accessibility for people with disabilities (visual, hearing, physical, cognitive, and neurological). The companion Techniques Working Draft is also updated. Read about the Web Accessibility Initiative.

The Web Services Architecture Working Group has updated Web Services Architecture Requirements. Software applications can communicate using Web services to present dynamic context-driven information to the user. The draft contains the reference architecture and the constraints used to determine implementation conformance. Comments are welcome. Read about the Web Services Activity.

The XML Query, XSL, and XML Schema Working Groups have released a number of documents through joint efforts. Please see the status section of each document for authorship and change history information. The documents are part of the XML and Style Activities.

• XSL Transformations (XSLT) Version 2.0
• XML Path Language (XPath) 2.0
• XML Query Use Cases
• XQuery 1.0: An XML Query Language
• XQuery 1.0 and XPath 2.0 Formal Semantics
• XQuery 1.0 and XPath 2.0 Data Model
• XQuery 1.0 and XPath 2.0 Functions and Operators

The HTML Working Group has released a Working Draft of Modularization of XHTML in XML Schema. The draft provides a complete set of XML Schema modules for XHTML, and allows document authors to modify and extend XHTML in a conformant way. Visit the HTML home page.

The XML Protocol Working Group has released the first Working Draft of the SOAP 1.2 Attachment Feature. This abstract SOAP 1.2 feature can be used as the basis for defining SOAP bindings that support the transmission of messages with attachments. Comments are welcome. Read more on the Web services home page.

The HTML Working Group has released an updated Working Draft of XML Events that incorporates comments received during Last Call. The specification defines a module used to associate behaviors with document-level markup for XML languages, and supports the DOM Level 2 event model. Comments are welcome. Visit the HTML home page.

The HTML and SVG Working Groups have published the second Working Draft of An XHTML + MathML + SVG Profile. The draft enables mixing XHTML, MathML and SVG in the same document using the XML namespaces mechanism while allowing validation. Comments are welcome. Read about the HTML and the Graphics Activities.

The Voice Browser Working Group has released the first Working Draft of Voice Browser Interoperation: Requirements. The draft describes requirements for how voice browsers and other call sites share user, application, and session data to coordinate user experience. Comments are welcome. Read more on the Voice Browser home page.

On Friday, 9 August, power at the MIT Laboratory for Computer Science (LCS) will be turned off at approximately 23:00 UTC for about four hours. All services will be suspended and the W3C site will be accessible in a read-only state. Mail sent to W3C archives will be queued and posted when the power is restored. Power is expected to return on Saturday, 10 August at 03:00 UTC. We apologize for the inconvenience.

W3C is pleased to announce the advancement of CSS TV Profile 1.0 to Candidate Recommendation. The document is a subset of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Level 2 and the CSS3 module: Color tailored to the needs and constraints of TV devices such as interactive television sets that display their output on a television screen. Comments are welcome through January 2003. Visit the CSS home page.

The HTML Working Group has released the first public Working Draft of XFrames. Replacing HTML frames, XFrames is an XML application for composing documents together that makes the content of framesets visible in their URIs. It addresses the usability, search and security problems associated with HTML frames. Comments are welcome. Read more on the HTML home page.

The HTML Working Group has released the first public Working Draft of XHTML 2.0. XHTML 2.0 is a relative of the Web's familiar publishing languages, HTML 4 and XHTML 1.0 and 1.1, and is not intended to be backward compatible with them. The draft contains the XHTML 2.0 markup language in modules for creating rich, portable Web-based applications. Comments are welcome. Visit the HTML home page.

The HTML Working Group has updated the W3C Note XHTML Media Types. Expressed in RFC compatible terms, the Note summarizes best current practice for serving XHTML Family documents by addressing four media types: 'text/html', 'application/xhtml+xml', and generic XML media types 'application/xml' and 'text/xml'. Read more on the HTML home page.

Paper submissions are due 13 September for SMIL Europe 2002 to be held in Paris, France on 20-22 November 2002. SMIL, pronounced "smile," enables authoring of interactive audiovisual rich media presentations. SMIL has been adopted as a basis for MMS, and for adding timing to other markup languages such as SVG. SMIL Europe is a forum for SMIL research and advanced applications. For more information, visit the conference Web site.

The XML Encryption Working Group has released two revised Candidate Recommendations, XML Encryption Syntax and Processing and its Decryption Transform. Encryption makes sensitive data confidential for storage or transmission. Please refer to the "Status of This Document" sections for summaries of changes. Comments are welcome through 13 September. Read about the W3C XML Encryption Activity.

The CSS Working Group has released four modules of Cascading Style Sheets Level 3 as Working Drafts. Fonts, Web Fonts, and Backgrounds are in Last Call with comments welcome through 30 August. Basic User Interface is a first publication, the result of merging relevant parts of CSS2 and the February Working Draft, User Interface for CSS3. Learn more on the CSS home page.

The CSS Working Group has released Cascading Style Sheets, Level 2 Revision 1 (CSS 2.1) as a Last Call Working Draft. Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a language used to render structured documents like HTML and XML on screen, on paper, and in speech. The draft brings CSS2 in line with implementations and CSS2 errata, and removes obsolete features. Comments are welcome through 30 August. Visit the CSS home page.

Registration is open through 6 September for the W3C Workshop on Device Independent Authoring Techniques to be held in St. Leon-Rot, near Heidelberg, Germany on 25-26 September 2002. Participants will discuss authoring for multiple devices, how markup languages can be used to achieve greater device independence, and possibly new markup standards. Interest statements are due 4 September. Read about the W3C Device Independence Activity.

The World Wide Web Consortium today released XHTML 1.0: The Extensible HyperText Markup Language (Second Edition) as a W3C Recommendation. XHTML 1.0 is a reformulation of HTML in XML, giving the rigor of XML to Web pages. The second edition is not a new version; it brings the XHTML 1.0 Recommendation up to date with comments from the community, ongoing work within the HTML Working Group, and the first edition errata. Read more on the HTML home page.

