W3C is pleased to receive the POIX submission from ACCESS Co., Ltd., TOYOTA MOTOR CORPORATION, Mitsubishi Electric Corporation, SHARP CORPORATION, Aplix Corporation, and NEC Corporation.
The Point of Interest Exchange (POIX) is a language, written in XML, for describing location-related information that is suitable for exchanging it over the Internet, e.g. via e-mail or by embedding in other documents. Nowadays, various types of mobile devices including PDAs and car navigation systems can access to the Internet, and the need for exchanging the location-related information is increasing.
An interesting aspect of the proposal is that it is capable to describe not only specific location information, such as latitude and longitude, but also various supplemental information about the target location such as route to the target location and contact information for the target location. Such supplemental information might be useful for some applications, such as car navigation systems, but there will be other applications which only need specific location information. In this respect, it might be useful to modularize the POIX language so that applications can use appropriate modules they need. Such modularization will make it easier to combine with other languages, e.g. modularized XHTML.
Another interesting point is that this proposal allows to specify format information like geodetic datum and angle unit. As methods of representing locations differ acccording to the country, region and organization, it will be a pragmatic way until they are standardized.
The proposal includes the "operational" specification in addition to the "language" specification. While it is necessary to define operational details, it would be better to separate the two specifications, as operational specification will differ by users.
As for standardization of representing geographical and point of interest information, relevant works being done by the Dublin Core and the IETF should also be studied.
Handling location information in mobile devices is among agenda items of the W3C Mobile Access Activity. Embedding location information into HTML/XML documents will be interesting for the HTML Activity, particularly for the mobile-related work on XHTML.
POIX will be brought to the attention of the participants in the Mobile Access Interest Group for discussion. The IG will hold a face-to-face meeting in July, so we encourage the submitters to present POIX there.
The HTML Working Group should also look at it in conjunction with its mobile-related work.
Disclaimer: Placing a Submission on a Working Group/Interest Group agenda does not imply endorsement by either the W3C Staff or the participants of the Working Group/Interest Group, nor does it guarantee that the Working Group/Interest Group will agree to take any specific action on a Submission.