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Publication rules for Obsolete Recommendation (“REC-OBSOLETE”)

1. Normative Document Representation

  • § At least one normative representation must be available for requests that use the "This Version" URI. More than one normative representation may be delivered in response to such requests. A "This Version" URI must not be used to identify a non-normative representation.
  • § recursive All normative representations must validate as HTML5 with the following limitations:
    • Inline markup for MathML is permitted but should use a (fallback) alternative.
    • If the HTML5 validator issues content warnings, the publication request must include rationale why the warning is not problematic.
  • § Visual styles should not vary significantly among normative alternatives.

2. Document Metadata

  • § recursive Each document must include the following absolute URI to identify a style sheet for this maturity level: https://www.w3.org/StyleSheets/TR/2016/W3C-OBSL

    Include this source code:
    <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="https://www.w3.org/StyleSheets/TR/2016/W3C-OBSL"/>

  • § recursive Any internal style sheets must be cascaded before this link; i.e., the internal style sheets must not override the W3C tech report styles.
  • § recursive The viewport meta tag is required.

    Include this source code:
    <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1, shrink-to-fit=no">

  • § recursive The canonical link is required.

    Include this source code:
    <link rel="canonical" href="@@URL@@">

3. Front Matter

  • § The front matter must appear at the beginning of the body of the document, within <div class="head">. There is one exception to that requirement: the hr element after the copyright may appear inside or after the div element. Editors should not include other information in this section.
  • § The document's title must be in the title element and in an h1 element. When calculating text equation, special transformations made to h1 are:
    1. Replace ':<br>' with ': '
    2. Replace '<br>' with ' - '
    3. Extract text from h1, and ignore HTML tags.
  • § Technical report version information, i.e., version and edition numbers.
    1. If a Recommendation modified in place, see the Comm Team's policy regarding in-place modification of W3C Technical Reports, otherwise
    2. See the (non-normative) Version Management in W3C Technical Reports for more information.
  • § The document's status and date must be in an h2 element as follows (see also date syntax): 
    <h2>W3C Obsolete Recommendation DD Month YYYY</h2>
  • § Document identifier information must be presented in a dl list, where each dt element marks up an identifier role ("This Version", "Latest Version", "Previous Version", etc.) and each dd element includes a link whose link text is the identifier.
  • § Document identifier information must be present in this order:
    • This version URI.
    • Latest version URI(s). See also the (non-normative) Version Management in W3C Technical Reports for information about "latest version" URI and version management.
    • "Obsoletes this Recommendation" URI
  • § The syntax of a “this version” URI must be https://www.w3.org/TR/YYYY/OBSL-shortname-YYYYMMDD/.
  • § The syntax of a “latest version” URI must be https://www.w3.org/TR/shortname/.
  • § The title page date and the date at the end of the "This Version" URI must match.
  • § The editors'/authors' names must be listed, with attribute data-editor-id="@@". Affiliations and email addresses are optional; email addresses are not recommended. If an editor/author is acknowledged in an earlier version of this document and the individual's affiliation has since changed, list the individual using the notation "<name>, <affiliation> (until DD Month YYYY)". If the list of authors is very long (e.g., the entire Working Group), identify the authors in the acknowledgments section, linked from the head of the document. Distinguish any contributors from authors in the acknowledgments section.
  • § Immediately after the editors/authors' names, there must be a link to an errata document made with the following markup:

    <p>Please check the <a href="http://www.w3.org/..."><strong>errata</strong></a> for any errors or issues reported since publication.</p>

    The order of the a and strong elements may be reversed. See also suggestions on errata page structure in the Manual of Style. Note: Do not put the errata document in TR space as the expectation is that we will not modify document in TR space after publication; see the policy for in-place modification of W3C Technical Reports.

  • § Authors may provide links to alternative (non-normative) representations or packages for the document. For instance:

    <p>This document is also available in these non-normative formats: <a href="OBSL-shortname-20180101.html">single HTML file</a>, <a href="OBSL-shortname-20180101.tgz">gzipped tar file of HTML</a>.</p>

  • § It must include a public archived place to send comments to in the headers (<div class="head">) of the document. (GitHub repository issue links are expected to be of the form https://github.com/<USER_OR_ORG>/<REPO_NAME>/[issues|labels][/…].)
  • § A horizontal rule (hr) must follow the copyright.

5. Document Status Section

  • § There must be a status section that follows the abstract, labeled with an h2 element with content "Status of This Document". The Team maintains the status section of a document.
  • § It must begin with the following boilerplate text:

    This section describes the status of this document at the time of its publication. Other documents may supersede this document. A list of current W3C publications and the latest revision of this technical report can be found in the W3C technical reports index at https://www.w3.org/TR/.