The Web Ontology Working Group has released three first Working Drafts. The Feature Synopsis, Abstract Syntax and Language Reference describe the OWL Web Ontology Language 1.0 and its subset OWL Lite. Automated tools can use common sets of terms called ontologies to power services such as more accurate Web search, intelligent software agents, and knowledge management. OWL is used to publish and share ontologies on the Web. Read about the W3C Semantic Web Activity.

Registration is open for the Forum on Security Standards for Web Services to be held in Boston, MA, USA, on 26 August. Co-sponsored by W3C and OASIS, the forum will explore the relationships between W3C and OASIS Web services and security specifications, and give insights on future directions. Read about W3C's work in encryption, digital signatures, key management, and Web services.

The Web Services Architecture Working Group has released the first Working Draft of Web Services Architecture Usage Scenarios. The draft is a collection of usage scenarios and use cases used for generating Web services architecture requirements and for evaluating existing technologies. Comments are welcome. Visit the Web Services Activity home page.

C. M. Sperberg-McQueen co-chairs and Liam Quin, Charles McCathieNevile, and Dan Connolly attend Extreme Markup Languages held 4-9 August in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. C. M. Sperberg-McQueen presents the closing talk, What matters?. On 14 August, Charles McCathieNevile lectures on Multimedia Accessibility - Current Work at the University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia. Browse upcoming W3C appearances and events.

The CSS Working Group has revised CSS Mobile Profile 1.0 to incorporate review suggestions, comments by implementors, and deliberations of the Working Group. The specification defines a subset of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Level 2 tailored for mobile devices such as wireless phones. Comments are welcome through January 2003. Visit the CSS home page.

The DOM Working Group has split DOM Level 3 Abstract Schemas and Load and Save into two Working Drafts, Validation and Load and Save, and a W3C Note Abstract Schemas (the Note is no longer a work in progress). The Document Object Model (DOM) allows programs and scripts to update the content and style of documents dynamically. Comments are welcome. Read about the DOM Activity.

W3C is pleased to announce the advancement of XML-Signature XPath Filter 2.0 to Candidate Recommendation. The Call for Implementations ends 8 August, and comments on implementation experience may be sent to the public comment list. The draft defines a means to digitally sign a document subset using XPath, the language for addressing parts of an XML document. Visit the XML Signature home page.

W3C has issued Exclusive XML Canonicalization as a W3C Recommendation. Produced by the joint IETF/W3C XML Signature Working Group, the specification augments the Canonical XML Recommendation to better enable a portion of an XML document to be as portable as possible while preserving the digital signature, and works with XML Signature. Read the press release and visit the XML Signature home page.

The W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) received the Roland Wagner Award at the International Conference on Computers Helping People (ICCHP) on 17 July in Linz, Austria. The award was given by the Austrian Computer Society, in recognition of WAI's international contributions to making Web technologies accessible to the broadest possible audience. Learn more about Web accessibility.

The Document Object Model (DOM) Working Group has released a Last Call Working Draft of the DOM Level 3 Events specification. Comments are welcome through 16 August. Language and platform neutral, the system allows registration of event handlers, describes event flow through a tree structure, and provides context for each event. Read about the DOM Activity.

Supported by the W3C UK and Ireland Office and IW3C2, the EuroWeb 2002 Conference will be held in Oxford, UK on 17-18 December 2002. The conference focus is "The Web and the GRID: from e-science to e-business." Research and position papers should be submitted by 27 September. For more information, please read the call for papers and consult the conference Web site.

The XML Linking Working Group has released four Working Drafts, three in Last Call. Comments are welcome through 31 July. The XPointer Framework is an extensible system for XML addressing and underlies additional schemes. The element() scheme allows basic addressing of XML elements, the xmlns() scheme is for interpreting namespace prefixes in pointers, and xpointer() scheme allows full XML addressing. Read about the XML Activity.

The Web Services Description Working Group has released the first public Working Draft of the Web Services Description Language 1.2 and bindings for use with SOAP 1.2, HTTP, and MIME. WSDL is an XML format for describing network services as a set of endpoints operating on messages containing either document-oriented or procedure-oriented information. Read the press release and visit the Web Services home page.

The Web Ontology Working Group has released an updated Working Draft of requirements for the Ontology Web Language (OWL) 1.0. Automated tools can use common sets of terms called ontologies to power services such as more accurate Web search, intelligent software agents, and knowledge management. Read about the W3C Semantic Web Activity.

W3C is pleased to announce the renewal of the Device Independence Activity through May 2004. In keeping with W3C's goals, the Device Independence Activity works to ensure seamless Web access and single Web authoring on all kinds of devices, for the benefit of Web users and content providers alike. Read the group's work items in its charter and visit the Device Independence home page.

Amaya is W3C's Web browser and authoring tool. Version 6.2 is internationalized and includes more encodings. New features include easier install on Windows; a choice of typical, compact, or custom installation; German documentation thanks to Rudolf Troeller; and CSS, SVG, STIX font, and Annotea icon enhancements. Download Amaya binaries for Solaris, Linux, and Windows. Source code is available. If you are interested in annotations, visit the Annotea home page.

W3C is pleased to announce the advancement of Media Queries to Candidate Recommendation. This module of the upcoming CSS3 specification proposes a registry of media types to describe what type of devices a style sheet applies to, and expressions to limit a style sheet's scope. Comments are invited. Visit the CSS home page.

Browse upcoming W3C appearances and events.

• 7 July - Max Froumentin presents at ISSAC 2002 Internet Accessible Mathematical Computation in Lille, France.
• 11 July - Hugo Haas presents at the IDG Web Services Conference in Aoyama, Tokyo, Japan.
• 15-16 July - Chris Lilley, Vincent Hardy, Dean Jackson, Ivan Herman, and Max Froumentin present at SVG Open / Carto.net conference in Zürich, Switzerland.
• 22 July - Tim Berners-Lee gives the opening keynote and Steve Bratt presents at the Open Group Web Services Conference in Boston, MA, USA.
• 23 July - Eric Miller gives a keynote at the American Association of Law Libraries conference in Orlando, FL, USA.
• 24 July - Liam Quin speaks at the O'Reilly Open Source Convention in San Diego, CA, USA.
• 25 July - Dean Jackson and Philipp Hoschka present at SIGGRAPH 2002 in San Antonio, TX, USA.
• 31 July - Dean Jackson presents at Open Publish 2002 in Sydney, Australia.

