In accordance with the W3C Patent Policy, W3C has launched a Patent Advisory Group (PAG) in response to disclosures related to the Remote Events for XML (REX) specification; see the PAG charter. The SVG Working Group and Web API Working Group jointly develop this specification. W3C launches a PAG to resolve issues in the event a patent has been disclosed that may be essential, but is not available under the W3C Royalty-Free licensing requirements. Public comments regarding these disclosures may be sent to public-rex-pag@w3.org (public archive). Learn more about Patent Advisory Groups.

The Web Services Policy Working Group has published two Web Services Policy 1.5 - Working Drafts: an update to the Primer and a First Public Working Draft of Guidelines for Policy Assertion Authors. The new Guidelines document provides guidance for assertion authors that will work with the Web Services Policy 1.5 Framework and Attachment specifications to create domain specific assertions. Web Services Policy Framework defines a base set of constructs that can be used and extended by other Web services specifications to describe a broad range of service requirements and capabilities. Visit the Web Services Policy Working Group home page.

Today the World Web Consortium released the Authorized Catalan Translation of Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 1.0. This is the first document published following the Policy for W3C Authorized Translations. The Lead Translation Organization for this Authorized Translation was the Facultat de Biblioteconomia i Documentació - Universitat de Barcelona. Visit the Web Accessibility Initiative home page. Learn more about W3C Translations.

The XML Core Working Group has published a Proposed Edited Recommendation for XML Base (Second Edition). XML Base describes a facility, similar to that of HTML BASE, for defining base URIs for parts of XML documents. Comments are welcome through 31 January 2007. Visit the XML Core home page.

The XML Core Working Group has published a Last Call Working Draft of Canonical XML 1.1, describes a method for generating a physical representation, the canonical form, of an XML document that accounts for permissible syntactic changes permitted by XML 1.0. Comments are welcome through 30 April 2007. Visit the XML Core home page.

The WAI Evaluation and Repair Tools Working Group (ERT WG) has released the First Public Working Draft of HTTP Vocabulary in RDF, which describes a representation of HTTP vocabulary in RDF. The terms defined by the document allow HTTP headers that have been exchanged between a client and a server to be recorded in RDF format. Visit the WAI ERT home page.

The Synchronized Multimedia (SYMM) Working Group has released the First Public Working Draft of Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language (SMIL 3.0). This the third version of the Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language (SMIL, pronounced "smile"), an XML-based language that allows authors to write interactive multimedia presentations. This version will extend the functionality of SMIL 2.1, facilitate the reuse of SMIL syntax and semantics in other XML-based languages, and define new SMIL profiles. Read more about the Synchronized Multimedia Activity.

The Protocols and Formats Working Group has published updated Working Drafts of WAI-ARIA Roadmap, Roles, and States and Properties. The suite describes accessibility of rich Web content using interactive technologies such as AJAX and DHTML. These concepts are further introduced in the WAI-ARIA Overview. The PFWG charter has been updated to allow the group to publish Recommendation-track documents. Accordingly, WAI-ARIA Roles and States and Properties are now intended to become W3C Recommendations; the Roadmap remains a draft Working Group Note. Visit the WAI PFWG home page.

The XML Core Working Group updated the Working Group Note Known Issues with Canonical XML 1.0 (C14N/1.0), which addresses some of the issues related to inheritance of the XML attributes xml:base and xml:id and the W3C Recommendation for Canonical XML Version 1.0. Visit the XML Core home page.

The XML Core Working Group updated the Working Group Note Using XML Digital Signatures in the 2006 XML Environment, describes how to use the XML Digital Signature Recommendation in a way consistent with the present (fall 2006) XML environment. Visit the XML Core home page.

Ten years ago, on 17 December 1996, W3C published the first standard for style on the Web: Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), level 1. CSS Web designers have since enjoyed fine-grain control of page appearance (fonts, colors, layout, margins, etc.) and easier page design and maintenance. CSS can also help make pages more adaptable to more users, including users with mobile devices and some users with disabilities. To celebrate this tenth anniversary, W3C invites developers to propose their favorite CSS designs for the CSS10 Gallery. Learn more about CSS from the CSS10 pages, the press release, and the CSS home page.

The XML Protocol Working Group has published four Proposed Edited Recommendations of SOAP 1.2, all Second Editions: Part 0: Primer, Part 1: Messaging Framework, Part 2: Adjuncts, and Specification Assertions and Test Collection. SOAP Version 1.2 provides the definition of the XML-based information that can be used for exchanging structured and typed information between peers in a decentralized, distributed environment. Comments are welcome through 2 February 2007. Visit the XML Protocol home page.

The XML Protocol Working Group has released the First Public Working Draft of SOAP 1.2 Part 3: One-Way MEP. Where SOAP Version 1.2 Part 2 provides a request-response Message Exchange Pattern (MEP) and a response-only MEP, the new Part 3 Working Draft provides a one-way MEP. Visit the XML Protocol home page.

The Voice Browser Working Group has released the First Public Working Draft of Speech Synthesis Markup Language Version 1.1 Requirements, which proposes a prioritized list of requirements for extending SSML 1.0 to accommodate a wider range of Asian, Eastern European, and Middle Eastern languages. This document follows discussions pursuant to W3C Workshops (first, second) on extending SSML; see the August 2006 press release and visit the Voice home page.

The Mobile Web Best Practices Working Group has released the second Working Draft of W3C mobileOK Basic Tests 1.0. This document defines the tests that provide the basis for making a claim to be W3C mobileOK Basic compliant and are based upon W3C's Mobile Web Best Practices. Read about the Mobile Web Best Practices Working Group.

A W3C Privacy Workshop Report recommending next steps for keeping privacy promises when exchanging sensitive information on the Web is now available. In October 2006, privacy and access control experts from America, Australia, Asia and Europe met to study Web privacy issues and solutions. Please read the press release about the results of the W3C Workshop on Languages for Privacy Policy Negotiation and Semantics-Driven Enforcement, hosted by the Joint Research Center of the European Commission.

The XForms Working Group has updated XForms 1.1, a foundation for the next generation of forms for the Web. XForms 1.1 adds to version 1.0: several new submission capabilities, action handlers, utility functions, user interface improvements, and helpful datatypes as well as a more powerful action processing facility, including conditional, iterated and background execution, the ability to manipulate data arbitrarily and to access event context information. Visit the XForms home page.

The Multimodal Interaction Working Group has released the third Working Draft of Multimodal Architecture and Interfaces. In multimodal interaction users choose the way or "mode" of access that suits their current needs. With this framework, developers can provide user interfaces allowing multiple ways to interact with the Web and output for each mode, including displays, tactile mechanisms, speech and audio.

The Device Independence Working Group released the First Public Working Draft of Composite Capability/Preference Profiles (CC/PP): Structure and Vocabularies 2.0. A CC/PP profile describes a device's capabilities and user preferences and is used to guide content adaptation. Version 2.0 is an update to the CC/PP 1.0 Recommendation for alignment with the Resource Description Framework (RDF). Visit the device independence home page.

The CSS Working Group released a Working Draft of CSS Mobile Profile 2.0. This subset of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) 2.1 is a baseline for implementations of CSS on constrained devices like mobile phones, written to ensure interoperability and for alignment with OMA's Wireless CSS Specification 1.1. Visit the CSS home page.

The Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines Working Group has released an updated Working Draft of Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 and requests comments prior to a second Last Call. ATAG helps developers design tools that are accessible to users, and that produce accessible Web content. The result is that more people, including those with disabilities, can create Web content that is accessible for more users including people with disabilities. Find out more from the Web Accessibility Initiative home page.

The Workshop on the Mobile Web in Developing Countries is underway 5-6 December in Bangalore, India. Jataayu Software hosts. Participants are discussing mobile Web access within developing countries in terms of needs, blocking factors and potential uses. "We must ensure that the Web is designed to meet the needs of sparser populations and of those whose only access to the Web may be on their phone," said Tim Berners-Lee (W3C). Read the press release, about W3C Workshops and about the Mobile Web Initiative.

Today the World Web Consortium released Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL) Version 1.1 as a W3C Recommendation. Version 1.1 adds new functionality to the XSL 1.0 Recommendation for change marks, indexes, multiple flows, and bookmarks, and extends support for graphics scaling, markers and page numbers. A change list is available. Read the press release and testimonials and about the XML Activity.

Advancing its goal to make browsing the Web from mobile devices a reality, W3C is pleased to announce the launch of two groups: The MWI Device Description Working Group is chaired by Rotan Hanrahan (MobileAware) and is rechartered to enable the development of globally accessible data and service repositories for use in content adaptation. The new MWI Test Suites Working Group is chaired by Dominique Hazaël-Massieux (W3C) and Carmelo Montanez (NIST) and is chartered to enable conformance testing for mobile Web user agents. Participation is open to W3C Members. Read about the Mobile Web Initiative.

Browse W3C presentations and events also available as an RSS channel.

• Philipp Hoschka presents at the 3G World Congress & Mobility Marketplace on 4 December in Hong Kong, China.
• Judy Brewer participates in a panel at the UN International Day of Disabled Persons on 4 December in New York, NY, USA.
• Paul Downey, Philippe Le Hégaret and Eric Prud'hommeaux present at XML 2006 on 5-6 December in Boston, MA, USA.
• Shawn Henry presents at Web Design World on 11 December in Boston, MA, USA.

The World Wide Web Consortium marks the ten year anniversary of its Asian presence with W3C10 Asia, a public celebration on 28 November in Tokyo, Japan. At the same venue on 29-30 November is the semiannual Advisory Committee Meeting where W3C Member organizations participate in two days of discussions, special sessions and lightning talks on W3C Activities. Learn how to become a W3C Member and join W3C at the next Advisory Committee Meeting on 6-8 May 2007 in the Banff/Calgary area, Alberta, Canada.

The Voice Browser Working Group has published a 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. The draft addresses minor changes based on the implementation report as well as many Last Call comments. Visit the voice browser home page.

The XML Schema Patterns for Databinding Working Group has released a Last Call Working Draft of Basic XML Schema Patterns for Databinding Version 1.0 and the First Public Working Draft of Advanced Patterns. The patterns can describe XML 1.0 representations of commonly used data structures independent of any particular programming language, database or modelling environment. The basic set is known to be interoperable between state of the art databinding implementations, while the advanced patterns are in common use but are known to cause issues. Comments on Last Call are welcome through 12 January. Read about Web services.

The Compound Document Formats Working Group has released four Last Call Working Drafts: Compound Document by Reference Framework 1.0, WICD Core 1.0, WICD Full 1.0, and WICD Mobile 1.0. Comments are welcome through 19 December. The Web Integration Compound Document (WICD, pronounced "wicked") is a device independent Compound Document profile based on XHTML, CSS and SVG. The drafts describe behavior when single documents contain multiple formats. Read more about Rich Web Clients.

W3C is pleased to announce the advancement of XML Query 1.0, XSLT 2.0, XPath 2.0 and supporting documents to Proposed Recommendations. XSLT transforms documents into different markup or formats. Important for databases, search engines and object repositories, XML Query can perform searches, queries and joins over collections of documents. Both XSLT 2 and XQuery use XPath expressions and operate on XPath Data Model instances. Today's drafts incorporate changes since Candidate Recommendation and move the xdt:* types to the XML Schema xs namespace, a change made in conjunction with the XML Schema Working Group. Comments are welcome through 31 December. Visit the XML home page.

• XSL Transformations (XSLT) Version 2.0:
  Transforms data model instances (XML and non-XML) into other documents including into XSL-FO for printing
• XQuery 1.0: An XML Query Language:
  An XML-aware syntax for querying collections of structured and semi-structured data both locally and over the Web
• XML Path Language (XPath) 2.0:
  Expression syntax for referring to parts of XML documents
• XQuery 1.0 and XPath 2.0 Functions and Operators:
  The functions you can call in XPath expressions and the operations you can perform on XPath 2.0 data types
• XQuery 1.0 and XPath 2.0 Data Model (XDM):
  Representation and access for both XML and non-XML sources
• XSLT 2.0 and XQuery 1.0 Serialization:
  How to output the results of XSLT 2.0 and XML Query evaluation in XML, HTML or as text
• XML Syntax for XQuery 1.0 (XQueryX):
  A precise representation in XML of the XML Query language, suitable for machine processing and introspection
• XQuery 1.0 and XPath 2.0 Formal Semantics:
  The type system used in XQuery and XSLT 2 via XPath defined precisely for implementers

The European W3C Symposium on eGovernment will be held on 1-2 February 2007, in Gijón, Asturias, Spain. The symposium is organized by the W3C Spanish Office and Fundación CTIC, and supported by the Principality of Asturias Government. Attendees will discuss specific government and citizens’ needs related to eGovernment services, identify aspects that put Web interoperability at risk and find how governments can deliver better and more efficient services through computer technologies. Registration is open and sponsorship opportunities are available. In order to establish better communication about Web technologies for eGovernment W3C plans a possible series of which this is the first event.

The XML Processing Model Working Group has released an updated Working Draft of XProc: An XML Pipeline Language. Used to control and organize the flow of documents, the XProc language standardizes interactions, inputs and outputs for transformations for the large group of specifications such as XSLT, XML Schema, XInclude and Canonical XML that operate on and produce XML documents. Visit the XML home page.

The Web Services Policy Working Group has released Last Call Working Drafts of Web Services Policy 1.5. Comments are welcome through 12 January. The Policy Framework defines a model for expressing the nature of Web services in order to convey conditions for their interaction. Attachment defines how to associate policies, for example within WSDL or UDDI, with subjects to which they apply. Changes in these drafts include ignorable policy assertions, an Internet media type, and a request for feedback on adding versioning guidance. Read about Web services.

