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14 April 2008

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Six OWL 2 Drafts Published

2008-04-11: The OWL Working Group published six drafts today related to the OWL 2 Web Ontology Language:

OWL 2 (previously known as OWL 1.1) defines extensions to OWL, which is one of the core standards of the Semantic Web. Semantic Web terms (such as "author" or "title") can be organized into vocabularies (such as "data about publications"). OWL is used to represent the meaning of terms (see, for example, the work of the Health Care and Life Sciences Interest Group) in these vocabularies (or, "ontologies'), and relationships between those terms. Three of the drafts published today (syntax, semantics, and mapping-to-rdf) are the same as their January 2008 counterparts except for the name change. Of the three new drafts: "XML Serialization" specifies a new XML (not RDF/XML) syntax for OWL; "Profiles" specifies subsets (logical fragments) of OWL that target particular application contexts; and the "Primer" provides a unified technical introduction to OWL 2. The Working Group seeks feedback on these drafts and has highlighted particular issues throughout the documents. Learn more about the Semantic Web. (Permalink)

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Multimodal Architecture and Interfaces Working Draft Published

2008-04-14: The Multimodal Interaction Working Group has published an updated Working Draft of Multimodal Architecture and Interfaces (MMI Architecture), which defines a loosely coupled architecture for multimodal user interfaces. The main change in this draft is a more thorough specification of the events sent between the Runtime Framework and the Modality Components, including both schemas for the individual messages and ladder diagrams showing message sequences. The architecture envisioned by the Working Group will provide a general and flexible framework providing interoperability among modality-specific components from different vendors - for example, speech recognition from one vendor and handwriting recognition from another. Learn more about W3C's Multimodal Interaction Activity. (Permalink)

Content Transformation Guidelines 1.0, Comments on First Public Draft Welcome

2008-04-14: The Mobile Web Best Practices Working Group has published the First Public Working Draft of Content Transformation Guidelines 1.0. This document provides guidance to managers of content transformation proxies and to content providers for how to coordinate when delivering Web content. Content transformation techniques diverge widely on the web, with many non-standard HTTP implications, and no well-understood means either of identifying the presence of such transforming proxies, nor of controlling their actions. This document establishes a framework to allow that to happen. Learn more about the Mobile Web Initiative Activity. (Permalink)

Four "Widgets 1.0" Working Drafts Published

2008-04-14: The Web Application Formats Working Group has published four Working Drafts related to Widgets 1.0: The Widget Landscape (Q1 2008), Packaging and Configuration, Digital Signature, and Requirements; these are the First Public drafts for Digital Signatures and Landscape. Widgets are small client-side Web applications for displaying and updating remote data, that are packaged in a way to allow a single download and installation on a client machine, mobile phone, or mobile Internet device. "Landscape" reviews commonalities and fragmentation across widget user agents and explores how fragmentation currently affects, amongst other things, authoring, security, distribution and deployment, internationalization and the device-independence of widgets. "Packaging" defines a Zip-based packaging format and an XML-based configuration document format for widgets. "Digital Signature" defines a profile of the XML-Signature Syntax and Processing specification to allow a widget resource to be digitally signed. "Requirements" lists the design goals and requirements that specification would need to address in order to standardize various aspects of widgets. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity. (Permalink)

Requirements of Japanese Text Layout Draft Published

Typography sample2008-04-11: Participants from four W3C Groups — CSS, Internationalization Core, SVG and XSL Working Groups — as part of the Japanese Layout Task Force published Requirements of Japanese Text Layout. This document describes requirements for general Japanese layout realized with technologies like CSS, SVG and XSL-FO. The document is mainly based on a standard for Japanese layout, JIS X 4051. However, it also addresses areas which are not covered by JIS X 4051. Japanese version is also available. Learn more about basics of Japanese text layout and W3C's Internationalization Activity. (Permalink)

Last Call: XHTML Role Attribute Module

2008-04-10: The XHTML2 Working Group has published the second Last Call 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. This attribute can be integrated into any markup language based upon XHTML Modularization. Comments are welcome through 10 May. Learn more about the HTML Activity. (Permalink)

Language Bindings for DOM Specifications Draft Published

2008-04-10: The Web API Working Group has published the Working Draft of Language Bindings for DOM Specifications. This specification defines an Interface Definition Language (IDL) to be used by other specifications that define a Document Object Model (DOM). The document also addresses how interfaces described with this IDL correspond to constructs within ECMAScript and Java execution environments. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity. (Permalink)

Mathematical Markup Language (MathML) Version 3.0 Draft Published

2008-04-09: The Math Working Group has published a Working Draft of Mathematical Markup Language (MathML) Version 3.0. This is the third draft of MathML, an XML application for describing mathematical notation and capturing both its structure and content. The goal of MathML is to enable mathematics to be served, received, and processed on the World Wide Web, just as HTML has enabled this functionality for text. Learn more about the Math Activity. (Permalink)