The XML Protocol Working Group has released four SOAP Version 1.2 Last Call Working Drafts: the Primer, Messaging Framework, Adjuncts, and Assertions and Test Collection. Comments are welcome through 19 July. Also published are updates to SOAP Version 1.2 Usage Scenarios and XML Protocol (XMLP) Requirements. Publicly developed, SOAP Version 1.2 is a data transfer protocol designed for information exchange on the Web, using XML as its encapsulation language. Read about the Web Services Activity.

The W3C Advisory Committee has filled six open seats on the W3C Advisory Board. Created in 1998, the Advisory Board provides guidance to the Team on issues of strategy, management, legal matters, process, and conflict resolution. Beginning 1 July, the nine Advisory Board participants are Ann Bassetti (Boeing), Jim Bell (Hewlett-Packard), Carl Cargill (Sun Microsystems), Don Deutsch (Oracle), Steve Holbrook (IBM), Renato Iannella (IPR Systems), Ken Laskey (SAIC), Ora Lassila (Nokia), and Lauren Wood (Unaffiliated). Steve Zilles is the interim Advisory Board Chair. Read more about the Advisory Board in the W3C Process Document.

W3C is pleased to announce the advancement of Speech Recognition Grammar to Candidate Recommendation. Speech grammars allow voice-based application authors to create rules describing what users are expected to say after listening to each application prompt. Read the press release and testimonials, and visit the Voice Browser home page.

The joint IETF/W3C XML Signature Working Group has released a Last Call Working Draft of XML-Signature XPath Filter 2.0. Comments are welcome through 11 July. The draft defines a means to digitally sign a document subset using XPath, the language for addressing parts of an XML document. Visit the XML Signature home page.

Registration is open for the MathML International Conference 2002 to be held in Chicago, IL, USA, on 28-30 June 2002. W3C is happy to co-sponsor this conference, whose aim is to bring together people involved in defining the future of mathematics and scientific content on the Web. Read about Math at W3C.

W3C is pleased to co-sponsor the Web Services Conference to be held 11 July 2002 (Technology day) and 12 July (Business day) at Aoyama TEPIA in Tokyo, Japan. On 11 July, Hugo Haas, W3C Web Services Activity Lead, gives the keynote speech, and Kazuhiro Kitagawa, W3C Device Independence Activity Lead, moderates a panel discussion. Registration is open. Read about Web services.

W3C is pleased to release the XML 1.0 (Second Edition) Conformance Test Suite, built in cooperation with NIST and formerly hosted by OASIS. The suite contains over 2000 test files that any developer can download free of cost and use to test the conformance of an XML processor to the XML Recommendation. Read the press release.

Libwww version 5.4.0 has been released for download on the Web and by FTP. Libwww is a free, highly modular client side Web API written in C for Unix and Windows. The new version features support for WebDAV protocols, RDF parser bug fixes, and updated auto-tool files scripts. Thanks to Manuele Kirsch Pinheiro, Richard Atterer, and many others for their contributions. To carry on this work, a project coordinator, a documentation maintainer, and other volunteers are needed. Please write to the www-lib@w3.org mailing list.

W3C is pleased to announce the advancement of the Document Object Model (DOM) Level 2 HTML Specification to Candidate Recommendation. Comments are welcome through 1 July. The sixth component of DOM Level 2, DOM2 HTML is a set of interfaces used to manipulate the structure and contents of HTML and XHTML documents. Read more about the DOM Activity.

The Web Services Description Working Group has released the first public Working Draft of Web Service Description Usage Scenarios. The document is part of W3C development of a language used to describe interfaces to Web services and how to interact with them. Comments are welcome. Read about the Web Services Activity.

On Friday, 31 May, power at the MIT Laboratory for Computer Science (LCS) will be turned off at approximately 8:00 p.m. Eastern (0:00Z 1 June) to complete retooling of the building's power configuration. All services will be suspended and the site will be accessible in a read-only state. Mail sent to W3C archives will be queued, and posted when the power is restored. Power is expected to return by 5:00 p.m. Saturday, 1 June (21:00Z). We apologize for the inconvenience.

Vincent Quint presents Documents structurés sur le Web (in French) at IDT/net 2002 in Paris, France. On 5 June, Tatsuya Hagino presents W3C Technology on Metadata (PDF in Japanese) at the JAGAT seminar in Tokyo, Japan. On 15 June, Karl Dubost presents Les standards Web? Ah non, jamais! in Montréal, Quebec, Canada. On 18 June, Judy Brewer and Wendy Chisholm present a 1/2 day tutorial, Web Accessibility: Technology and Policy for an Inclusive Future, at INET 2002 in Arlington, VA, near Washington, D.C., USA. On 20 June, Daniel J. Weitzner participates in the Panel on Private Governance: Perils and Prospects for Self-Regulation (G-2), also at INET 2002. On 30 June, Vincent Quint and Irène Vatton present MathML in e-Learning with Amaya at the MathML Conference 2002 in Chicago, IL, USA. Browse W3C appearances and events.

W3C is pleased to announce the advancement of Exclusive XML Canonicalization Version 1.0 to Proposed Recommendation. Produced by the joint IETF/W3C XML Signature Working Group on digital signatures, the specification provides a method to exclude ancestor context from a canonicalized subset of an XML document. Read about XML Signature.