Today, W3C holds a Mobile Web Seminar in Paris, France, about the use of the Web while on the move: the mobile Web. The speakers on 16 November include representatives of Mobile Web Initiative sponsors such as Bango, France Telecom, Jataayu Software, MobileAware, mTLD, Opera Software, and Vodafone, as well as W3C-MWI representatives. Read about the Mobile Web Initiative, a joint effort by authoring tool vendors, content providers, handset manufacturers, browser vendors and mobile operators.

W3C is pleased to announce the advancement of Timed Text (TT) Authoring Format 1.0 - Distribution Format Exchange Profile (DFXP) to Candidate Recommendation. The format enables authors and authoring systems to interchange style, layout and timing associated with text. DFXP helps to transform and distribute subtitles and captions to legacy systems. Comments are welcome through 16 February 2007. W3C encourages developers to implement the specification and share their experience with the Timed Text Working Group.

The Hypertext Coordination Group has released Rich Web Application Backplane as a Coordination Group Note describing a common infrastructure for declarative and imperative Web programming languages. The common building blocks for Web applications such as submission, data models, model-view binding and behavior, and Web components may thus be used for multiple markup formats. Read about the Hypertext Coordination Group.

The Web API Working Group has released the First Public Working Draft of Clipboard Operations for the Web 1.0: Copy, Paste, Drag and Drop. Developers will be able to use this API to enable and enhance common clipboard functions in their Web applications. This first draft is based on data transfer documentation for Internet Explorer on Windows. The group invites comments from Web content and browser developers. Read about the Rich Web Clients Activity.

Today the World Web Consortium released XML Inclusions (XInclude) Version 1.0 Second Edition as a Recommendation. Produced as a convenience to readers, the second edition is intended to correct all known errata in the 2004 XInclude 1.0 Recommendation. XInclude is a generic mechanism for merging XML documents (information sets) using existing XML constructs — elements, attributes and URI references. Visit the XML home page.

The Mobile Web Best Practices Working Group has released the First Public Working Draft of W3C mobileOK Basic Tests 1.0. This document defines the tests that provide the basis for making a claim to be W3C mobileOK Basic compliant and are based upon W3C's Mobile Web Best Practices. Read about Mobile Web Best Practices Working Group.

The HTML Working Group has released an updated Working Draft of XHTML Role Attribute Module. The XHTML Role Attribute defined in this specification allows the author to annotate XML Languages with machine-extractable semantic information about the purpose of an element. Use cases include accessibility, device adaptation, server-side processing, and complex data description. Visit the HTML home page.

The P3P Specification Working Group has published The Platform for Privacy Preferences 1.1 (P3P1.1) Specification as a W3C Working Group Note. P3P enables Web sites to express their privacy practices in a standard format that can be retrieved automatically and interpreted easily by user agents. This release incorporates resolutions to Last Call review comments. Although W3C does not have plans at this time to advance P3P 1.1 to Recommendation, we anticipate more work in the area of Web privacy and invite the P3P community to continue discussions about P3P in the forums listed on the the P3P home page.

Join us for a free W3C Webinar where you will learn how to mobilize your Web content. Dominique Hazaël-Massieux (W3C) will present documents and tools provided by the Mobile Web Best Practices Working Group including best practices, techniques, plans for the future mobileOK mark, and a demonstration of the best practices checker. The webinar will be held on 20 November at 10:00 a.m. UTC. Please register and visit the Mobile Web Initiative home page.

The Web Application Formats Working Group has released the First Public Working Draft of Widgets 1.0. Also known as gadgets or modules, widgets are small programs like clocks, stock tickers, news casters, games and weather forecasters that display and update remote data and run on the Web browser environment. The specification defines the packaging format, manifest file and scripting interfaces for downloading and installation on client machines. Also published, the requirements document has been updated and retitled. Read about Rich Web Clients.

W3C is pleased to announce Planet Mobile Web. This community service is a starting point for reading multiple blogs that discuss mobile Web usage. The Planet provides both an aggregated HTML view and aggregated RSS/Atom feeds. Read about the W3C Mobile Web Initiative, a joint effort by authoring tool vendors, content providers, handset manufacturers, browser vendors and mobile operators.

W3C is pleased to announce that Institute of Semantic Computing (ISeC), National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), and Justsystem have chosen the W3C Incubator process as a means to explore a Common Web Language (CWL) for information exchange through the Web, to enable computer processing of that language, and to provide a pilot model and conversions for RDF/OWL, UNL and UWs. W3C Members may use this form to join the group. Read about the Incubator Activity, an initiative to foster development of emerging Web-related technologies.

The CSS Working Group has published a Last Call Working Draft of Cascading Style Sheets, level 2 revision 1 (CSS 2.1). Comments are welcome through 7 December. CSS 2.1 is derived from and is intended to replace CSS2. A snapshot of CSS language usage, the specification adds a few highly requested features, fixes errata and brings CSS2 in line with implementations. Visit the CSS home page.

Position papers are due 1 December for the Third Workshop on Internationalizing the Speech Synthesis Markup Language (SSML) on 13-14 January 2007 in Hyderabad, India, jointly hosted by the International Institute of Information Technology (IIIT) and Bhrigus Software. Attendees will discuss improvements for using SSML to render under-represented languages including Arabic, Hebrew and the Indian languages Telugu, Hindi, Bengali, Punjabi, Gujarthi and Urdu. Read about W3C Workshops and visit the Voice Browser home page.

The Voice Browser Working Group has released a Last Call Working Draft of Semantic Interpretation for Speech Recognition (SISR) Version 1.0. SISR tags for grammar rules are used to extract meaning from speech recognition. SISR defines the syntax and semantics of tag content in the Speech Recognition Grammar Specification (SRGS) for output as serialized XML or ECMAScript variables. This draft removes the starttime and endtime features present at Candidate Recommendation. Comments are welcome through 24 November. Visit the Voice Browser home page.

The XForms Working Group has released an updated Working Draft of XForms 1.1. Designed to refine and strengthen the XML processing platform introduced by XForms 1.0, version 1.1 adds several submission capabilities, a more powerful action processing facility, the ability to manipulate data arbitrarily and to access event context information, and adds numerous helpful data types, utility functions, user interface improvements, and action event handlers. Visit the XForms home page.

The Web Services Policy Working Group has released updated Working Drafts of Web Services Policy 1.5. The Policy Framework defines a model for expressing the nature of Web services in order to convey conditions for their interaction. Attachment defines how to associate policies, for example within WSDL or UDDI, with subjects to which they apply. Read about Web services.

W3C is pleased to announce the advancement of Internationalization Tag Set (ITS) Version 1.0 to Candidate Recommendation. Organized by data categories, the ITS set of elements and attributes supports the internationalization and localization of schemas and documents. Implementations are provided for DTDs, XML Schema and Relax NG, and can be used with new or existing vocabularies like XHTML, DocBook and OpenDocument. Comments are welcome through 10 December. Visit the Internationalization home page.

W3C is pleased to announce the advancement of Mobile Web Best Practices 1.0 to Proposed Recommendation. Comments are welcome through 11 December. Written for designers of Web sites and content management systems, these guidelines describe how to author Web content that works well on mobile devices. Thirty organizations participating in the Mobile Web Initiative achieved consensus and encourage adoption and implementation of these guidelines to improve user experience and to achieve the goal of "one Web." Read about the Mobile Web Initiative.

Browse W3C presentations and events also available as an RSS channel.

• Shadi Abou-Zahra and Daniel Dardailler participate in panels on 1-2 November at the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Athens, Greece.
• Tim Berners-Lee, Yuhsin Chen, Lydia Chilton, Dan Connolly, Ruth Dhanaraj, James Hollenbach, Adam Lerer and David Sheets give a tutorial at the 3rd International Semantic Web User Interaction Workshop (SWUI 2006) on 3 November in Athens, Georgia, USA.
• Ivan Herman gives a keynote at the Workshop on Uncertainty Reasoning on the Semantic Web on 5 November in Athens, Georgia, USA.
• Marie-Claire Forgue presents at Mobile Monday Paris on 6 November in Paris, France.
• Molly E. Holzschlag gives a tutorial at An Event Apart on 6 November in Austin, Texas, USA.
• Steve Bratt gives a keynote at mobile2.0 on 6 November in San Francisco, California, USA.
• Shadi Abou-Zahra presents at the Konference WebTop100 on 7 November in Prague, Czech Republic.
• Christian de Sainte Marie presents at the 9th International Business Rules Forum on 9 November in Washington, DC, USA.
• Ivan Herman presents at the Industrial Track of the 5th International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC2006) on 9 November in Athens, Georgia, USA.
• José Manuel Alonso and Jesús García give keynotes organized by the Escuela de Ingenierías Industrial e Informática, Universidad de León, on 10 November in León, Spain.
• Shawn Henry presents via Webcast at World Usability Day on 14 November.
• Olle Olsson gives a keynote at Beyond IT on 21 November in Stockholm, Sweden.
• Olle Olsson presents at the DFS-seminarium on 23 November in Stockholm, Sweden.
• Judy Brewer, Michael Cooper and Shawn Henry present at the Information Accessibility International Standardization Seminar 2006 - Harmonization of JIS X8341-3 (Web Contents) and W3C WCAG 2.0 on 27 November in Tokyo, Japan.

The World Wide Web Consortium marks the ten year anniversary of its Asian presence with a public celebration on 28 November in Tokyo, Japan. The program includes "Role of W3C at Keio — From Foundations to the Future," "How Japanese Industry Works with Web Standards," "How Asia Will Influence the Future Web," discussion, and an exhibition, press briefing and reception. Advance registration is required. Read the media advisory and more about W3C10 Asia.

The Voice Browser Working Group has released the second Last Call Working Draft of Pronunciation Lexicon Specification (PLS) Version 1.0. Comments are welcome through 26 November. Designed for ease of use by developers and internationally, PLS allows pronunciation information to be specified for both speech recognition and speech synthesis engines in voice browsing applications. Pronunciations grouped together in a PLS document may be referenced from other markup languages such as SRGS and SSML. Visit the Voice Browser home page.

W3C plans a third Workshop on Internationalizing the Speech Synthesis Markup Language (SSML) on 13-14 January 2007, hosted by Bhrigus Software in Hyderabad, India. Attendees will discuss improvements for using SSML to render under-represented languages including Arabic, Hebrew and Hindi. A Call for Participation is expected in November. Read about W3C Workshops and visit the Voice Browser home page.

The GRDDL Working Group has released the First Public Working Draft of GRDDL. With important applications such as connecting microformats to the Semantic Web, GRDDL is a mechanism to extract RDF statements from suitable XHTML and XML content using programs such as XSLT transformations. GRDDL allows powerful mash-ups at very low cost. Read the press release and visit the Semantic Web home page.

W3C has updated its W3C Markup Validation Service and Link Checker with bug fixes, documentation and usability improvements, and a new Validator API for developers. Along with W3C's other Web Quality Tools, the Markup Validator and Link Checker are developed as open source software with the participation of volunteers and support of a large community, and are among W3C's most popular and useful resources.

The Multimodal Interaction Working Group has released a Last Call Working Draft of Ink Markup Language (InkML). Comments are welcome through 18 December. The InkML data format is used to represent ink entered with an electronic pen or stylus. Ink-aware Web applications can process and exchange handwriting, gestures, sketches, music and other notational languages. Visit the Multimodal Interaction home page.

Position papers are due 15 December for the Workshop on Web of Services for Enterprise Computing to be held 27-28 February 2007 in Bedford, MA, USA, hosted by MITRE. Participants will discuss how to facilitate the processing of business transactions and interactions with systems that pre-date the Web, and to address the need to interconnect intranet and/or extranet services using Web technologies. Read about Workshops and W3C Activities.

W3C is pleased to announce the advancement of Delivery Context: Interfaces (DCI) Accessing Static and Dynamic Properties to Candidate Recommendation. DCI provides access to device properties including capabilities, configuration, user preferences and environmental conditions such as remaining battery life, signal strength, ambient brightness, location, and display orientation. Comments are welcome through 31 March 2007. Read about the Device Independence Activity.

W3C invites the public to a Mobile Web seminar that will focus on current results produced by W3C's Mobile Web Initiative on 16 November in Paris, France. Speakers include representatives of MWI sponsors such as France Telecom, Jataayu Software, MobileAware, Opera Software, and Vodafone. Entrance is free but registration is required. The 3GWeb project is a European IST Programme. Read the media advisory.

The Web API Working Group has released the First Public Working Draft of File Upload. Applications will be able to use this API to trigger a file selection dialog with which the user can select one or more files in their local file system. It allows client-side manipulation of the content, for instance to display an image or parse an XML document from disk. The group invites comments from Web content and browser developers. Read about the Rich Web Clients Activity.

The Web Services Policy Working Group has released the First Public Working Draft of Web Services Policy 1.5 - Primer. This introduction to the Web Services Policy language is designed for authors of policy expressions and assertions and for implementers whose software modules read and write policy expressions. Basic and advanced concepts are presented through examples. The primer can be read alongside the normative Policy Framework and Attachment specifications. Read about Web services.

W3C is pleased to announce the launch of the Web Security Context Working Group whose mission is to enable a secure and usable interface so Web users can make safe trust decisions on the Web. "There is much deployed and proven security technology, but we now need to connect it all the way through to the Web user," said Tim Berners-Lee (W3C). Mary Ellen Zurko (IBM) chairs the group which is chartered to establish requirements and deliver standards for presenting essential security information to users and for ensuring the integrity of that information. Read the press release and more about the Security Activity.