    Include this source code:
    <p><em>This section describes the status of this document at the time of its publication. Other documents may supersede this document. A list of current W3C publications and the latest revision of this technical report can be found in the <a href="https://www.w3.org/TR/">W3C technical reports index</a> at https://www.w3.org/TR/.</em></p>
  • § All dates must have the form DD Month YYYY. A leading zero in the day is optional.
  • § It must indicate that it rescinds a Recommendation and must link to the most recent Recommendation (if any) having the same major revision number.
  • § It must include rationale for the decision to obsolete the Recommendation.

    Include this source code:
    <p>W3C has chosen to obsolete the <a href="@@PREVIOUS REC URI@@">@@TITLE@@ Recommendation</a> for the following reasons: [...list of reasons...]. For additional information about replacement or alternative technologies, please refer to the <a href="https://www.w3.org/2016/11/obsoleting-rescinding/">explanation of Obsoleting, Rescinding or Superseding W3C Specifications</a>.</p>

  • § It should direct readers to alternative technologies.
  • § It must include at least one customized paragraph. This section should include the title page date (i.e., the one next to the maturity level at the top of the document). These paragraphs should explain the publication context, including rationale and relationships to other work. See examples and more discussion in the Manual of Style.
  • § It must include a link to changes since the previous draft (e.g., a list of changes or a diff document or both; see the online HTML diff tool).
  • § It must set expectations about the stability of the document. The recommended text is:

    This document has been reviewed by W3C Members, by software developers, and by other W3C groups and interested parties, and is endorsed by the Director as a W3C Recommendation. It is a stable document and may be used as reference material or cited from another document. W3C's role in making the Recommendation is to draw attention to the specification and to promote its widespread deployment. This enhances the functionality and interoperability of the Web.

    Include this source code:
    <p>This document has been reviewed by W3C Members, by software developers, and by other W3C groups and interested parties, and is endorsed by the Director as a W3C Recommendation. It is a stable document and may be used as reference material or cited from another document. W3C's role in making the Recommendation is to draw attention to the specification and to promote its widespread deployment. This enhances the functionality and interoperability of the Web.</p>
  • § It must include this text related to patent policy* requirements (with suitable links inserted; see guidelines for linking to disclosure pages):

    This document was produced by a group operating under the W3C Patent Policy. W3C maintains a public list of any patent disclosures made in connection with the deliverables of the group; that page also includes instructions for disclosing a patent.

    *If the Working Group is operating under the Patent Policy 2017, the link to the Patent Policy should be https://www.w3.org/Consortium/Patent-Policy-20170801/.
    Include this source code:
    <p> This document was produced by a group operating under the <a href="https://www.w3.org/Consortium/Patent-Policy/">W3C Patent Policy</a>. W3C maintains a <a rel="disclosure" href="@@URI to IPP status or other page@@">public list of any patent disclosures</a> made in connection with the deliverables of the group; that page also includes instructions for disclosing a patent. </p>

    Note: Contact the Communications Team for suitable adaptations in the case where a document has been published jointly by more than one group. In the adaptation, be sure that the text for informative-only specs or specs not going to Rec is the same as the standard text.

  • § It must not indicate the number of known disclosures at the time of publication.
  • § The document must include the following boilerplate text in the status section to identify the governing process:

    This document is governed by the 15 September 2020 W3C Process Document.

    Include this source code:
    <p>This document is governed by the <a id="w3c_process_revision" href="https://www.w3.org/2020/Process-20200915/">15 September 2020 W3C Process Document</a>. </p>
  • § There should be a table of contents after the status section, labeled with an h2 element with content "Table of Contents".
  • § The table of content must be inside a navigation element (nav).

    Include this source code:
    <nav id="toc"><h2>Table of Contents</h2>

7. Document Body

  • § recursive Every marked-up section and subsection of the document must have a target anchor. A section is identified by a heading element (h1-h6). The anchor may be specified using an id (or name if an a element is used) attribute on any of the following: the heading element itself, the parent div or section element of the heading element (where the heading element is the first child of the div or section), a descendant of the heading element, or an a immediately preceding the heading element.
  • § recursive The document must not have any style sheet errors.
  • § recursive All proposed XML namespaces created by the publication of the document must follow URIs for W3C Namespaces .
  • § The document(s) must conform to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1, Level AA. Note: You may wish to consult the customizable quick reference to Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1.
  • § The document must include the script fixup.js.

    Include this source code:
    <script src="//www.w3.org/scripts/TR/2016/fixup.js" type="application/javascript"></script>

8. Compound Documents

  • § If the document is compound (i.e., if it consists of more than one file), all the files must be under a directory /TR/YYYY/OBSL-shortname-YYYYMMDD/. Exceptions are resources under these paths:
    1. https://www.w3.org/StyleSheets/
    2. https://www.w3.org/scripts/
  • § The main page should be called Overview.html.
  • § All other files must be reachable by links from the document.