Joseph Reagle, W3C Policy Analyst, has been chosen as one of Technology Review's "2002 TR100," a group of one hundred young innovators in technology from around the world. The magazine has recognized Joseph's contributions to developing open Web technologies related to privacy, security, and digital signatures. Join us in congratulating Joseph for his achievement. Read about W3C work on Privacy, XML Signature, XML Encryption, and XML Key Management.

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is holding a series of public one-day events across Europe from 21 May to 3 June, in Paris, Vienna, Dublin, and Brussels. The W3C Interop Tour promotes W3C technologies, and demonstrates their interoperability on the World Wide Web. The tour also marks the start of three new regional W3C Offices, expanding the impact of W3C in Europe. Read the press release.

The Quality Assurance (QA) Working Group has released four Working Drafts.

• QA Framework: Introduction
• QA Framework: Operational Guidelines
• QA Framework: Specification Guidelines
• QA Framework: Operational Examples & Techniques

The W3C QA Activity's goals include planning and process; better, more testable specifications; coordination with internal and external groups; and building and acquiring conformance test materials. Comments are welcome. Visit the QA home page.

The CSS Working Group has released four Working Drafts.

• CSS3 module: line
• CSS TV Profile 1.0 - Last Call comments welcome through 14 June
• CSS3 module: text
• Syntax of CSS rules in HTML's "style" attribute

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a language used to render structured documents like HTML and XML on screen, on paper, and in speech. Read about CSS level 3 and visit the CSS home page.

The W3C Team presented over 25 talks at the Eleventh International World Wide Web Conference (WWW2002) in Honolulu, Hawaii, USA, during May. Slides are available for the W3C Track chaired by Marie-Claire Forgue and the keynote speech given by Tim Berners-Lee. Read about the Team and W3C presentations.

The deadline for early registration for the MathML International Conference 2002 has been extended from 17 May to 24 May. W3C is happy to be a co-sponsor of this conference, in Chicago 28-30 June, whose aim is to bring together those involved in defining the future of mathematics on the Web under the rubric "MathML and Technologies for Mathematics on the Web". Read more about Math at W3C.

As W3C increases its presence worldwide through its Office program, some of the Offices have been transformed into regional Offices. This means that they are not bound to national borders any more and that they act as regional outreach centers for countries that share common culture, history, or language. As a first step, the former W3C German Office is now the W3C Office in Germany and Austria, the former W3C UK Office is now the W3C Office in the UK and Ireland, and the former W3C Dutch Office is now the W3C Office in the Benelux (i.e., Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg). Read more about the W3C Offices Program.

W3C is pleased to announce the advancement of Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) 1.1 and Mobile SVG to Candidate Recommendations. SVG 1.1 separates the SVG language into reusable building blocks. Mobile SVG re-combines them into two profiles optimized for cellphones and pocket computers. SVG delivers accessible, dynamic, reusable vector graphics, text, and images to the Web, in XML. Read the press release and testimonials, and visit the SVG home page.

The XML Query Working Group, XML Schema Working Group, and XSL Working Group have released a number of documents through joint efforts (see the status section of each document for authorship information):

• XSL Transformations (XSLT) Version 2.0
• XML Path Language (XPath) 2.0
• XML Query Use Cases
• XQuery 1.0: An XML Query Language
• XQuery 1.0 and XPath 2.0 Data Model
• XQuery 1.0 and XPath 2.0 Functions and Operators

XPath is a language for addressing parts of an XML document, XQuery is an query language for XML, and XSLT is a language for describing XML transformations. Read about how they work together as part of the XML Activity.

The RDF Core Working Group has released a Working Draft of "RDF Vocabulary Description Language 1.0: RDF Schema", which describes how to use RDF to describe RDF vocabularies. This specification also defines a basic vocabulary for this purpose, as well as conventions that can be used by Semantic Web applications to support more sophisticated RDF vocabulary description. Read about the Semantic Web Activity.

The HTML Working Group and the SVG Working Group have worked together to publish the first Working Draft of "An XHTML + MathML + SVG Profile." An XHTML+MathML+SVG profile is a profile that combines XHTML 1.1, MathML 2.0, and SVG 1.1 together. This profile enables mixing XHTML, MathML and SVG in the same document using XML namespaces mechanism, while allowing validation of such a mixed-namespace document. Read about the HTML Activity and the Graphics Activity.

The Internationalization Working Group has released a Last Call Working Draft of Character Model for the World Wide Web 1.0. Comments are welcome through 31 May. This Architectural Specification provides authors of specifications, software developers, and content developers with a common reference for interoperable text manipulation on the World Wide Web. Read about the Internationalization Activity.

Amaya is W3C's Web browser and authoring tool. Version 6.1 is a bug fix release adding support for more international documents and encodings and new MIME types; enhanced SVG, MathML, annotation, and CSS support; and other new features. Download Amaya binaries for Solaris, Linux, and Windows. Source code is available. If you are interested in annotations, visit the Annotea home page.

The Web Services Architecture Working Group has released the first Working Draft of Web Services Architecture Requirements, the reference architecture and the constraints used to determine implementation conformance. The Web Services Description Working Group has released the first Working Draft of Web Service Description Requirements, the definitions and requirements for application to application communication. Comments are welcome. Read about the Web Services Activity.

The RDF Core Working Group has released updated Working Drafts of the RDF Primer, RDF Test Cases, and RDF Model Theory. The Resource Description Framework (RDF) is a general-purpose language for representing information in the Web. The primer provides the fundamentals required to use RDF in applications. The test cases described correspond to technical issues the Working Group is addressing. The model theory Working Draft specifies model-theoretic semantics for RDF and RDFS, and some basic results on entailment. Read about the Semantic Web Activity.

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) Working Group has released a Working Draft of Requirements for WCAG 2.0. Written for page authors, site developers, and developers of authoring tools, WCAG checkpoints explain how to make Web content accessible to people with disabilities and to all users. Feedback is welcomed. Read about the Web Accessibility Initiative.

The joint IETF/W3C XML Signature Working Group has released a Working Draft of XML-Signature XPath Filter 2.0. The draft defines a means to digitally sign a document subset using XPath, the language for addressing parts of an XML document. Comments are welcome. Visit the XML Signature home page.