W3C is pleased to announce the advancement of WebCGM 2.0 to Proposed Recommendation. Computer Graphics Metafile (CGM) is an ISO standard for the interchange of 2D vector and mixed vector/raster graphics. WebCGM is a profile of CGM, which adds Web linking and is optimized for Web applications in technical illustration, documentation, data visualization and similar fields. Version 2.0 adds DOM access to WebCGM objects, adds an XML Companion File (XCF) for external data, and extends graphical and intelligent content. Comments are welcome through 30 November. Implementations of WebCGM 2.0 are already available. Read about WebCGM.

A joint effort of the SVG and Web API Working Groups, the REX Task Force has released an updated Working Draft of Remote Events for XML (REX) 1.0. Using the REX grammar, endpoints can interact with DOM Events remotely as if they were at the same location. Read more about Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) and Web APIs.

The Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) Working Group has published the First Public Working Draft of Media Access Events. This set of events and DOM APIs enable detailed monitoring of media stream buffering and initialization. The group invites review from Web content and browser developers to determine whether the specification meets the community's needs for event-driven access to streaming media. Visit the SVG home page.

The CSS Working Group has released a Last Call Working Draft of CSS Print Profile. This subset of the Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) language works with the XHTML-Print Recommendation for printing to low-cost devices. It satisfies print and display needs in the absence of a printer-specific driver and where variability in the formatting of the output is acceptable. An extension set provides stronger layout control for the printing of mixed text and images, tables and image collections. Comments are welcome through 20 November. Visit the CSS home page.

W3C is pleased to announce the renewal of the Extensible Markup Language (XML) Activity. "W3C created, developed and continues to maintain the enormously successful XML family of specifications for supporting and interchanging text, graphics, protocols, voice, music, math, programming, user interfaces, Web services and more," said Liam Quin, W3C XML Activity Lead. The XML Activity's nine groups maintain stability and backwards compatibility, make improvements to encourage interoperability, and bring new communities to XML. Join W3C and visit the XML home page.

The Device Independence Working Group has released the First Public Working Draft of DIAL Primer. The Device Independent Authoring Language (DIAL) describes data, styling, layout, and interaction independently, making Web content adaptable for a wide variety of platforms including the thousands of mobile devices in use and devices to come. Read about device independence.

The Device Independence Working Group released the DISelect specification in three parts. Content Selection for Device Independence (DISelect) 1.0 and Delivery Context: XPath Access Functions 1.0 are Last Call Working Drafts. Comments are welcome through 7 November. Content Selection Primer 1.0 is a First Public Working Draft. DISelect supports the creation of Web sites that can be used from diverse devices. Visit the device independence home page.

The CSS Working Group has released a Last Call Working Draft of CSS3 Module: Paged Media, a part of the Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) language Level 3. Built on the box model, the page module adds functionality for pagination, margins, size and orientation, headers and footers, widows and orphans, image orientation and page numbering. Comments are welcome through 3 November. Visit the CSS home page.

The Semantic Web Health Care and Life Sciences Interest Group (HCLSIG) holds a public ISWC workshop on Semantic Web Health Care & Life Sciences on 6 November in Athens, Georgia, USA at the 5th International Semantic Web Conference. The agenda (PDF) has been announced. Aiding decision-making in clinical research and drug discovery, Semantic Web technologies will bridge many forms of biological and medical information across institutions. If your organization wishes to participate, use the conference registration. Read about the Health Care and Life Sciences Interest Group and the Semantic Web.

W3C is pleased to announce the advancement of Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL) Version 1.1 to Proposed Recommendation. Version 1.1 updates and enhances the XSL 1.0 Recommendation for change marks, indexes, multiple flows, and bookmarks, and extends support for graphics scaling, markers, and page numbers. The change list since Candidate Recommendation is available. Comments are welcome through 3 November. Read about the XML Activity.

The RDF Data Access Working Group has released a Working Draft of the SPARQL Query Language for RDF. SPARQL (pronounced "sparkle") offers developers and end users a way to write and to consume search results across a wide range of information such as personal data, social networks and metadata about digital artifacts like music and images. W3C has published the document as a Working Draft while the group evaluates the language design and the trade-offs between simplicity and user requirements. Visit the Semantic Web home page.

W3C has named Mauro Nunez to North American Business Manager. Mauro coordinates financial matters at MIT and across the Consortium and contributes to Membership, legal, policy and other operational areas. A Fulbright Scholar, Mauro founded and ran a business in Boston, MA, USA, and served as Director of Finance at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso in Valparaíso, Chile. Read more about W3C and its Management team.

The GRDDL Working Group has released First Public Working Drafts of GRDDL Primer and GRDDL Use Cases. With important applications such as connecting microformats to the Semantic Web, Gleaning Resource Descriptions from Dialects of Languages (GRDDL) is a mechanism to extract RDF statements from suitable XHTML and XML content using programs such XSLT transformations. Visit the Semantic Web home page.

The RDF Data Access Working Group has released Serializing SPARQL Query Results in JSON as a Working Group Note. JavaScript Object Notation (JSON), a lightweight data-interchange format, is used as an alternative to XML vocabulary to serialize the results of SPARQL query forms. SPARQL offers developers and end users a way to write and consume search results across a wide range of information and provides a means of integration over disparate sources. Visit the Semantic Web home page.

Browse W3C presentations and events also available as an RSS channel.

• Steven Pemberton gave a keynote at EUROIA 2006 on 1 October in Berlin, Germany.
• Richard Ishida gave a keynote at Fundamentos Web 2006 on 3 October in Oviedo, Asturias, Spain.
• Shadi Abou-Zahra presents at Warum barrierefreies Internet on 12 October in Vienna, Austria.
• Ivan Herman gives a talk organized by the IBM China Research Lab on 16 October in Beijing, China.
• Bert Bos presents at the W3C Print Symposium on 17 October in Heidelberg, Germany.
• Molly E. Holzschlag and Andy Clarke give a tutorial at Carson Workshops: CSS for Developers on 19 October in London, UK.
• Richard Ishida gives a keynote at LRC XI on 26 October in Dublin, Ireland.

The XML Core Working Group has released a Proposed Edited Recommendation of XML Inclusions (XInclude) Version 1.0 Second Edition. Produced as a convenience to readers, the second edition is intended to correct all known errata in the 2004 XInclude 1.0 Recommendation. XInclude introduces a generic mechanism for merging XML documents (information sets) using existing XML constructs—elements, attributes and URI references. Comments are welcome through 3 November. Visit the XML home page.

The Semantic Annotations for Web Services Description Language (SAWSDL) Working Group released a Last Call Working Draft of Semantic Annotations for WSDL. With these attributes, semantic annotations can be added to Web Services Description Language (WSDL) components for use in classifying, discovering, matching, composing, and invoking Web services. Comments are welcome through 1 November. The group also released the First Public Working Draft of the companion Usage Guide. Read about Web services.

The Semantic Web Best Practices and Deployment Working Group has released the First Public Working Draft of Time Ontology in OWL. The OWL-Time work follows from the DARPA Agent Markup Language DAML-Time work and brings together a number of classifications related to time. Developed for describing the temporal content of Web pages and the temporal properties of Web services, the vocabulary can express datetime, relationships between intervals and between instants, and durations of intervals. A Time Zone Resource in OWL is provided for the US and the entire world. Visit the Semantic Web home page.

The XML Schema Working Group has released the First Public Working Draft of Guide to Versioning XML Languages using XML Schema 1.1. XML Schema 1.1 introduces new features that make it easier to define XML languages which are flexible enough to tolerate later revision in a forward-compatible way. Written for application and schema developers, the guide shows the new mechanisms and illustrates several techniques. The group invites comments on this draft which is expected to become a Working Group Note. Visit the XML home page.

The XML Processing Model Working Group has released the First Public Working Draft of XProc: An XML Pipeline Language. Used to control and organize the flow of documents, the XProc language standardizes interactions, inputs and outputs for transformations for the large group of specifications such as XSLT, XML Schema, XInclude and Canonical XML that operate on and produce XML documents. Visit the XML home page.

The Evaluation and Repair Tools Working Group has released an updated Working Draft of the Evaluation and Report Language (EARL) 1.0 Schema. EARL is a flexible format used to exchange, combine and compare test results including bug reports, test suite evaluations and conformance claims. The test subjects might be Web sites, authoring tools, user agents or other entities. See the EARL Overview. The group welcomes feedback from Web developers and researchers. Read about the Web Accessibility Initiative.

The Web APIs Working Group released an updated Working Draft of Selectors API. Methods are defined for identifying elements in a document for the purpose of performing script or Document Object Model (DOM) operations on them. Selectors defined in the CSS3 Selectors specification are used to identify the elements. Visit the Web APIs Working Group home page.

The Web API Working Group has released an updated Working Draft of The XMLHttpRequest Object. The draft documents features of the XMLHttpRequest object, the core component of AJAX. The interface allows scripts to perform HTTP client functions, such as submitting form data or loading data from a remote Web site. Read about the Rich Web Clients Activity.

The Web Services Policy Working Group has released updated Working Drafts of Web Services Policy 1.5. The Policy Framework defines a model for expressing the nature of Web services in order to convey conditions for their interaction. Attachment defines how to associate policies, for example within WSDL or UDDI, with subjects to which they apply. Read about Web services.

Today the World Web Consortium released XHTML-Print as a W3C Recommendation. Designed for printing from mobile and low-cost devices, the XHTML-Print page description format satisfies print and display needs in the absence of a printer-specific driver and where variability in the formatting of the output is expected and is acceptable. The work is based on XHTML-Print written by the Printer Working Group (PWG), a program of the IEEE-ISTO. Visit the HTML home page.

The Protocols and Formats Working Group has released First Public Working Drafts of Accessible Rich Internet Applications (WAI-ARIA). The Roadmap describes accessibility of dynamic Web content built with technologies such as AJAX and DHTML. Roles provides mappings for user interface controls and navigation APIs. States and Properties associates behaviors with document-level markup. Read the press release and visit the Web Accessibility Initiative home page.

The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) has published two new specifications for language tags. RFC 4646: Tags for the Identification of Languages replaces RFC 3066 and, with the new IANA Language Subtag Registry, extends language tag syntax to address a number of long-standing issues. The separate RFC 4647: Matching of Language Tags addresses how to match the new tags. The W3C I18n GEO Working Group provides a gentle introduction to the new syntax. Visit the Internationalization home page.

The W3C Office for the UK and Ireland in conjunction with XML UK holds the XML Access Languages conference on 26 September at the CCLRC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory near Oxford, UK. Mark Birbeck, Michael Kay, Brian Matthews, Liam Quin, Andy Seaborne, Jeni Tennison, Chris Wallace, and Michael Wilson present the latest advances in XSLT, XQuery, and other XML technologies. All registrations must be received by 17:00 UTC on 22 September. Visit the XML home page.

W3C has named Ralph Swick Acting Technology and Society Domain Leader directing the privacy, security and Semantic Web Activities. Ralph has served as T&S Technical Director since 1997 and will continue those responsibilities as well. Ralph came to W3C from technical direction and architecture for the X Window System, and from Digital and MIT Project Athena where he engineered information filtering and computer-supported collaboration software. Ralph is standing in as Domain Leader for Daniel J. Weitzner, who will turn most of his attention for nine months to Web privacy research at MIT/CSAIL. Read about T&S, W3C's work at the intersection of Web technology and public policy, and about W3C.

Position papers are due 1 November for the Workshop on the Mobile Web in Developing Countries to be held 5-6 December in Bangalore, India. Jataayu Software hosts. Participants will discuss mobile Web access within developing countries in terms of needs, blocking factors and potential uses. "We must ensure that the Web is designed to meet the needs of sparser populations and of those whose only access to the Web may be on their phone," said Tim Berners-Lee (W3C). Sponsorships are available to enable participation by those who might not otherwise be able to attend due to travel or other costs. Read the press release, about W3C Workshops and about the Mobile Web Initiative.

The CSS Working Group has released two updated Working Drafts for Cascading Style Sheets Level 3 (CSS3). Generated Content for Paged Media describes features such as cross-references, footnotes, headers and footers often used in printed publications. Values and Units explains specified, computed, and actual values and defines common values and units in one specification which can be referred to by other CSS3 modules. Visit the CSS home page.

In order to address the impact of the xml:id W3C Recommendation, the XML Core Working Group has released the following three First Public Working Drafts to update Canonical XML to version 1.1 and to provide guidelines on using it with XML digital signatures. Canonical XML and XML signatures can ensure the integrity of data traveling between XML processors, crucial in applications like electronic commerce. Visit the XML home page.

• Known Issues with Canonical XML 1.0 (C14N/1.0)
• Using XML Digital Signatures in the 2006 XML Environment
• Canonical XML 1.1

The Voice Browser Working Group has released a Last Call Working Draft of Voice Extensible Markup Language (VoiceXML) 2.1. Comments are welcome through 6 October. Fully backwards-compatible with VoiceXML 2.0, version 2.1 standardizes eight additional features implemented by VoiceXML platforms: data, disconnect, grammar, foreach, mark, property, script, and transfer. Refer to the summary for changes since Candidate Recommendation, including modification of the foreach element. Visit the voice browser home page.

The W3C Workshop on Gathering Requirements for Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL) 2.0 will be held 18 October in Heidelberg, Germany at Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG. The XSL Working Group invites experts to discuss requirements, features and design for Version 2.0 of the formatting part of the Extensible Stylesheet Language also called XSL-FO. The Workshop is colocated with the Print Symposium. Read the press release, about W3C Workshops and about the XML Activity.

The Multimodal Interaction Working Group has published Common Sense Suggestions for Developing Multimodal User Interfaces as a Working Group Note. Written for interface designers and developers, the suggestions are based on several years experience developing multimodal applications. The four principles described are: satisfying real-world constraints, communication with users, helping users recover from errors, and making users comfortable. Read about multimodal interaction.