Rich Web Application Backplane Incubator Group to Study Building Blocks for Web Applications

2008-04-09: W3C is pleased to announce the creation of the Rich Web Application Backplane Incubator Group, sponsored by W3C Members CWI, HP, IBM, and Xerox. The mission of the XG is to explore and refine the architecture of a "Rich Web Application Backplane" -- a set of common building blocks for Web applications. The XG charter states: "[B]enefits to end-user interaction of adopting such common infrastructure will include richer user interaction enabled through simplified approaches to mixing multiple interaction technologies in a single application. The ability to easily share data across multiple components, and to freely intermix AJAX and declarative components, should support a wider range of high function composable UIs." Like all XG's, this group's work is not standards-track. Read more about the Incubator Activity, an initiative to foster development of emerging Web-related technologies. (Permalink)

Last Call: Device Description Repository Simple API

2008-04-08: The Mobile Web Initiative Device Description Working Group has published the First Public and Last Call Working Draft of Device Description Repository Simple API. Web content delivered to mobile devices usually benefits from being tailored to take into account a range of factors such as screen size, markup language support and image format support. Such information is stored in "Device Description Repositories" (DDRs). This document describes a simple API for access to DDRs, in order to ease and promote the development of Web content that adapts to its Delivery Context. Comments are welcome through 01 May. Learn more about the Mobile Web Initiative. (Permalink)

Health Care and Life Sciences Interest Group Drafts Show Power of Data Integration

2008-04-08: The mission of the W3C Health Care and Life Sciences (HCLS) Interest Group is to show how to use Semantic Web technology to answer cross-disciplinary questions in life science that have, until now, been prohibitively difficult to research. Today the HCLS Interest Group published two Working Drafts. The first describes the construction and use of the knowledge base that was used as part of a demonstration of life sciences data integration at the the 2007 World Wide Web Conference in Banff, Canada. The second document explains the process of integrating data with an existing Semantic Web knowledge base. The success of the group continues to draw industry interest. W3C Members are currently reviewing a draft charter that would enable the renewed HCLS Interest Group to develop and support use cases that have clear scientific, business and/or technical value, using Semantic Web technologies in three areas: life science, translational medicine, and health care. We invite all W3C Members to review the draft charter (which is public during the review), and encourage those who are interested in using the Semantic Web to solve knowledge representation and integration on a large scale to join the Interest Group. Learn more about the Semantic Web Activity. (Permalink)

Upcoming Meetings

WWW 2008

Multiple presenters will be at W3C Track, The 17th International World Wide Web Conference (WWW2008) in Beijing, China:

21 April
  • Producing XML that works internationally, by Richard Ishida, Felix Sasaki
  • Introduction to the Semantic Web (through an example…), by Ivan Herman
  • RDFa: Extensible Structured Data in HTML, by Ben Adida, Elias Torres, Ivan Herman
23 April
  • W3C booth, by Marie-Claire Forgue
  • Geolocation in the Mobile Web , by Dave Raggett
  • Making a Web Site Accessible Both for Mobile Devices and for People with Disabilities, by Henny Swan
  • Localization and Internationalization of Layout on the Web, by Paul Nelson
  • Internationalizing Speech Synthesis, by Zhi Wei Shuang
  • International Domain Names, by Tina Dam
  • Adopting International Standards Locally: The Importance of Harmonization , by Judy Brewer
  • Linking Open Data, by Chris Bizer, Tom Heath, Tim Berners-Lee
  • A World of Stakeholders: Lessons from Global Outreach, by Daniel Dardailler
  • Semantic Web Development in China, by Huajun Chen
  • Managing Online Video (or Multimedia) Content with the Semantic Web, by Raphaël Troncy
  • What you Need to Know to Reach a Chinese Audience?, by Richard Ishida
  • News from W3C's Mobile Web Initiative, by Dominique Hazaël-Massieux
  • Mobile Web in Rural China, by Stéphane Boyera
24 April
  • POWDER Use Cases, by Kai-Dietrich Scheppe
  • Wicked Wide Web: Integrating Documents and Devices, by Doug Schepers
  • Accessibility for rich Web applications, by Lisa Pappas
  • Video on the Web, by Philippe Le Hégaret
  • Standards and mobile applications, services and widgets, by Art Barstow
  • Web Usage in China, by Weihan Liu
  • HTML 5, the future of Web Content, by Michael Smith
  • Web applications security issues, by Thomas Roessler
  • Improving Access to Government through Better Use of the Web, by José Manuel Alonso
  • Building a More Secure Browser, by Mary-Ellen Zurko

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