The XML Core Working Group has released a Last Call Working Draft of XML 1.1. Comments are welcome through 28 June. Built from XML Blueberry Requirements, the draft addresses Unicode and line ending issues. Everything that is not forbidden is permitted in XML 1.1 names. Read about the XML Activity.

Amaya is W3C's Web browser and authoring tool. New features in version 6.0 include support for more international documents and encodings and new MIME types, and enhanced SVG, MathML, annotation, and CSS support. Download Amaya binaries for Solaris, Linux, and Windows. Source code is available. If you are interested in annotations, visit the Annotea home page.

The Voice Browser Working Group has released a Last Call Working Draft of the Voice Extensible Markup Language (VoiceXML) Version 2.0. Comments are welcome through 24 May. VoiceXML uses XML to bring synthesized speech, spoken and touch-tone input, digitized audio, recording, telephony, and computer-human conversations to the Web. Visit the Voice Browser home page.

The SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) Working Group has released an updated Working Draft of SVG 1.1/1.2/2.0 Requirements for future versions of the SVG language. SVG delivers accessible, dynamic, and reusable vector graphics, text, and images to the Web in XML. Comments are welcome. Read more on the SVG home page.

W3C is pleased to announce the opening of the W3C Hungarian Office in Budapest, Hungary. The Office is hosted by the Department of Distributed Systems of MTA SZTAKI (Computer and Automation Research Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences). László Kovács is the Office Manager, and the coordinator is Éva Megyaszai. Learn more about W3C Offices.

The CSS Working Group has released a Last Call Working Draft of CSS3 module: Color. Comments are welcome through 17 May. The draft describes properties that authors can use to specify foreground color and opacity, ICC color profiles, and rendering intent of image content. Visit the CSS home page.

W3C is pleased to announce the launch of the W3C Korean Office (in Korean) based at the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI) in Daejeon, Korea. Dr. Steven R. Bratt, W3C COO, Dr. Seungtaik Yang of the Korean Ministry of Information and Communication, and Dr. Gilrok Oh, President of ETRI, are among those attending today's opening ceremonies. Read the press release and more about W3C Offices.

The W3C Note Describing and retrieving photos using RDF and HTTP has been updated. As seen in the demo, the authors' system includes RDF schemas, search methods, data-entry software, and a way to serve photos and metadata over HTTP.

The World Wide Web Consortium today released The Platform for Privacy Preferences 1.0 (P3P 1.0) as a W3C Recommendation. The specification has been reviewed by the W3C Membership, who favor its adoption by industry. P3P allows people to define and publish their Web site privacy policies, and helps automate how those policies are read. P3P also gives users control over the use of their personal information on Web sites they visit, thus promoting trust and confidence in the Web. Read the press release and testimonials.

The P3P Specification Working Group has released A P3P Preference Exchange Language (APPEL) 1.0 as a Working Draft and companion to the P3P specification. The APPEL language describes collections of privacy policy preferences between P3P user agents. Read the answers to frequently asked questions about P3P and more on the W3C Privacy Activity.

The DOM Working Group has released two DOM Level 3 Working Drafts, the Core Specification and the Abstract Schemas and Load and Save Specification. The Document Object Model (DOM) allows programs and scripts to update the content and style of documents dynamically. Comments are invited. Read about the DOM Activity.

Jigsaw version 2.2.1 is available for download. The new version includes a security fix for URI parsing, a new JigShell utility, XHTML/HTML validation on PUT, JigEdit support for WebDAV, Apache mod_asis, and PushCache contributed by Paul Henshaw. The release notes list all new features and bug fixes. Jigsaw is W3C's leading-edge Web server platform implemented in Java. Learn more about the Jigsaw Activity.

The Voice Browser Working Group has released a Working Draft of the Speech Synthesis Markup Language Specification. With this XML-based language, content authors can generate synthetic speech on the Web, controlling pronunciation, volume, pitch, and rate. Read about the Voice Browser Activity.

The XML Core Working Group has released Working Drafts of Namespaces in XML 1.1 and Namespaces in XML 1.1 Requirements. Version 1.1 will incorporate errata in version 1.0, and provide a mechanism to undeclare prefixes. Read more about the XML Activity.

W3C is pleased to announce W3C Mailing List Search Services. Olivier Thereaux of the W3C Systems Team developed the services based on Namazu, a full text search engine. W3C maintains hundreds of mailing lists, over 170 of them public. Search documentation is available, and comments are welcome.

The conference program and registration are available for the SVG Open / Carto.net Developers Conference to be held in Zurich, Switzerland on 15-17 July 2002, with 6 additional workshops on 18 July. SVG Open is a platform for Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) developers to share ideas, examples and implementations. The event is organized by ETH Zurich, W3C and Zurich University. The deadline for early bird registration is 30 April.

Browse past W3C Team talks and presentations and upcoming W3C appearances and events.

• 6 AprilLiam Quin speaks on XML at the World Wide Web Consortium at GUADEC, the GNOME Users And Developers European Conference, in Seville, Spain.
• 8 AprilDave Raggett presents on W3C voice and multimodal work at the WAP Forum meeting in Paris, France.
• 11 AprilBert Bos presents Web Publishing with XSL, Stephane Boyera presents Device Independent Principles, and Ivan Herman presents W3C - Why and How at Cross Media Publishing in Sankt Augustin, Bonn, Germany.
• 18 AprilDaniel J. Weitzner participates in the US Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission hearing "Competition and Intellectual Property Law and Policy in the Knowledge-Based Economy" about patents and standards in Washington, DC, USA.
• 18 - 20 AprilThree W3C Team members attend Museums and the Web 2002 in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. On 18 April, Charles McCathieNevile presents The Virtual On-Ramp. On 19 April, Eric Miller and Ralph Swick present a mini-workshop, RDF - How can museums take advantage of it?. On 20 April, Eric Miller presents Weaving Meaning: the W3C's Semantic Web Initiatives.
• 19 AprilSeveral Team members speak at the W3C Korean Office Opening in Daejeon, Korea. Steve Bratt presents an Overview of W3C. Marie-Claire Forgue presents W3C Process for Issuing W3C Recommendations. Tatsuya Hagino speaks on the Semantic Web. Ivan Herman presents an Overview of XML Related Recommendations. Kazuhiro Kitagawa presents Device Independence activities of W3C.
• 22 AprilSteven Pemberton presents a tutorial Styling the New Web at the CHI 2002 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems in Minneapolis, MN, USA.
• 30 AprilCharles McCathieNevile presents A Best Practice Guide to Web Site Standards - Streamlining Accessibility at the Online Business - Law and Regulation conference in Sydney, Australia.