The XML Query Working Group has released version 1.0 of the XML Query Test Suite (XQTS). With this release there are over 15,000 test cases. The Working Group is asking implementors to submit results in September (anonymously if necessary) to help demonstrate that the XML Query 1.0 specification can be implemented interoperably and is ready to move forward to Proposed Recommendation. Visit the XML home page.

The Web Application Formats Working Group has released a Last Call Working Draft of XML Binding Language (XBL) 2.0, a technology for extending the appearance and behavior of elements in Web formats such as HTML. Comments are welcome through 7 December. With XBL, elements may be mapped to script, event handlers, CSS, and more complex content models. Content can be re-ordered and wrapped so that, for instance, complex CSS styles can be applied to simple HTML or XHTML markup. XBL can be used to implement new DOM interfaces, and, with other specifications, to implement arbitrary tag sets as widgets. Read about the Rich Web Clients Activity.

W3C is pleased to announce the advancement of WebCGM 2.0 to Candidate Recommendation. Computer Graphics Metafile (CGM) is an ISO standard for the interchange of 2D vector and mixed vector/raster graphics. WebCGM is a profile of CGM, which adds Web linking and is optimized for Web applications in technical illustration, documentation, data visualization and similar fields. Version 2.0 adds DOM access to WebCGM objects, adds an XML Companion File (XCF) for external data, and extends graphical and intelligent content. Comments and implementation reports are welcome through 6 October. Six implementations of WebCGM 2.0 are already available. Read more about WebCGM.

The W3C Germany and Austria Office is pleased to present the W3C Print Symposium 2006 on 17 October at the Heidelberg Print Media Academy in Heidelberg, Germany. Klaas Bals, Bert Bos, Håkon Wium Lie, Chris Lilley, Liam Quin, Thomas Tikwinski, Andrew Shellshear, and a representative of Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG will present on W3C print technologies including XSL, XSLT, SVG Print, CSS Paged Media and XHTML Print. The event is colocated with the XSL-FO Workshop on 18 October and there will be an opportunity to meet the XSL Working Group. A student discount is offered. Symposium registration is open, and is free for W3C Members.

The XML Schema Working Group has released an updated Working Draft of XML Schema 1.1 Part 1: Structures. XML schemas define shared markup vocabularies, the structure of XML documents which use those vocabularies, and provide hooks to associate semantics with them. Simplifications and changes in this draft are to sections on rules for checking validity, "all" groups, the PSVI, conformance, fallback for lax validation, particles and wildcards, among other revisions. Visit the XML home page.

Browse W3C presentations and events also available as an RSS channel.

• Kazuyuki Ashimura participates in a panel at FIT2006 on 6 September in Fukuoka, Japan.
• Shadi Abou-Zahra presents at Internet für alle on 6 September in Bern, Switzerland.
• Philipp Hoschka presents at MapOS on 7 September in London, UK.
• Olle Olsson presents at a seminar at the Graduate School of Language Technology of Göteborg University on 12 September in Göteborg, Sweden.
• Shadi Abou-Zahra gives a keynote at the Design for All Conference on 14 September in Rovaniemi, Finland.
• Olle Olsson presents at the DFS-ITvet möte on 18 September in Stockholm, Sweden.
• Dave Raggett presents at CE2006 on 19 September in Antibes, France.
• Tim Berners-Lee gives a keynote at Terra future on 19 September in Southampton, UK.
• Ivan Herman presents at the Miniseminar om semantisk web on 20 September in Oslo, Norway.
• Karl Dubost and Daniel Glazman present at Paris Web on 22 September in Paris, France.
• Molly E. Holzschlag and Andy Clarke give a tutorial at Web Directions on 26 September in Sydney, Australia.
• José Manuel Alonso participates in a panel at III Simposio Pluridisciplinar sobre Objetos y Diseños de Aprendizaje Apoyados en la Tecnología (od@06) on 26 September in Oviedo, Spain.
• On behalf of the W3C Germany and Austria Office, Ivan Herman presents at XML-Tage on 27 September in Berlin, Germany.

The CSS Working Group has released an updated Working Draft of CSS Module: Namespaces. The @namespace rule is used for declaring the default namespace and for binding namespaces to namespace prefixes. A syntax is defined that other specifications can adopt for using those prefixes in namespace-qualified names. Visit the CSS home page.

W3C announces the Workshop on Gathering Requirements for Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL) 2.0 to be held 18 October in Heidelberg, Germany, hosted by Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG. The Workshop will be held in conjunction with the Print Symposium at the same location. Participants will discuss the requirements, features and design of a future version of the formatting part of the Extensible Stylesheet Language also called XSL-FO. Read about W3C Workshops and the XML Activity.

W3C plans a Workshop on the Mobile Web in Developing Countries on 4-5 December in New Delhi, India, hosted by C-DAC, the site of the W3C India Office. Participants will discuss mobile Web access within developing countries, in terms of needs, blocking factors and potential uses. A Call for Participation for this Workshop is expected in September. Scholarships to cover travel costs will be available. Read about W3C Workshops and the Mobile Web Initiative.

The Web Application Formats Working Group has released the First Public Working Draft of Web Applications Packaging Format Requirements. The document specifies design goals and requirements for packaging small client-side Web applications known as "widgets", "gadgets" or "modules," used to display and update remote data. Applications such as clocks, stock tickers, news casters, games and weather forecasters are packaged to allow a single download and installation on a client machine. Read about Rich Web Clients.

The Web Application Formats Working Group has released the First Public Working Draft of Web Forms 2.0. Extending HTML 4, XHTML 1.1 and the DOM, Web Forms 2.0 features include new strongly-typed input fields, attributes, declarative repeating of form sections, DOM interfaces, DOM events, and XML submission and initialization of forms. Web Forms 2.0 leverages the knowledge authors have gained with their experience with HTML. Read about Rich Web Clients.

The World Wide Web Consortium today published new editions of four core XML standards: the fourth edition of Extensible Markup Language (XML) 1.0 and second editions of Extensible Markup Language (XML) 1.1, Namespaces in XML 1.0 and Namespaces in XML 1.1. These new editions incorporate corrections to all known errata. Read the press release and visit the XML home page.

Addressing Last Call comments, the Compound Document Formats Working Group has released four updated Working Drafts: Compound Document by Reference Framework, WICD Core 1.0, WICD Full 1.0, and WICD Mobile 1.0. The Web Integration Compound Document (WICD, pronounced "wicked") is a device independent Compound Document profile based on XHTML, CSS and SVG. The drafts describe behavior when single documents contain multiple formats. Read more about Rich Web Clients.

W3C is pleased to announce the advancement of Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) Tiny 1.2 to Candidate Recommendation. With native support shipping in Opera and Firefox browsers on desktops, the SVG language describes interactive vector graphics, text, images, animation and graphical applications in XML. SVG Tiny 1.2 is designed for Web access by devices of all sizes from handhelds to desktops, automobile media centers and entertainment consoles. Two implementations of SVG Tiny 1.2 are already available, with more on the way. The Requirements document is also updated. Read the press release and testimonials and visit the SVG home page.

Participants in the second Workshop on Internationalizing the Speech Synthesis Markup Language (SSML) have published their minutes and report. Speech and linguistics experts met on 30-31 May in Heraklion, Crete to study improvements to SSML for Asian, Middle Eastern and Eastern European languages such as Arabic, Finnish, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin Chinese, Polish, Russian and Slovenian. W3C thanks FORTH for hosting. Read the press release, join W3C and visit the voice home page.

The Web Services Policy Working Group has released First Public Working Drafts of the Web Services Policy 1.5. The Policy Framework defines a model for expressing the nature of Web services in order to convey conditions for their interaction. Attachment defines how to associate policies, for example within WSDL or UDDI, with subjects to which they apply. Read about Web services.

On System Administrator Appreciation Day, W3C expresses its gratitude to the Systems Team. Under their care W3C's main Web servers have served over 70 million hits per day. Our mail hubs reject over 1 million virus and spam delivery attempts per day with zero reported false positives. Our server infrastructure typically sees server uptimes measured in hundreds of days; some of our servers have been in continuous operation for over a year. Join us in celebration of these key contributors to W3C, and thank your own sysadmins for their tireless work. We extend our appreciation to:

• Stéphane Boyera
• Laurent Carcone
• Matthieu Fuzellier
• Ted Guild
• Dominique Hazaël-Massieux
• Simon J. Hernandez
• José Kahan
• Fumihiro Kato
• Vivien Lacourba
• Gerald Oskoboiny
• Jean-Guilhem Rouel
• Olivier Thereaux

The HTML Working Group has released the eighth public Working Draft of XHTML™ 2.0. A general purpose markup language without presentation elements, XHTML 2 is designed for representing documents for a wide range of purposes across the Web. See the introduction for the differences between XHTML versions 1 and 2. Much of XHTML 2 works in existing browsers. The draft includes an implementation in RELAX NG with DTD and XML Schema implementations to follow. Visit the HTML home page.

W3C has named Ted Guild to Head of W3C Systems. Previously led by Alan Kotok, the Systems Team is responsible for the operation of W3C servers worldwide, development and deployment of software tools, and support for standards development, content development, collaboration, communication and archiving. Ted came to W3C in 2000 from corporate IT positions in financial, Internet, public utilities and marketing organizations. Read more About W3C.

The HTML Working Group has released the First Public Working Draft of the XHTML Role Attribute Module to provide the ability to integrate the role attribute into any markup language based on XHTML Modularization 1.1. Developed in conjunction with the accessibility community and other groups, the document is the first of a series of XHTML modules designed to help extend the scope of XHTML-family markup languages into new environments. Visit the HTML home page.

Participants in the International Workshop on the Implementation of a Device Description Repository have published their report. Mobile operators, manufacturers, service providers, and accessibility, content adaptation and device information providers met 12-13 July in Madrid, Spain, to discuss the creation of a repository of device information. W3C thanks Telefónica for hosting. Read about the W3C Mobile Web Initiative, a joint effort to make the Web interoperable and usable for users of mobile devices.

In response to Last Call comments, the Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) Working Group has published a Working Draft of the Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) Tiny 1.2 Specification. The SVG language delivers vector graphics, text, and images to the Web in XML. SVG Tiny 1.2 is a complete language specification and is implementable on devices large and small, from cellphones and PDAs to desktop and laptop computers. Visit the SVG home page.

The Internationalization GEO (Guidelines, Education & Outreach) Working Group has published an updated Working Draft of Internationalization Best Practices: Specifying Language in XHTML & HTML Content. Part of a series designed for authors, the document is an aid to specifying the language of content for an international audience. Visit the Internationalization home page.

W3C will hold a Workshop on Languages for Privacy Policy Negotiation and Semantics-Driven Enforcement on 17-18 October 2006 at the Joint Research Center (JRC) of the European Commission in Ispra, Italy. Vendors and researchers will meet to discuss privacy for personal data, automated policy negotiation in Web services, Web applications and identity management, and the use of Semantic Web technologies for privacy enforcement. Participation is open to Members and the public. Read about Workshops and the Privacy Activity.

W3C's Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) has been appointed to the Advisory Committee for the revision of U.S. Section 255 guidelines and Section 508 standards, which include Web accessibility. WAI looks forward to continuing to coordinate with organizations around the world to develop harmonized standards for Web accessibility. Additional information is available in the U.S. Access Board article: Board Names Advisory Committee for 508 Standards Update. Visit the WAI home page.

W3C is pleased to announce the creation of the Emotion Incubator Group to investigate a language to represent the emotional states of users and the emotional states simulated by user interfaces. The group is sponsored by W3C Members DFKI, Deutsche Telekom T-Com, University of Edinburgh, Chinese Academy of Sciences, EPFL, USC ISI, Universidad Politecnica de Madrid, and Fraunhofer Gesellschaft. W3C Members may use this form to join the group. Read about the Incubator Activity, an initiative to foster development of emerging Web-related technologies.

The XForms Working Group has released an updated Working Draft of XForms 1.1. Designed to refine and strengthen the XML processing platform introduced by XForms 1.0, version 1.1 adds several submission capabilities, a more powerful action processing facility, the ability to manipulate data arbitrarily and to access event context information, and adds numerous helpful data types, utility functions, user interface improvements, and action event handlers. Visit the XForms home page.

The Efficient XML Interchange Working Group has released the First Public Working Draft of the Efficient XML Interchange Measurements Note. An analysis of the expected performance characteristics of a potential Efficient XML Interchange (EXI) encoding format, the draft covers the "compactness" and "processing efficiency" properties and outlines plans for future updates. Visit the XML home page.

W3C has named Yves Lafon to the position of Web Services Activity Lead. The Web Services Activity includes Working Groups for semantic annotations, addressing, choreography, description and policy as well as XML protocol and databinding. Yves joined W3C in 1995 to work on the experimental browser Arena. He led development of Jigsaw, W3C's Java based server, and served as Activity Lead for the Protocols Activity and the XML Protocol Activity. and as Team Contact for the XML Protocol Working Group, the XML Schema Patterns for Databinding Working Group and the Web Services Choreography Working Group. W3C wishes to thank Hugo Haas who previously led the Activity. Read more about W3C.

W3C is pleased to announce the renewal of the Semantic Web Activity. "W3C continues to support the advancement of universal sharing and automatic processing of data in the World Wide Web," said Ivan Herman (W3C). Semantic Web technologies allow data to be shared and reused across applications, enterprises, and communities. The W3C Advisory Committee approved the continuing work in RDF data access, rules interchange, and health care and life sciences. Three new groups are chartered for work on Semantic Web deployment, extracting RDF from XML (e.g., to process microformats), and education and outreach. Join W3C and visit the Semantic Web home page.