The DOM Working Group has released Document Object Model (DOM) Level 3 XPath as a Last Call Working Draft. The draft provides functionalities to access a DOM tree using XPath 1.0. Comments are welcome through 1 May. Read about the DOM Activity.

A Working Draft of the XQuery 1.0 Formal Semantics has been released. XQuery is a computer language designed to return information to users or their agents. It is applicable to XML data sources from documents to databases, search engines, and object repositories. XQuery is defined jointly by the XML Query Working Group, part of the XML Activity, and the XSL Working Group, part of the Style Activity.

The RDF Core Working Group has released a Working Draft of the RDF/XML Syntax Specification (Revised). With new support for XML Base, the document updates the grammar in the Resource Description Framework (RDF) Model and Syntax Specification in terms of the XML Infoset and RDF Model Theory. Read about the Semantic Web Activity.

The RDF Core Working Group has released the first public Working Draft of the RDF Primer. The Resource Description Framework (RDF) is a general-purpose language for representing information in the Web. This primer provides the fundamentals required to use RDF in applications. Read about the Semantic Web Activity.

The W3C Track has been announced for the Eleventh International World Wide Web Conference (WWW2002) in Honolulu, Hawaii, USA. W3C will present three days on 8-10 May: W3C's Achievements and Expectations, Web Services, the Semantic Web, XML, Document Formats, Cool Web, Universal Access, Device Independence, Amaya, and a Town Meeting. Please visit the W3C Track page for details on presentations. Conference registration is open.

The XKMS Working Group has published three first Working Drafts. The XML Key Management Specification (XKMS 2.0) specifies protocols for distributing and registering public keys for use with XML Signature and XML Encryption. XML Key Management (2.0) Requirements, in Last Call through 15 April, specifies design principles and scope. X-BULK allows bulk registration necessary for systems such as smart card management. Comments are welcome. Visit the XKMS home page.

W3C held its second annual Technical Plenary and Working Group Meeting on 25 February - 1 March in Cannes Mandelieu, France. More than 20 W3C Working Groups and Interest Groups held face-to-face meetings. Mid-week, over 200 participants attended the all day public plenary. Minutes have been published. If your organization would like to join W3C, please refer to the Membership page.

W3C's Semantic Web Advanced Development initiative announces the release of IsaViz, a visual environment for browsing and authoring RDF models represented as graphs. IsaViz has a 2.5D user interface allowing smooth zooming and navigation. IsaViz supports RDF/XML and N-Triple import and export, and SVG and PNG export. Developed by Emmanuel Pietriga of W3C and Xerox Research Centre Europe, IsaViz is based on the Xerox Visual Transformation Machine, Hewlett-Packard's Jena, Graphviz from AT&T Research, and Apache's Xerces. Learn more about IsaViz.

Workshop materials are available for the W3C Workshop on Delivery Context held at W3C/INRIA in Sophia-Antipolis, France, on 4-5 March. Participants exchanged ideas and developed a roadmap for the W3C Device Independence Activity work on delivery context, a term used to describe user preferences and the capabilities of user Web access mechanisms.

The Web Ontology Working Group has released a Working Draft of requirements for the Ontology Web Language (OWL) 1.0. Automated tools can use common sets of terms called ontologies to power services such as more accurate Web search, intelligent software agents, and knowledge management. Read about the W3C Semantic Web Activity.

W3C is pleased to announce the opening of the W3C Korean Office (in Korean). The Office is hosted by the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI) in Daejeon, Korea. W3C Offices assist with promotion efforts in local languages, broaden W3C's geographical base, and encourage international participation in W3C Activities.

W3C is pleased to announce the advancement of XML Encryption Syntax and Processing and Decryption Transform to Candidate Recommendations. A companion document, XML Encryption Requirements has been released as a W3C Note. Encryption makes sensitive data confidential for storage or transmission. Comments are welcome through 25 April. Read about the W3C XML Encryption Activity.

Browse past W3C Team talks and presentations and upcoming W3C appearances and events.

• 5-6 MarchIan Jacobs speaks on W3C Technologies and Accessibility at the University of Venezia in Venice and the University of Bologna Dept. of Internet Economics in Forlì, Italy.
• 7 MarchHugo Haas speaks on Web services at W3C at the OMG workshop Web Services From Technology to Reality in San Jose, California, USA.
• 13 MarchVincent Hardy, W3C Fellow from Sun Microsystems, speaks on SVG in Web Services at XML & Web Services 2002 in London, UK.
• 14 MarchDaniel Dardailler, Vincent Quint, Philipp Hoschka, and Marie-Claire Forgue attend an Aristote seminar on Travaux du W3C in Paris, France. Their talks are broadcast live on the Renater network via IP multicast. Philipp's talk is titled Point sur les besoins des nouveaux terminaux sur le Web.
• 20 MarchWendy Chisholm presents Learn To Use Tools And Processes To Evaluate Web Content For Accessibility at CSUN's Technology and Persons With Disabilities conference held at California State University, Northridge, CA, USA.
• 20-21 MarchW3C has a booth at Documation 2002 at Paris La Défense, France.
• 27 MarchVincent Hardy speaks on SVG Graphics on the Java Platform and Scalable Vector Graphics and the Batik Project at JavaOne 2002 held in San Francisco, CA, USA.
• 27 MarchPhilipp Hoschka speaks on Applications vocales de XML at Net 2002 in Paris, France.
• 28 MarchIvan Herman presents a tutorial 2D Web Graphics: SVG in Amsterdam, the Netherlands at a Masterclass organized by the W3C Dutch Office and the Dutch chapter of ISOC.