The Mobile Web Best Practices Working Group has released the First Public Working Draft of the W3C mobileOK Scheme 1.0. mobileOK labels indicate that content and its delivery pass tests based on the Mobile Web Best Practices and are designed to create an effective user experience. Read about the W3C Mobile Web Initiative, a joint effort by authoring tool vendors, content providers, handset manufacturers, browser vendors and mobile operators.

The XML Query and XSL Working Groups have released an updated Candidate Recommendation of XQuery 1.0 and XPath 2.0 Data Model (XDM). Both XSLT 2 and XQuery use XPath expressions and operate on XDM instances such as documents and databases. The group also released an updated Working Draft of the XQuery Update Facility which provides expressions to create, modify and delete nodes. Visit the XML home page.

W3C plans a Workshop on Gathering Requirements for Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL) 2.0 on 18 October in Heidelberg, Germany, hosted by Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG. The Workshop will be held in conjunction with a symposium on Web Printing at the same location. Participants will discuss the requirements, features and design of a future version of the formatting part of the Extensible Stylesheet Language also called XSL-FO. A Call for Participation for this Workshop is expected in August. Read about W3C Workshops and the XML Activity.

The Rule Interchange Format (RIF) Working Group has published an updated Working Draft of RIF Use Cases and Requirements. Synthesized from nearly fifty use cases, the document specifies use cases and requirements for a format that allows rules to be translated between rule languages and thus transferred between rule systems. The group invites comments through 8 September. Visit the Semantic Web home page.

The HTML Working Group has released a Last Call Working Draft of XHTML™ Basic 1.1. The draft adds four new features for small devices which are the language's primary users. Version 1.1 is intended to be the convergence of the XHTML Basic 1.0 W3C Recommendation for mobile devices, released in coordination with the WAP Forum in 2000, and the Open Mobile Alliance (OMA) XHTML Mobile profile. Comments are welcome through 4 August. Visit the HTML home page.

The HTML Working Group has released a Last Call Working Draft of XHTML™ Modularization 1.1. This modularization allows the subsets and extensions to XHTML needed for emerging platforms. This document is based on Modularization of XHTML in XML Schema and the Modularization of XHTML W3C Recommendation. Comments are welcome through 4 August. Visit the HTML home page.

W3C is pleased to announce the creation of the Geospatial Incubator Group, whose mission is to begin addressing issues of location and geographical properties of resources for the Web of today and tomorrow. The group is sponsored by W3C Members the Open Geospatial Consortium, Oracle Corporation, SRI International, Stanford University, and the University of Southern California Information Sciences Institute (USC ISI). W3C Members may use this form to join the group. Read about the Incubator Activity, an initiative to foster development of emerging Web-related technologies.

The Semantic Annotations for Web Services Description Language (SAWSDL) Working Group has released the First Public Working Draft of Semantic Annotations for WSDL. The attributes defined in this draft are references from elements within Web Services Description Language (WSDL) or XML Schema documents to concepts in ontologies outside the documents. Read more about Web services.

Browse W3C presentations and events also available as an RSS channel.

• On behalf of the W3C Australian Office, Ivan Herman gives a keynote at AusWeb06 on 3 July in Australis Noosa Lakes, Queensland, Australia.
• Steven Pemberton gives a keynote at The Next Web on 7 July in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
• Shawn Henry presents on 10 and 11 July at Web Design World in Seattle, WA, USA.
• Tim Berners-Lee gives a keynote at the Twenty-First National Conference on Artificial Intelligence on 18 July in Boston, MA, USA.

W3C is pleased to announce the launch of a new Math Working Group to replace the Math Interest Group. Patrick Ion (Invited Expert, representing the American Mathematical Society) and Robert Miner (Design Science) will co-Chair. The group is chartered through 29 February 2008 to produce a new MathML 3.0 Recommendation, to improve and expand MathML in the areas of internationalization, accessibility, and mathematical richness. W3C Members may use this form to join the Working Group. Visit the Math home page.

W3C is pleased to announce the renewal of the Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Working Group. Bert Bos (W3C) is Chair. The group is chartered through 1 July 2008 to develop and maintain CSS specifications, profiles and test suites. CSS is the most common style sheet language for HTML documents and can be used with textual XML documents. W3C Members may use this form to join the Working Group. Visit the CSS home page.

W3C is pleased to announce the advancement of Mobile Web Best Practices 1.0 to Candidate Recommendation. Written for designers of Web sites and content management systems, these guidelines describe how to author Web content that works well on mobile devices. Thirty organizations participating in the Mobile Web Initiative achieved consensus and encourage adoption and implementation of these guidelines to improve user experience and to achieve the goal of "One Web." Read the press release and testimonials.

Jérôme Chailloux has joined the W3C staff and management team as the new Site Manager for W3C/ERCIM. Based in France, Jérôme brings a wealth of experience to W3C in both technology development and management. Jérôme was the main inventor and developer of the programming language Le-Lisp. He served on an information technology committee for the French National Ministry for Education, Research and Technology. Jérôme also held the position of Chief Information Officer of the genomics company GENSET. Please join us in welcoming Jérôme to W3C.

The WebCGM Working Group has released a First Public and Last Call Working Draft of WebCGM 2.0. WebCGM is a vector and composite vector/raster picture definition used in technical illustration, documentation, and data visualization. Version 2.0 adds DOM access to WebCGM objects and an XML Companion File (XCF) for external data, and extends graphical and intelligent content. The draft incorporates discussion and feedback on the OASIS Committee Specification submitted to W3C. Comments are welcome through 30 July. Read more about WebCGM.

Attendees from countries including Austria, China, Finland, France, India, Japan, Korea, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sweden and the USA presented thirty two position papers on 9-10 March in Tokyo at the W3C Workshop on the Ubiquitous Web. They proposed ways to standardize distributed applications that adapt to context: user preferences, device capabilities and environmental conditions. The Workshop report has been published. W3C thanks Keio University for hosting. Read the press release and about W3C Workshops.

The Web Application Formats Working Group has released the First Public Working Draft of XML Binding Language (XBL) 2.0, a technology for extending the appearance and behavior of elements in Web formats such as HTML. This draft was produced from the XBL 2.0 specification developed by the Mozilla Foundation and has now moved to the W3C Recommendation Track. Read about the Rich Web Clients Activity.

The Web Services Choreography Working Group has released the First Public Working Draft of Web Services Choreography Description Language: Primer. The primer is intended as an easy to understand tutorial on the uses and the features of the WS-CDL specification. WS-CDL describes peer-to-peer collaborations between Web service participants by defining their behavior from a global viewpoint. Ordered message exchanges thus accomplish a common business goal. Visit the Web services home page.

The WordNet Task Force of the Semantic Web Best Practices and Deployment Working Group has released the First Public Working Draft of RDF/OWL Representation of WordNet. The draft proposes a conversion to RDF and OWL of WordNet, the machine-readable lexical reference system developed at Princeton University for the English language. The group describes how the conversion was made and how it may be queried for use in Semantic Web applications. Read about the Semantic Web.

The Web API Working Group has released an updated Working Draft of The XMLHttpRequest Object. The draft documents features of the XMLHttpRequest object, the core component of AJAX. The interface allows scripts to perform HTTP client functions, such as submitting form data or loading data from a remote Web site. Read about the Rich Web Clients Activity.

The XML Core Working Group has released four Proposed Edited Recommendations for core XML specifications: the fourth edition of Extensible Markup Language (XML) 1.0 and second editions of Extensible Markup Language (XML) 1.1, Namespaces in XML 1.0 and Namespaces in XML 1.1. Proposed for the convenience of readers, the publications correct all errors reported to date and are not new versions. The test suites have been updated. For XML, markup for RFC 2119 key words has been improved. Comments are welcome through 12 July. Visit the XML home page.

On 25 May, the Web APIs Working Group released the First Public Working Draft of Selectors API. The draft defines methods for identifying elements in a document for the purpose of performing script or Document Object Model (DOM) operations on them. Selectors defined in the CSS3 Selectors specification are used to identify the elements. Visit the Web APIs Working Group home page.

The XML Query and XSL Working Groups have released updated Candidate Recommendations of XML Query 1.0, XSLT 2.0, XPath 2.0 and supporting documents. The XQuery use cases are also updated. Today's drafts incorporate comments received at Candidate Recommendation and move the xdt:* types to the XML Schema xs namespace, a change made in conjunction with the XML Schema Working Group. XSLT transforms documents into different markup or formats. Important for databases, search engines and object repositories, XML Query can perform searches, queries and joins over collections of documents. Both XSLT 2 and XQuery use XPath expressions and operate on XPath Data Model instances. Visit the XML home page.

• XSL Transformations (XSLT) Version 2.0:
  Transforms data model instances (XML and non-XML) into other documents including into XSL-FO for printing
• XQuery 1.0: An XML Query Language:
  An XML-aware syntax for querying collections of structured and semi-structured data both locally and over the Web
• XML Path Language (XPath) 2.0:
  Expression syntax for referring to parts of XML documents
• XQuery 1.0 and XPath 2.0 Functions and Operators:
  The functions you can call in XPath expressions and the operations you can perform on XPath 2.0 data types
• XQuery 1.0 and XPath 2.0 Data Model (XDM):
  Representation and access for both XML and non-XML sources
• XSLT 2.0 and XQuery 1.0 Serialization:
  How to output the results of XSLT 2.0 and XML Query evaluation in XML, HTML or as text
• XML Syntax for XQuery 1.0 (XQueryX):
  A precise representation in XML of the XML Query language, suitable for machine processing and introspection
• XQuery 1.0 and XPath 2.0 Formal Semantics:
  The type system used in XQuery and XSLT 2 via XPath defined precisely for implementers

The Internationalization Core Working Group has published an updated Working Draft of Language Tags and Locale Identifiers for the World Wide Web. The draft includes mechanisms for identifying or selecting the language of content or locale preferences used to process information using Web technologies. It describes how document formats, specifications, and implementations should handle language tags, as well as data structures for describing international preferences. Visit the Internationalization home page.

The CSS Working Group has released the First Public Working Draft of CSS3 module: Generated Content for Paged Media. The draft describes features used in printed publications: named strings, leaders, cross-references, footnotes, endnotes, running headers and footers, named flows, ad hoc counter styles, paged-based floats, hyphenation, change bars, and named page and generated lists. It is a companion to the CSS3 modules for multicolumn layout and paged media. Visit the CSS home page.

The W3C Spanish Office is pleased to present Vinton Cerf and noted Web Standards experts at the second edition of Fundamentos Web 2006 (Web Foundations 2006) on 3-5 October in Oviedo, Asturias, Spain. Daniel Appelquist, Andy Clarke, Enrique Dans, Ben Hammersley, Bernardo Hernández, Molly Holzschlag, Richard Ishida, Dean Jackson, Gumerinsdo Lafuente, Bob Regan, Dave Shea, Juan Varela, Luis Villa, Chris Wilson and Kevin Yank will present. Registration for the conference, which sold out last year, is open and offers discounts for W3C Members.

The HTML Working Group has released the First Public Working Draft of XHTML™ Basic 1.1. The draft adds four new features for small devices which are the language's primary users. Version 1.1 is intended to be the convergence of the XHTML Basic 1.0 W3C Recommendation for mobile devices, released in coordination with the WAP Forum in 2000, and the Open Mobile Alliance (OMA) XHTML Mobile profile. Visit the HTML home page.

Browse W3C presentations and events also available as an RSS channel.

• Jesús García participates in a panel at Tecnimap 2006 on 1 June in Sevilla, Spain.
• Olle Olsson gives a keynote at Metadatas roll inom rättslig informationsförsörjning on 1 June in Stockholm, Sweden.
• Paolo Baggia presents at the DIT Seminars on 7 June in Povo, Trento, Italy.
• Olle Olsson presents at Web 2.0 -- Nya mål och medel on 7 June in Stockholm, Sweden.
• Steven Pemberton gives a keynote at The Web and Beyond: 10th SIGCHI.NL Conference on 8 June in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
• Judy Brewer presents at ICT for an Inclusive Society on 12 June in Riga, Latvia.
• Shawn Henry gives a tutorial on 13 June and presents on 15 June at UPA 2006 in Broomfield, CO, USA.
• Shadi Abou-Zahra presents on 13 and 14 June at the Workshop on Web Accessibility and Metamodelling 2006 in Grimstad, Norway.
• Molly Holzschlag presents at @media 2006 on 15 June in London, UK.
• Daniel J. Weitzner participates at a panel at Net Neutrality: What's at Stake - for the Internet, Politics and Consumers on 16 June in Washington, DC, USA.
• Shadi Abou-Zahra presents at the Euro-Southeast Asia ICT Forum 2006 on 19 June in Singapore.
• Judy Brewer gives a keynote at the RESNA Annual Conference on 26 June in Atlanta, GA, USA.

W3C has named Daniel Dardailler to the position of Head of W3C Offices effective 1 June. Daniel will continue his roles as W3C Associate Chair for Europe, liaison for international standards bodies, and in efforts such as UN organizations, ISOC, ISO, and ICANN. W3C Offices assist with promotion efforts in local languages, broaden W3C's geographical base, and encourage international participation in W3C Activities.

W3C has named Ivan Herman to the position of Semantic Web Activity Lead effective 1 June. Previously led by Eric Miller, the Semantic Web Activity includes development of the standards for RDF, OWL, SPARQL and rules languages. W3C wishes to thank Eric for his contributions as he moves to Semantic Web deployment. Based at CWI, site of the W3C Benelux Office, Ivan served as W3C Head of Offices and on the Semantic Web Coordination Group. Read more About W3C.