Responding to comments from the public, W3C Members, the W3C Advisory Committee, and the Open Source/Free Software community, the Patent Policy Working Group has released a Royalty-Free Patent Policy interim Working Draft. Its goal is to produce W3C Recommendations that can be implemented on a Royalty-Free (RF) basis. Comments are welcome. Read more in the press release and backgrounder.

The Voice Browser Working Group has published the first public Working Draft of Voice Browser Call Control: CCXML Version 1.0. CCXML, the Call Control eXtensible Markup Language, provides telephony call control support for VoiceXML and other dialog systems. Comments are welcome. Visit the Voice Browser home page.

W3C is pleased to announce the advancement of XML Inclusions (XInclude) Version 1.0 to Candidate Recommendation. Produced by the XML Core Working Group, XInclude introduces a generic mechanism for merging XML documents using elements, attributes, and URI references. Comments are invited through 30 April. Read about the XML Activity.

The CSS Working Group has released the first public Working Draft of CSS3 module: Lists. This module of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Level 3 describes how lists are rendered and offers enhanced list marker styling. Comments are welcome. Visit the CSS home page.

The W3C Internationalization Working Group has released an interim Working Draft of the Character Model for the World Wide Web 1.0 recording their progress. This document provides authors of specifications, software developers, and content developers a common reference for interoperable text manipulation. Please hold comments until the second Last Call. Read about W3C work on internationalization.

The CSS Working Group has released three Working Drafts: Backgrounds, Cascading and Inheritance, and Color. Each is a module of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Level 3, a language used to render structured documents like HTML and XML on screen, on paper, and in speech. Comments are welcome. Visit the CSS home page.

An update to Unicode in XML and other Markup Languages has been released as a Unicode Technical Report and a W3C Note. These guidelines cover the use of Unicode with markup languages such as XML, and are published jointly by the Unicode Technical Committee and the W3C Internationalization Working Group and Interest Group. Read about the W3C Internationalization Activity.

The SVG Working Group has released two Last Call Working Drafts. Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) Version 1.1 is a modularization of the SVG language used to build profiles. Mobile SVG Profiles: SVG Tiny and SVG Basic defines SVG Tiny for highly restricted mobile devices, and SVG Basic for higher level mobile devices. SVG delivers accessible, dynamic, and reusable vector graphics, text, and images to the Web in XML. Comments are welcome through 15 March. Visit the SVG home page.

The World Wide Web Consortium today released XML-Signature Syntax and Processing as a W3C Recommendation. Produced by the joint IETF/W3C XML Signature Working Group, XML digital signatures provide integrity, message authentication, and signer authentication services. Read the press release and testimonials.

W3C is pleased to announce the advancement of Exclusive XML Canonicalization to Candidate Recommendation. Produced by the joint IETF/W3C XML Signature Working Group, the specification provides a method to exclude ancestor context from the canonicalized form of a subset of an XML document. Comments are welcome through 16 April. Read the interoperability report and more about the XML Digital Signature Activity.

The RDF Core Working Group has released an updated Working Draft of RDF Model Theory. The document provides a precise semantic theory for RDF and RDFS, and sharpens the notions of consequence and inference in RDF. Learn more on the RDF home page, and read about the W3C Semantic Web Activity.

The DOM Test Suite Group has released the first version of the DOM Conformance Test Suite for Level 1 Core. Launched by W3C and NIST, the USA National Institute of Standards and Technology, this work is a publicly developed and open framework to test Document Object Model (DOM) Level 1 Core implementations. Comments are welcome.

W3C is pleased to announce the creation of the Multimodal Interaction Activity. By developing markup specifications for synchronization across multiple modalities and devices, the new Activity is extending the Web user interface. Read more on the Multimodal Interaction Activity home page.

W3C is pleased to be co-sponsoring the second international MathML conference, "MathML and Technologies for Mathematics on the Web," scheduled for 28-30 June 2002, near Chicago, IL, USA. The deadline for submitting abstract and panel proposals is 18 February. Poster abstracts and demo proposals are due 15 March. MathML 2.0 became a W3C Recommendation one year ago. Visit the MathML Conference 2002 Web site.

The Platform for Privacy Preferences 1.0 Deployment Guide has been updated. Written for content owners and Webmasters, the guide explains how to write a machine-readable privacy policy, and gives step-by-step instructions for deploying your privacy policy on popular Web servers. Read the answers to frequently asked questions about P3P and more about the W3C Privacy Activity.

The Document Object Model (DOM) Working Group has released two updated Working Drafts. DOM Level 3 XPath provides functionalities to access a DOM tree using XPath 1.0. DOM Level 3 Events is an interface that allows programs and scripts to dynamically update the content, structure, and style of documents. Comments are welcome. Read about the W3C DOM Activity.

The QA Working Group has released the first public Working Draft of the QA Framework: Introduction. This draft introduces the goals and structure of the overall W3C Quality Assurance (QA) framework and includes a first version of the Process & Operational Guidelines for promoting and facilitating the quality practices of W3C Working Groups. Comments are welcome. Visit the QA Working Group home page.

Representing the W3C Team at PAGE2002 in Tokyo, Japan: on 7 February, Norio Touyama gives an Introduction to W3C Activities and Max Froumentin speaks on Web-based publishing using XSL, and on 8 February Martin J. Dürst speaks on Metadata and the Semantic Web (in Japanese). Charles McCathieNevile gives a series of talks in Finland including a two-day workshop at Mlab/UIAH in Helsinki on 5-6 February. On 12-14 February, Thierry Michel and Vincent Hardy give SVG and SMIL demos at the W3C booth at IMAGINA.02 held at the Grimaldi Forum, Monaco. On 25 February, Ivan Herman presents a tutorial 2D Web Graphics: SVG at the Web3D 2002 Symposium in Tempe, Arizona, USA.