W3C is pleased to announce the launch of the Web Services Policy Working Group. Paul Cotton (Microsoft) and Chris Ferris (IBM) will co-Chair. The group is chartered through 31 December 2007 to standardize a general policy framework for expressing Web service capabilities and requirements. W3C Members may use this form to join the Working Group. Visit the Web services home page.

Alan Kotok, W3C Associate Chair, MIT site manager and head of the W3C Systems Team, passed away last week in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. He was 64. Before his many contributions to W3C, Alan held senior engineering positions at DEC. A member of the MIT Tech Model Railroad Club, he helped to build the legendary computer game Spacewar. He appears in the Origins of Computer Chess and in Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution. We are grateful to have worked with him and will miss his great kindness, humor, intellect and dedication. Remembrances may be sent to the public-memoria@w3.org public mailing list.

W3C is pleased to announce the advancement of Web Services Addressing 1.0 - WSDL Binding to Candidate Recommendation. Comments are welcome through 7 July. The document defines how the properties in Web Services Addressing 1.0 - Core are described in the Web Services Description Language (WSDL). Web Services Addressing provides transport-neutral mechanisms and is designed to work with both WSDL versions 1.1 and 2.0. Read about Web services at W3C.

Following a successful Workshop in Beijing, China, W3C holds a second Workshop on Internationalizing the Speech Synthesis Markup Language (SSML) on 30-31 May, hosted by the Foundation for Research and Technology - Hellas (FORTH) in Heraklion, Crete, site of the W3C Office in Greece. Attendees will identify and prioritize extensions and additions to SSML to improve its use for rendering non-English languages. Read about W3C Workshops and visit the Voice Browser home page.

We invite you to attend the W3C Track of the Fifteenth International World Wide Web Conference (WWW2006) for discussion on Web standards in media, health sciences, and international commerce, as well as opportunities in the next wave of Internet and Web technical development. Come learn about the latest developments in accessibility, browser security, Semantic Web applications, SVG graphics, compound document formats and styling, Web services, XML tools, and the Mobile Web Initiative. The W3C Track runs from 24-26 May in Edinburgh, Scotland, UK. Read the press release.

W3C holds its semiannual Advisory Committee Meeting on 21-22 May in Edinburgh, Scotland, UK. W3C Member organizations participate in two days of discussions and strategic planning about W3C Activities and future work. Learn How to Become a W3C Member and join W3C at the next Advisory Committee Meeting on 29-30 November in Tokyo, Japan.

The Voice Browser, Web API and Web Application Formats (WAF) Working Groups jointly released a Working Draft of Authorizing Read Access to XML Content Using the <?access-control?> Processing Instruction 1.0. The draft describes a mechanism in use by voice browser vendors that allows content providers to specify the access policy of that content. Implementors should perform their own security analysis. Read about the Rich Web Clients Activity.

The Web Services Description Working Group has released a Last Call Working Draft of Web Services Description Language (WSDL) Version 2.0: RDF Mapping. Comments are welcome through 17 July. WSDL 2.0 models and describes modular Web services and is used to document distributed systems and to automate communication between applications. The draft describes WSDL in RDF and OWL, and a mapping procedure for transforming WSDL descriptions into RDF form. Read about Web services.

The Internationalization Tag Set Working Group has published a Last Call Working Draft of the Internationalization Tag Set (ITS) Version 1.0, a First Public Working Draft of Best Practices for XML Internationalization, and updated requirements. Organized by data categories, the ITS set of elements and attributes supports the internationalization and localization of schemas and documents. Implementations are provided for DTDs, XML Schema and Relax NG, and for existing vocabularies like XHTML, DocBook and OpenDocument. Last Call comments are welcome through 30 June. Visit the Internationalization home page.

W3C holds the International Workshop on the Implementation of a Device Description Repository on 12-13 July 2006, in Madrid, Spain. Application and database developers and others are invited to discuss the design, implementation and use of a repository of device information for content and service providers. Position papers are due 31 May. Read the press release, about W3C Workshops and about the Mobile Web Initiative.

The Mobile Web Best Practices Working Group has published an updated Working Draft of Mobile Web Best Practices 1.0 that incorporates comments from their 18 April 2006 Last Call Working Draft. This document aims to improve user experience by describing how to produce Web content and Web sites intended for delivery to mobile and small-screen devices. Visit the Mobile Web Best Practices Working Group home page.

W3C is pleased to announce the launch of the Web CGM Working Group. Lofton Henderson will Chair this Working Group, which is chartered through 31 May 2007 to produce a W3C Recommendation for version 2.0 of the WebCGM 1.0 Recommendation. W3C Members may use this form to join the Working Group. Visit the WebCGM Working Group home page.

In a 17 May 2006 press release, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan established "an Advisory Group to assist him in convening the Internet Governance Forum (IGF), a new forum for a multi-stakeholder dialogue on Internet governance." Daniel Dardailler, W3C's Associate Chair for Europe, will represent W3C on the new Advisory Board. W3C looks forward to sharing its experience in distributed consensus-building within this new international environment for standardization.

The HTML Working Group and the Semantic Web Best Practices and Deployment Working Group jointly have published an updated Working Draft of the RDFa Primer 1.0. RDFa expresses metadata in XHTML-compatible constructs and extensions, enabling a new world of user functionality. Produced by the groups' RDF in XHTML Task Force, the draft is a companion to the XHTML 2.0 specification. Read about the HTML Activity and the Semantic Web.

The W3C Device Independence Working Group has released the First Public Working Draft of Device Independent Authoring Language (DIAL). DIAL describes data, styling, layout, and interaction independently, making Web content adaptable for a wide variety of platforms including the thousands of mobile devices in use and devices to come. Read the press release and more about device independence.

The World Wide Web Consortium today released Web Services Addressing - Core and its SOAP Binding as W3C Recommendations. The core properties allow uniform addressing of Web services and messages, independent of the underlying transport. The binding defines their association to SOAP messages. Read the press release and testimonials and visit the Web services home page.

The XML Query Working Group has published updated Working Drafts of the XQuery Update Facility and its Use Cases. XML Query can perform searches, queries and joins over collections of XDM instances such as documents and databases. The specifications provide expressions to create, modify and delete nodes within those instances. Visit the XML home page.

The XML Query and XSL Working Groups have released an updated Working Draft of XQuery 1.0 and XPath 2.0 Full-Text. The draft defines a language that extends XQuery and XPath to allow full-text searching of XML text and documents. The companion Use Cases Working Draft has also been updated and provides examples for full-text search over data model collections. Read about the XML Activity.

Position papers are due 31 May for the W3C International Workshop on the Implementation of a Device Description Repository to be held 12-13 July 2006, in Madrid, Spain, hosted by Telefónica Investigación y Desarrollo. Participants will discuss the design, implementation and use of a Device Description Repository (DDR) being proposed by the MWI Device Description Working Group. The proposed DDR will provide device information to content and service providers for adapting content to suit client devices. Read about W3C Workshops and the Mobile Web Initiative.

The Timed Text (TT) Working Group has released a second Last Call Working Draft of the Timed Text (TT) Authoring Format 1.0 – Distribution Format Exchange Profile (DFXP). The format enables authors and authoring systems to interchange style, layout and timing associated with text. DFXP helps to transform and distribute subtitles and captions to legacy systems. Comments are welcome through 18 May. Timed Text (TT) Authoring Format 1.0 Use Cases and Requirements were published as a Working Group Note. Visit the Synchronized Multimedia home page.

The W3C China Office is open in Beijing, China, hosted at the School of Computer Science & Engineering of Beihang University. For more information on the opening ceremonies on 27-28 April, please refer to the press release. W3C Offices assist with promotion efforts in local languages, broaden W3C's geographical base, and encourage international participation in W3C Activities. W3C invites organizations in China who wish to become W3C Members to contact the W3C China Office and Join W3C.

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) Working Group has released a Last Call Working Draft of Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0, Working Drafts of Understanding WCAG 2.0 and Techniques for WCAG 2.0, and About Baselines for WCAG 2.0. Following WCAG makes Web content more accessible to the vast majority of users, including people with disabilities and older users, using many different devices including a wide variety of assistive technologies. Comments are welcome through 31 May. Read about the Web Accessibility Initiative.

Browse W3C presentations and events also available as an RSS channel.

• Daniel J. Weitzner participates in the Net Neutrality panel at Computers, Freedom and Privacy on 4 May in Washington, DC, USA.
• Takayuki Watanabe and Makoto Ueki present a tutorial at the WCAG 2.0 ラストコール・ワーキングドラフト研究会 - JIS X 8341-3 と WCAG 2.0 の国際協調 on 7 May in Tokyo, Japan.
• On behalf of the W3C Spanish Office, Allan Beaufour presents at the Ciclo de Conferencias on 10 May in Oviedo, Spain.
• On behalf of the W3C Benelux Office, Bert Bos gives a tutorial on Cascading Style Sheets on 12 May in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
• Molly Holzschlag gives a tutorial at the Los Alamos National Laboratories Web Design Conference on 15 May in Los Alamos, NM, USA.
• Erik Bruchez, Christian Lieske, Steven Pemberton, Dave Raggett, Sebastian Rahtz and Felix Sasaki present at XTech 2006 on 16-19 May in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
• Rhys Lewis gives a keynote at W4A 2006 - Building the Mobile Web: Rediscovering Accessibility? on 22 May in Edinburgh, UK.
• Ivan Herman presents at the Workshop on E-Government: Barriers and Opportunities on 23 May in Edinburgh, UK.
• W3C presents the W3C Track at the 15th International World Wide Web Conference (WWW2006) on 24-26 May in Edinburgh, UK.
• Ivan Herman and Richard Ishida give tutorials on 24 and 26 May at 15th World Wide Web Conference in Edinburgh, UK.
• Daniel J. Weitzner gives a keynote at the 15th World Wide Web Conference on 26 May in Edinburgh, UK.

Google, HP, IBM, KDE, Microsoft, Mozilla, Nokia, Opera, Sun Microsystems, VeriSign, Yahoo! and many other W3C Members and research organizations gathered with leaders of the online finance community in New York City, USA, to address pressing Web security issues at the March 2006 W3C Workshop on "Usability and Transparency of Web Authentication." The Workshop report, including suggested next steps, is now available. W3C thanks Citigroup for hosting and Cisco for network services. More information is available in the press release. Read about W3C Workshops.

W3C is pleased to announce the creation of the Multimedia Semantics Incubator Group, chartered to show how metadata interoperability can be achieved by using the Semantic Web technologies to integrate existing multimedia metadata standards. The group is sponsored by W3C Members IVML-NTUA, CWI, University of Aberdeen, University of Maryland and DFKI. Read about the Incubator Activity, a new initiative to foster development of emerging Web-related technologies.

The Internationalization Core Working Group has released the First Public Working Draft of Language Tags and Locale Identifiers for the World Wide Web. The draft includes mechanisms for identifying or selecting the language of content or locale preferences used to process information using Web technologies. It describes how document formats, specifications, and implementations should handle language tags, as well as data structures for describing international preferences. Visit the Internationalization home page.

The Multimodal Interaction Working Group has released Multimodal Application Developer Feedback as a Working Group Note. The Note documents feedback for the W3C Multimodal Interaction and Voice Browser Working Groups to consider when specifying future multimodal and voice authoring capabilities. It includes features developers liked about their development environments as well as features they thought were lacking. Visit the Multimodal Interaction home page.

The Internationalization Tag Set Working Group has published an updated Working Draft of the Internationalization Tag Set (ITS). Organized by data categories, this set of elements and attributes supports the internationalization and localization of schemas and documents. Implementations are provided for DTDs, XML Schema and Relax NG, and for existing vocabularies like XHTML, DocBook and OpenDocument. Visit the Internationalization home page.

The Multimodal Interaction Working Group has released an updated Working Draft of Multimodal Architecture and Interfaces. The draft is a framework and platform for the creation and development of user interfaces that allow multiple ways to interact with the Web. With multimodal interaction users choose the way or "mode" of access that suits their current needs. Developers can provide user interfaces and output for each mode, including displays, tactile mechanisms, speech and audio.

The Semantic Web Best Practices and Deployment (SWBPD) Working Group has published Defining N-ary Relations on the Semantic Web as a Working Group Note. In Semantic Web languages like RDF and OWL, a property links two individuals or an individual and a value. The Note presents patterns and considerations for representing relations between more than two individuals or values. Visit the Semantic Web home page.

The Web API Working Group has released a Working Draft of Document Object Model (DOM) Level 3 Events. Language and platform neutral, the system allows registration of event handlers, describes event flow through a tree structure, and provides context for each event. The previous version of this document was a Working Group Note from the Document Object Model (DOM) Working Group. Read about the Rich Web Clients Activity.

W3C plans an International Workshop on the Implementation of a Device Description Repository on 12-13 July in Madrid, Spain, hosted by Telefónica Investigación y Desarrollo. Participants will discuss the design, implementation and use of a Device Description Repository (DDR) being proposed by the Device Description Working Group. The proposed DDR will provide device information to content and service providers for adapting content to suit client devices. A Call for Participation for this Workshop is expected in April. Read about W3C Workshops and the Mobile Web Initiative.

The Mobile Web Best Practices Working Group has released a second Last Call Working Draft of Mobile Web Best Practices 1.0. The draft describes how to produce Web content and Web sites intended for delivery to mobile and small-screen devices. Written for all participants in the mobile value chain, the document is designed to improve user experience. Comments are welcome through 3 May. Read about the W3C Mobile Web Initiative, a joint effort by authoring tool vendors, content providers, handset manufacturers, browser vendors and mobile operators.

Addressing many of the comments received during Last Call, the CSS Working Group has published a Working Draft of Cascading Style Sheets, level 2 revision 1 (CSS 2.1). CSS 2.1 is derived from and is intended to replace CSS2. A snapshot of CSS language usage, the specification adds a few highly requested features, fixes errata and brings CSS2 in line with implementations. Visit the CSS home page.

The XML Processing Model Working Group has released the First Public Working Draft of XML Processing Model Requirements and Use Cases. The draft describes the conceptual model of XML process interactions, the XML Pipeline Language to describe these interactions, and the inputs and outputs of the overall process. The group is chartered to standardize the order, parameters, and expected results for transformations for the large group of specifications such as XSLT, XML Schema, XInclude and XML Canonicalization that operate on and produce XML documents. Visit the XML home page.

The Web API Working Group has released the First Public Working Draft of Window Object 1.0. This draft defines the Window object, a long-standing de facto standard. Window provides the global namespace for Web scripting languages, access to other documents in a compound document by reference, timers and navigation to other locations. Read about the Rich Web Clients Activity.

The Device Description Working Group has released the First Public Working Draft of Device Description Repository Requirements 1.0. This draft contains requirements for storing and giving access to device descriptions. Topics include extensibility and capacity; query, access and management mechanisms, availability and resilience; extensibility; format and storage; and validation and accuracy. Read about the W3C Mobile Web Initiative, a joint effort by authoring tool vendors, content providers, handset manufacturers, browser vendors and mobile operators.

W3C is pleased to announce the advancement of the SPARQL specifications to Candidate Recommendations. With SPARQL (pronounced "sparkle"), developers and end users can write and consume search results across a wide range of information such as personal data, social networks and metadata about digital artifacts like music and images. SPARQL Query Language for RDF specifies syntax for authoring, matching and testing. SPARQL Protocol for RDF describes remote data access and transmission of queries from clients to processors. The SPARQL Query Results XML Format is provided for search results. Visit the Semantic Web home page.

The Web API Working Group has released the First Public Working Draft of The XMLHttpRequest Object. The draft documents features of the XMLHttpRequest object, the core component of AJAX. The interface allows scripts to perform HTTP client functions, such as submitting form data or loading data from a remote Web site. Read about the Rich Web Clients Activity.

W3C is pleased to announce the opening of the W3C China Office. The Office is hosted at the School of Computer Science & Engineering of Beihang University in Beijing, China. Jinpeng Huai is Office Manager. Kazuyuki Ashimura, Steve Bratt, Marie-Claire Forgue, Ivan Herman, Richard Ishida, and Dean Jackson are among those attending the opening ceremonies on 27-28 April. Read the press release and about W3C Offices.

The XML Schema Working Group has released an updated Working Draft of XML Schema 1.1 Part 1: Structures. XML schemas define shared markup vocabularies, the structure of XML documents which use those vocabularies, and provide hooks to associate semantics with them. This draft has changes for XML 1.1, union types, context, canonical forms of values, the Simple Type Definition, and white space handling. Visit the XML home page.

Browse W3C presentations and events also available as an RSS channel.

• Steve Bratt presents at CTIA Wireless 2006 on 4 April in Las Vegas, NV, USA.
• Tim Berners-Lee presents on 5 April at the Spencer Trask Lectures Series at Princeton University in Princeton, NJ, USA.
• Molly Holzschlag presents at Knowbility Access U on 6 April in San Francisco, CA, USA.
• José Manuel Alonso presents at the CIO Summit 2006 on 20 April in Madrid, Spain.
• On behalf of the W3C Office in Hong Kong, Ivan Herman presents at HKUST on 24 April in Hong Kong, China.

The W3C Technical Architecture Group (TAG) has released the First Public Working Draft of The Disposition of Names in an XML Namespace. This finding on a TAG issue addresses the question of whether or not adding new names to a (published) namespace is a sound practice. The TAG's mission is stewardship of the Web architecture. Read Architecture of the World Wide Web and the TAG findings, and visit the TAG home page.

W3C is pleased to announce the advancement of XML Linking Language (XLink) Version 1.1 to Candidate Recommendation. Comments are welcome through 1 July. The XLink 1.1 language allows elements to be inserted into XML documents in order to create and describe links between resources. It uses XML syntax to create structures that can describe links similar to the simple unidirectional hyperlinks of today's HTML, as well as more sophisticated links. Visit the XML home page.

The Web Services Description Working Group has updated three Candidate Recommendations for the Web Services Description Language (WSDL) Version 2.0: Part 0: Primer, Part 1: Core Language and Part 2: Adjuncts. Comments are welcome through 1 July. WSDL RDF Mapping and SOAP 1.1 Binding are updated Working Drafts. WSDL 2.0 models and describes modular Web services and is used to document distributed systems and to automate communication between applications. Read about Web services.

The Rule Interchange Format (RIF) Working Group has published the First Public Working Draft of RIF Use Cases and Requirements. Synthesized from nearly fifty use cases, the document specifies use cases and requirements for a format that allows rules to be translated between rule languages and thus transferred between rule systems. The group invites comments through 21 April. Visit the Semantic Web home page.

The Semantic Web Best Practices and Deployment Working Group has published the First Public Working Draft of Image Annotation on the Semantic Web. Produced by the group's Multimedia Annotation in the Semantic Web Task Force, the draft describes creation, storage, manipulation, interchange and processing of image metadata. Guidelines and an overview of tools and RDF and OWL vocabularies are provided. Visit the Semantic Web home page.

W3C is pleased to announce the renewal of the Web Services Activity through February 2008. The Activity has an Interest Group, a Coordination Group, and four Working Groups including the new Semantic Annotations for Web Services Description Language (SAWSDL) Working Group. Participation is open to W3C Members. "W3C is bringing communities together... to work on a standard solution for Web automation," said Jacek Kopecky (DERI Innsbruck), Chair of the SAWSDL Working Group. Read the press release and about W3C Activities.

Browse W3C presentations and events also available as an RSS channel.

• Oreste Signore participates in a panel at Broadcasting & Videoconferencing on 22 March in Milan, Italy.
• Tim Berners-Lee presents a Richard Snyder Presidential Lecture at Tufts University on 28 March in Medford, MA, USA.
• Steve Bratt presents at CTIA Wireless 2006 on 4 April in Las Vegas, NV, USA.
• Tim Berners-Lee presents at the Spencer Trask Lecture Series at Princeton University on 5 April in Princeton, NJ, USA.
• Molly Holzschlag gives a keynote at Knowbility Access U on 6 April in San Francisco, CA, USA.
• Molly Holzschlag gives a tutorial at the Los Alamos National Laboratories Web Design Conference on 15 May in Los Alamos, NM, USA.
• Steven Pemberton gives a tutorial at XTech 2006 on 16 May in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
• Rhys Lewis gives a keynote at W4A2006 - Building the Mobile Web: Rediscovering Accessibility? on 22 May in Edinburgh, UK.
• Ivan Herman and Richard Ishida give tutorials on 24-26 May at the 15th International World Wide Web Conference (WWW2006) in Edinburgh, UK.

W3C is pleased to announce the advancement of Web Services Addressing - Core and its SOAP Binding to Proposed Recommendations. The core specification defines properties that allow uniform addressing of Web services and messages, independent of the underlying transport. The binding defines the core properties' association to SOAP messages. Comments are welcome through 18 April. SOAP 1.1 Request Optional Response HTTP Binding was published as a Working Group Note. Visit the Web services home page.

The Device Independence Working Group has updated the Delivery Context Overview for Device Independence Working Group Note. The term delivery context is used to describe user preferences and the capabilities of user Web access mechanisms. Part of a series, the Note describes information that may be included in the delivery context, and how that information may be used and conveyed. Read more about device independence.

Following a successful Workshop in Beijing, China, W3C holds a second Workshop on Internationalizing the Speech Synthesis Markup Language (SSML) on 30-31 May, hosted by the Foundation for Research and Technology - Hellas (FORTH) in Heraklion, Crete, site of the W3C Office in Greece. Attendees will identify and prioritize extensions and additions to SSML to improve its use for rendering non-English languages. Position papers are due 14 April. Read about W3C Workshops and visit the Voice Browser home page.

The W3C Workshop on Transparency and Usability of Web Authentication is underway 15-16 March hosted by Citigroup in New York, NY USA. Attendees will identify and report publicly on steps W3C can take to improve the Web's trustworthiness and security for users. Read the program, over forty accepted position papers and about Technology and Society.

W3C is pleased to announce new management of Activities related to the Web's user interface. Philipp Hoschka leads the newly created Ubiquitous Web Domain which includes the Device Independence, Mobile Web Initiative (MWI), Multimodal Interaction and Voice Browser Activities, and continues his role as W3C Deputy Director for Europe. Chris Lilley leads the Interaction Domain which includes the Graphics, HTML, Math, Rich Web Clients, Style, Synchronized Multimedia and XForms Activities. Read about W3C's Management Team and Activities.

The HTML Working Group and the Semantic Web Best Practices and Deployment Working Group jointly have published the First Public Working Draft of the RDF/A Primer 1.0. Produced by the groups' RDF in XHTML Task Force, the draft is a companion to the XHTML 2.0 specification. This document introduces syntax for expressing RDF metadata within XHTML and explains the use of the XHTML metainformation modules. Read about the HTML Activity and the Semantic Web.

The World Wide Web Consortium today released XForms 1.0 Second Edition as a W3C Recommendation. The new generation of Web forms, XForms separate presentation and content, minimize round-trips to the server, offer device independence, and reduce the need for scripting. This second edition adds clarifications and corrects errors as reported in the first edition errata. Second edition publications include the following documents.

• XForms 1.0 Second Edition
• XForms for HTML Authors: Part 2
• XForms Quick Reference
• XHTML to XForms Converter (XSLT)
• Revised XForms Test Suite

The Semantic Web Best Practices and Deployment Working Group has published the First Public Working Draft of Best Practice Recipes for Publishing RDF Vocabularies. Produced by the group's Vocabulary Management Task Force, this cookbook offers step-by-step instructions for choosing and publishing an RDF Schema or OWL vocabulary or ontology on the Web, giving example configurations for the Apache HTTP server. Visit the Semantic Web home page.

The Semantic Web Best Practices and Deployment Working Group has published XML Schema Datatypes in RDF and OWL as a Working Group Note. Providing questions and answers about XML Schema datatypes in the Semantic Web, the Note addresses user defined datatypes, comparison of values, duration, and the use of numeric types. Visit the Semantic Web home page.

The Semantic Web Best Practices and Deployment Working Group has published A Semantic Web Primer for Object-Oriented Software Developers as a Working Group Note. Produced by the group's Software Engineering Task Force, the Note shows how development processes can use the Semantic Web as a platform for domain model creation, sharing and reuse. RDF Schema and OWL are shown used in tandem with mainstream object-oriented languages. Visit the Semantic Web home page.

W3C holds its Technical Plenary Week from 27 February - 3 March in Cannes-Mandelieu, France where 30 W3C Working Groups and Interest Groups hold face-to-face meetings. Participants and invited guests attend plenary day for talks and discussions on data ownership, microformats, query languages, the Grid, a backplane for compound documents, and formal methods. Join W3C and attend the next Technical Plenary planned for November 2007 in the Boston, Massachusetts area, USA.

The Internationalization Tag Set Working Group has published an updated Working Draft of the Internationalization Tag Set (ITS). Organized by data categories, this set of elements and attributes supports the internationalization and localization of schemas and documents. Implementations are provided for DTDs, XML Schema and Relax NG, and for existing vocabularies like XHTML, DocBook and OpenDocument. Visit the Internationalization home page.

The RDF Data Access Working Group has released a second Last Call Working Draft of the SPARQL Query Language for RDF. SPARQL (pronounced "sparkle") offers developers and end users a way to write and to consume search results across a wide range of information such as personal data, social networks and metadata about digital artifacts like music and images. SPARQL also provides a means of integration over disparate sources. Visit the Semantic Web home page.

W3C invites the public to the free seminar Using Web Services - From Infrastructure to Semantics in Paris, France on 6 March. W3C Members Amadeus, Canon, France Telecom, Nokia and W3C technical staff will demonstrate Web services in real world scenarios, show how business challenges are resolved, and offer a preview of semantic enhancements. Registration is required. Read the press release and about Web services. The WS2 project is a European IST Programme.

W3C is pleased to announce the advancement of Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL) Version 1.1 to Candidate Recommendation. Version 1.1 updates and enhances the XSL 1.0 Recommendation for change marks, indexes, multiple flows, and bookmarks, and extends support for graphics scaling, markers, and page numbers. Comments are welcome through 31 May. Read about the XML Activity.

The XML Schema Working Group has released a Last Call Working Draft of XML Schema 1.1 Part 2: Datatypes. Comments are welcome through 31 March. XML schemas define shared markup vocabularies, the structure of XML documents which use those vocabularies, and provide hooks to associate semantics with them. With XML Schema Part 2, datatypes may be defined for use in XML schemas as well as other contexts. Visit the XML home page.

The Web Services Addressing Working Group has released a Last Call Working Draft of Web Services Addressing 1.0 - WSDL Binding. Comments are welcome through 31 March. The document defines how the properties in Web Services Addressing 1.0 - Core are described in the Web Services Description Language (WSDL). Web Services Addressing provides transport-neutral mechanisms and is designed to work with both WSDL versions 1.1 and 2.0. Read about Web services at W3C.

Please join W3C at the 3GSM World Congress in Hall 2 stand G78 on 13-16 February in Barcelona, Spain. Marie-Claire Forgue, Dominique Hazaël-Massieux, Philipp Hoschka and Cédric Kiss present. "At 3GSM 2006, W3C will show recent work on best practices for mobile content authors. With authors' help, mobile telephones and computers can offer usable and interoperable Web browsing worldwide," said Philipp Hoschka. Read about W3C at 3GSM and the W3C Mobile Web Initiative.