The SYMM Working Group has published XHTML+SMIL Profile as a W3C Note integrating a subset of the SMIL 2.0 specification with XHTML. The profile includes modules for animation, content control, media objects, timing and synchronization, time manipulations, and transition effects. Read about the W3C Synchronized Multimedia Activity.

W3C is pleased to announce the advancement of the The Platform for Privacy Preferences 1.0 (P3P1.0) Specification to Proposed Recommendation. P3P is a simple automated way for users to gain control over the use of their personal information on Web sites they visit. Comments are welcome through 25 February. Read the answers to frequently asked questions about P3P and more about the W3C Privacy Activity.

The P3P Specification Working Group has published An RDF Schema for P3P as a W3C Note. Based on The Platform for Privacy Preferences 1.0 (P3P1.0) Specification Last Call Working Draft, the Note represents one possible RDF schema for P3P. P3P simplifies and automates the process of reading Web site privacy policies, promoting trust and confidence in the Web. Comments are welcome. Read about the W3C Privacy Activity.

W3C is pleased to announce the creation of the Web Services Activity. Initially composed of three Working Groups and a Coordination Group and folding in the former W3C XML Protocol Activity, the new Activity will develop a set of interfaces for application to application communication on the Web. Chartered to build three Recommendations, Web services work is conducted publicly. Read more in the Web Services Activity statement.

The World Wide Web Consortium has published Current Patent Practice as a W3C Note. Reviewed by the Advisory Board, the Note represents the current state of W3C patent practice as implemented by the Team for W3C Recommendations. It serves as a guide for W3C Activities between now and when the policy developed by the Patent Policy Working Group is finalized. Comments are welcome on the publicly archived mailing list www-patentpolicy-comment@w3.org.

The CSS Working Group has released a Last Call Working Draft of Media queries. The draft proposes a registry of media types to describe what type of devices a style sheet applies to, and provides for expressions to limit a style sheet's scope. Comments are invited. Visit the CSS home page.

The XForms Working Group has released a Last Call Working Draft of XForms 1.0. More flexible than previous HTML and XHTML form technologies, the new generation of Web forms separates purpose, presentation, and data. Comments are welcome through 22 February. Visit the XForms home page.

The CSS Working Group is pleased to announce the first release of the CSS Selectors Test Suite written by Daniel Glazman (Netscape/AOL), Ian Hickson, and Tantek Çelik (Microsoft) for Selectors and the Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) language Levels 2 and 3. Ian Hickson developed variants for all kinds of XML and HTML in a format invented by Tantek Çelik. The original CSS1 Test Suite has been converted to the new format. object elements allow the same tests to be used in different test suites. The Working Group welcomes comments. Visit the CSS home page.

The DOM Working Group has released two updated DOM Level 3 Working Drafts, the Core Specification and the Abstract Schemas and Load and Save Specification. The Document Object Model (DOM) allows programs and scripts to update the content and style of documents dynamically. Comments are invited. Read about the W3C DOM Activity.

W3C Team members will attend the Twentieth International Unicode Conference in Washington, DC, USA. On 29 January, Martin J. Dürst and François Yergeau give a tutorial titled Weaving the Multilingual Web: Standards and their Implementations. On 30 January, Vincent Quint presents Amaya: Towards an Internationalized Web Authoring Tool and Chris Lilley presents SVG: Vector Graphics meets Unicode. On 31 January, Martin Dürst gives a tutorial titled UTF-8: Properties and Usage.

Dr. Jean-François Abramatic steps down as W3C Chairman. From 1996 to 2001, Jean-François led the Consortium with wisdom and insight. Many thanks and best wishes to Jean-François! Please join W3C in welcoming Dr. Steven R. Bratt, W3C's new Chief Operating Officer. Steve will oversee worldwide operations, the W3C Process, the Team, strategic plans, budget, legal matters, and major events. See a photo of our new COO and visit People of the W3C.

The SVG Working Group has updated two Working Drafts. Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) Version 1.1 is a modularization of the SVG language used to build profiles. Mobile SVG Profiles: SVG Tiny and SVG Basic defines SVG Tiny for highly restricted mobile devices, and SVG Basic for higher level mobile devices. SVG delivers accessible, dynamic, and reusable vector graphics, text, and images to the Web in XML. Comments are welcome. Read more on the SVG home page.

Philippe Le Hégaret presents A Short History of the Web at the Faculty of Science, University of Nice, France on 8 January. On 10 January, Daniel Dardailler presents an Update on W3C Technologies and Vincent Quint speaks at Autrans 2002 (in French) "Internet au défi des usages" in Autrans (Vercors), France. On 14 January, Philippe Le Hégaret gives a talk on DOM Level 3 at ILOG in Sophia-Antipolis, France. On 22 January, Daniel Dardailler presents Tools and standards: Evolution and perspectives at the Benchmark Forum (in French) "Gestion de contenu Internet-Intranet" in Paris, France. On 23 January, Tim Berners-Lee gives a talk titled Semantic Web: Toward Machine Processable Data on the Web at the Cambridge-MIT Institute Distinguished Lecture Series "Innovation at the Boundaries" in Cambridge, MA, USA. On January 25, Ivan Herman gives a W3C Overview to employees of ETRI in Daejeon, Korea. On January 28, Ivan Herman presents A Tour Around W3C XML Recommendations at IDA in Singapore.

Registration is open through 11 February for the W3C Workshop on Delivery Context to be held at W3C/INRIA in Sophia-Antipolis, France, on 4-5 March 2002. Participants will exchange ideas and develop a roadmap for the W3C Device Independence Activity work on delivery context, a term used to describe user preferences and the capabilities of their Web access mechanism. Position papers must be submitted by 11 February.