The P3P Specification Working Group has released a Last Call Working Draft of the Platform for Privacy Preferences 1.1 (P3P 1.1). P3P simplifies and automates the process of reading Web site privacy policies, promoting trust and confidence in the Web. Version 1.1 has new extension and binding mechanisms based on suggestions from W3C workshops and the privacy community. The draft completes the transition to XML Schema for P3P data schemas. Comments are welcome through 31 March. Read about privacy and P3P.

W3C is pleased to announce the advancement of XHTML™ Modularization 1.1 to Proposed Recommendation. This modularization allows the subsets and extensions to XHTML needed for emerging platforms. This document is based on Modularization of XHTML in XML Schema and the Modularization of XHTML W3C Recommendation. Comments are welcome through 6 March. Visit the HTML home page.

The Device Description Working Group has released the First Public Working Draft of Device Description Landscape, a companion to Device Description Ecosystem. This draft describes the current state of the various options that exist for providing Device Descriptions to enable device-aware applications. Read about the W3C Mobile Web Initiative, a joint effort by authoring tool vendors, content providers, handset manufacturers, browser vendors and mobile operators.

The Semantic Web Best Practices and Deployment Working Group has published A Survey of RDF/Topic Maps Interoperability Proposals as a Working Group Note. The Note records existing proposals for integrating data represented in W3C's RDF/OWL family of languages with data represented in ISO's Topic Maps. It is a starting point for establishing guidelines for combined usage of these standards, assuring interoperability. Visit the Semantic Web home page.

W3C announces the launch of its Incubator Activity, a new initiative to foster development of emerging Web-related technologies. "With the Incubator Activity, W3C Members and Invited Experts can now combine Web technology discovery with the outstanding technical resources of W3C and see what develops," said Steve Bratt, W3C Chief Executive Officer. The first Incubator Group (XG) to be launched addresses the issue of content labels. Read the press release and the new XG charter.

A joint effort of the SVG and Web API Working Groups, the REX Task Force has released the First Public Working Draft of Remote Events for XML (REX) 1.0 and their Requirements. Using the REX grammar, endpoints can interact with DOM Events remotely as if they were at the same location. Read more about Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) and Web APIs.

The Internationalization GEO (Guidelines, Education & Outreach) Working Group publishes information to help people understand and use international aspects of W3C technologies. Recently the group published Changing (X)HTML page encoding to UTF-8, xml:lang in XML document schemas and Localization vs. Internationalization, as well as numerous updates and translations. For details and I18n news and RSS feeds, visit the Internationalization home page.

Mobile industry leaders have reached a preliminary agreement on best practices for mobile Web content. Written to improve user experience, the Last Call Working Draft of Mobile Web Best Practices 1.0 describes how to produce Web content and Web sites intended for delivery to mobile and small-screen devices. Please send review comments before 17 February 2006. Read the press release and about the W3C Mobile Web Initiative. Visit the W3C booth at 3GSM 13-16 February in Barcelona, Spain.

W3C is pleased to announce the advancement of XHTML-Print to Proposed Recommendation. Comments are welcome through 28 February. XHTML-Print is designed for printing from mobile devices, low-cost printers and in environments without a printer-specific driver. The work is based on XHTML-Print written by the Printer Working Group (PWG), a program of the IEEE-ISTO. Visit the HTML home page.

The Math Interest Group has released Arabic mathematical notation as an Interest Group Note. The Note analyzes the handling of mathematical presentation in Arabic and related languages using the Mathematical Markup Language (MathML) 2.0. Its goals are to clarify implementation details and to uncover genuine specification limitations that may require extensions. Read about the W3C Math Activity.

The Voice Browser Working Group has released a Last Call Working Draft of Pronunciation Lexicon Specification (PLS) Version 1.0. Comments are welcome through 15 March. Designed for ease of use by developers and internationally, PLS allows pronunciation information to be specified for speech recognition and speech synthesis engines in voice browsing applications. Pronunciations grouped together in a PLS document may be referenced from other markup languages such as SRGS and SSML. Visit the Voice Browser home page.

Browse W3C presentations and events also available as an RSS channel.

• Tim Berners-Lee gives a keynote at the MIT Information Technology Conference on 2 February in Cambridge, MA, USA.
• Olle Olsson presents at the SITI-konferensen 2006 on 2 February in Stockholm, Sweden.
• Masayasu Ishikawa participates in a panel at PAGE2006 on 3 February in Tokyo, Japan.
• Richard Ishida presents at the Open Road Conference on 7 February in Melbourne, Australia.
• Shadi Abou-Zahra gives a keynote at the Euro American Conference on Telematics and Information Systems (EATIS 2006) on 7 February in Santa Marta, Colombia.
• Daniel J. Weitzner participates in a panel at the Internet Caucus State of the Net Conference on 8 February in Washington, DC, USA.
• On behalf of the W3C Indian Office, Ivan Herman gives a talk organized by the Delhi Chapter of the IEEE on 8 February in Delhi, India.
• Richard Ishida presents at the Victoria Online Seminar Series on 8 February in Melbourne, Australia.
• Richard Ishida presents at the WSG Meeting on 9 February in Melbourne, Australia.
• Olle Olsson presents at Aktuella utmaningar on 10 February in Stockholm, Sweden.
• Ivan Herman presents at the LinuxAsia Conference & Expo on 10 February in Delhi, India.
• Richard Ishida presents at the W3C/WSG Meeting on 10 February in Canberra, Australia.
• Oreste Signore presents at the VIII Congresso Nazionale SIE on 10 February in Milan, Italy.
• Marie-Claire Forgue, Dominique Hazaël-Massieux, Philipp Hoschka and Cédric Kiss run a booth at the 3GSM World Congress on 13 February in Barcelona, Spain.
• Molly E. Holzschlag presents at the North East Usability and Accessibility (NEUA) Group Meeting on 15 February in Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK.
• Martín Álvarez presents at II Congreso Nacional de BPMS on 15 February in Madrid, Spain.
• Eric Miller presents at the Bioinformatics Summit on 16 February in Bethesda, MD, USA.

The XML Query Working Group has released First Public Working Drafts of the XQuery Update Facility and its Use Cases. XML Query can perform searches, queries and joins over collections of XDM instances such as documents and databases. Today's drafts provide expressions to create, modify and delete nodes within those instances. Visit the XML home page.

The RDF Data Access Working Group has released a second Last Call Working Draft of the SPARQL Query Results XML Format. The SPARQL query language (pronounced "sparkle") offers developers and end users a way to write and to consume search results across a wide range of information such as personal data, social networks and metadata about digital artifacts like music and images. SPARQL also provides a means of integration over disparate sources. Comments are welcome through 10 February. Visit the Semantic Web home page.

The RDF Data Access Working Group has released a second Last Call Working Draft of the SPARQL Protocol for RDF. The draft describes RDF data access and transmission of RDF queries from clients to processors. The protocol is compatible with the SPARQL query language (pronounced "sparkle") and is designed to convey queries from other RDF query languages as well. Comments are welcome through 10 February. Visit the Semantic Web home page.

W3C holds the Workshop on the Ubiquitous Web on 9-10 March in Tokyo, Japan. The Ubiquitous Web "takes advantage of the diversity of networked devices," said Dave Raggett (W3C/Canon). Attendees will examine technologies and help W3C make choices for standardization to realize the vision of distributed applications that adapt to users' needs, device capabilities and environmental conditions. Position papers are due 10 February. Read the press release and about W3C Workshops.

The Voice Browser Working Group has released an updated Working Draft of State Chart XML (SCXML): State Machine Notation for Control Abstraction 1.0. SCXML is an execution environment based on UML Harel State Tables and CCXML. SCXML is a candidate for the control language within VoiceXML 3.0, CCXML 2.0, and the authoring language under development by the Multimodal Interaction Working Group. Visit the Voice Browser home page.

W3C has named Dr. Steven R. Bratt to the newly-created position of W3C Chief Executive Officer (CEO), effective 20 January. In this capacity, Steve will continue to oversee worldwide operations and outreach, including overall management of Member relations, the W3C Process, the staff, strategic planning, budget, legal matters, external liaisons and major events. Since joining W3C in 2002, Steve served as W3C's Chief Operating Officer and subsequently also as Acting Chair. Read about the W3C management team and more About W3C.

As part of the European IST Programme's WS2 project, the seminar Using Web Services - From Infrastructure to Semantics will be held in Paris, France on 6 March. W3C Members Amadeus, Canon, France Telecom, Nokia and W3C technical staff will demonstrate the use of Web services technologies in real world scenarios. Please register. The seminar is free and open to the public. Visit the Web Services home page.

W3C is pleased to announce that the XML Key Management (XKMS) Working Group has successfully completed its work: the W3C Recommendation XML Key Management Specification (XKMS 2.0) and its companion Bindings and Requirements as well as the Working Group Notes Using XKMS with PGP and A WSDL 1.1 description for XKMS. With XKMS, users can share public key identity across applications, systems and trust boundaries. Please join us in thanking all participants and Chairs Stephen Farrell (Invited Expert) and Shivaram Mysore (Microsoft) for their contributions. Read about Technology and Society at W3C.

Browse W3C presentations and events also available as an RSS channel.

• José Manuel Alonso presents at Jornadas Técnicas sobre Administración Electrónica "Abrimos 24 horas" on 20 January in Gijón, Spain.
• Steve Bratt presents at the RFID Academic Convocation on 23 January in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.
• Deborah Dahl presents at SpeechTek West 2006 on 30 January and 1 February in San Francisco, California, USA.
• Dave Raggett presents at SpeechTek West 2006 on 31 January in San Francisco, California, USA.
• Masayasu Ishikawa participates in a panel at PAGE2006 on 3 February in Tokyo, Japan.
• Richard Ishida presents at the Open Road Conference on 7 February in Melbourne, Australia.
• On behalf of the W3C Hungarian Office, Ivan Herman presents at the Magyarországi Web Konferencia on 18 March in Budapest, Hungary.
• Rhys Lewis gives a keynote at W4A2006 - Building the Mobile Web: Rediscovering Accessibility? on 22 May in Edinburgh, UK.

Position papers are due 25 January for the W3C Workshop on Transparency and Usability of Web Authentication to be held 15-16 March 2006, hosted by Citigroup in New York, NY, USA. Attendees will identify steps W3C can take to improve the Web's trustworthiness and security for users. Topics include site authentication, safe Web client behavior, communication with users, infrastructures for content providers, and user agent testing. Read the press release, about W3C Workshops and more about Technology and Society.

The XML Schema Working Group has released an updated Working Draft of XML Schema 1.1 Part 2: Datatypes. XML schemas define shared markup vocabularies, the structure of XML documents which use those vocabularies, and provide hooks to associate semantics with them. With XML Schema Part 2, datatypes may be defined for use in XML schemas as well as other contexts. Visit the XML home page.

W3C is pleased to announce the advancement of the Semantic Interpretation for Speech Recognition (SISR) Version 1.0 language to Candidate Recommendation. The specification describes ECMAScript-based annotations to grammar rules for extracting meaning from speech recognition. SISR defines the syntax and semantics of tag content in the Speech Recognition Grammar Specification (SRGS) for output as serialized XML or ECMAScript variables. Comments are welcome through 20 February. Visit the Voice Browser home page.

The Mobile Web Best Practices Working Group has released a Last Call Working Draft of Mobile Web Best Practices 1.0. The draft describes how to produce Web content and Web sites intended for delivery to mobile and small-screen devices. Written for all participants in the mobile value chain, the document is designed to improve user experience. Comments are welcome through 17 February. Read about the W3C Mobile Web Initiative, a joint effort by authoring tool vendors, content providers, handset manufacturers, browser vendors and mobile operators.

The W3C Advisory Committee has elected T.V. Raman (Google) and Henry Thompson (University of Edinburgh) to the W3C Technical Architecture Group (TAG). Continuing TAG participants are Dan Connolly (W3C), Noah Mendelsohn (IBM), David Orchard (BEA), Ed Rice (HP), Norman Walsh (Sun Microsystems) and co-Chairs Tim Berners-Lee (W3C) and Vincent Quint (INRIA). In 2004, the TAG published the W3C Recommendation Architecture of the World Wide Web, Volume One. Visit the TAG home page.

W3C's Offices held their annual meeting on 10-11 January in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. "Office representatives from five continents and members of the W3C Communication Team have gathered at CWI, the hosting institution of the W3C Benelux Office in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Issues related to W3C Membership, Office events, outreach, and plans for the future of the W3C Office program for 2006 and beyond were discussed," said Ivan Herman, Head of Offices. W3C Offices work with their regional Web communities to promote W3C technologies in local languages, broaden W3C's geographical base, and encourage international participation in W3C Activities. Visit the Offices home page.

The Semantic Web Conference 2006 will be held at Keio University in Tokyo, Japan on 27 January 2006, organized by INTAP. Keio University holds an exhibition booth, Nobuo Saito gives a welcome message, and Tatsuya Hagino presents "Past and Future of the Semantic Web" and moderates a panel discussion on "Semantic Web, the Past, Today and Tomorrow."

W3C is pleased to announce the advancement of the Web Services Description Language (WSDL) Version 2.0 specifications to Candidate Recommendations: Part 0: Primer, Part 1: Core Language and Part 2: Adjuncts. Comments are welcome through 15 March. SOAP 1.1 Binding is an updated Working Draft. WSDL 2.0 models and describes modular Web services and is used to document distributed systems and to automate communication between applications. Read about Web services.