Welcome to the September 2006 Newsletter from the Australian W3C Office. Your link to the latest Consortium news and events... 1. Events 2. IETF Publishes New Language Tag Specifications 3. Paged Media, Values and Units: CSS3 Working Drafts 4. Mobile Web in Developing Countries: Call for Participation 5. Ralph Swick Named Acting Technology and Society Domain Leader 6. Last Call: VoiceXML 2.1 7. Canonical XML and Digital Signatures: Working Drafts Published 8. XSL-FO Workshop to Explore Requirements for Version 2.0 9. Note: Developing Multimodal User Interfaces 10. Last Call: XML Binding Language (XBL) 2.0 11. XML Query Test Suite 1.0 Released 12. WebCGM 2.0 Is a Candidate Recommendation 13. Working Draft: XML Schema 1.1 Structures 14. Print Symposium to Focus on Web Standards 15. Working Draft: XML Schema 1.1 Structures 1. Events Web Directions 2006: Sydney 26 - 29 September 2006 Web Directions 2006 will bring you another all star line up to inform, educate and inspire. With in depth, practical sessions on design and development with (X)HTML and CSS, user experience design, interaction development with Javascript and Ajax, information architecture, accessibly, RSS, user generated content and much more, this really is the conference to see this year, in Sydney Australia. http://webdirections.org/ W3C Talks Molly E. Holzschlag and Andy Clarke give a tutorial at Web Directions on 26 September in Sydney, Australia. http://www.w3.org/Talks/ 2. IETF Publishes New Language Tag Specifications 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. http://www.ietf.org/ http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc4646.txt http://www.iana.org/assignments/language-subtag-registry http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc4647.txt http://www.w3.org/International/articles/language-tags/Overview.en.php http://www.w3.org/International/ 3. Paged Media, Values and Units: CSS3 Working Drafts 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. http://www.w3.org/TR/2006/WD-css3-gcpm-20060919/ http://www.w3.org/TR/2006/WD-css3-values-20060919/ http://www.w3.org/Style/CSS/ 4. Mobile Web in Developing Countries: Call for Participation 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. http://www.w3.org/2006/07/MWI-EC/cfp.html http://www.w3.org/2006/07/MWI-EC/sponsors.html http://www.w3.org/2006/09/mwiec-pressrelease http://www.w3.org/2003/08/Workshops/ http://www.w3.org/Mobile/ 5. Ralph Swick Named Acting Technology and Society Domain Leader 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. http://www.w3.org/People/all#swick http://www.w3.org/TandS/ http://www.w3.org/People/Weitzner.html http://dig.csail.mit.edu/TAMI/ http://www.w3.org/Consortium/ 6. Last Call: VoiceXML 2.1 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. http://www.w3.org/TR/2006/WD-voicexml21-20060915/ http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/REC-voicexml20-20040316/ http://www.w3.org/TR/2006/WD-voicexml21-20060915/#sec-changes-cr http://www.w3.org/Voice/ 7. Canonical XML and Digital Signatures: Working Drafts Published 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. http://www.w3.org/TR/xml-id/ http://www.w3.org/TR/xmldsig-core/ http://www.w3.org/XML/ http://www.w3.org/TR/2006/WD-C14N-issues-20060915/ http://www.w3.org/TR/2006/WD-DSig-usage-20060915/ http://www.w3.org/TR/2006/WD-xml-c14n11-20060915/ 8. XSL-FO Workshop to Explore Requirements for Version 2.0 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. http://www.w3.org/Style/XSL/2006-Workshop/ http://www.w3.org/TR/xsl/ http://www.w3c.de/Events/2006/PrintSymposium_en.html http://www.w3.org/2006/09/xslfo-pressrelease http://www.w3.org/2003/08/Workshops/ http://www.w3.org/XML/ 9. Note: Developing Multimodal User Interfaces 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. http://www.w3.org/TR/2006/NOTE-mmi-suggestions-20060911/ http://www.w3.org/2002/mmi/ 10. Last Call: XML Binding Language (XBL) 2.0 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. http://www.w3.org/TR/2006/WD-xbl-20060907/ http://www.w3.org/2006/rwc/ 11. XML Query Test Suite 1.0 Released 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. http://www.w3.org/XML/Query/test-suite/ http://www.w3.org/TR/xquery/ http://www.w3.org/XML/ 12. WebCGM 2.0 Is a Candidate Recommendation 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. http://www.w3.org/TR/2006/CR-webcgm20-20060906/ http://www.w3.org/Graphics/WebCGM/WG/ 13. Working Draft: XML Schema 1.1 Structures 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. http://www.w3.org/TR/2006/WD-xmlschema11-1-20060831/ http://www.w3.org/XML/ 14. Print Symposium to Focus on Web Standards 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. http://www.w3c.de/ http://www.w3c.de/Events/2006/PrintSymposium_en.html http://www.w3.org/Style/XSL/2006-Workshop/ http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Member/List 15. Working Draft: XML Schema 1.1 Structures 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. http://www.w3.org/TR/2006/WD-xmlschema11-1-20060831/ http://www.w3.org/XML/ ____________________________________________________________________ For previous newsletters from the Australian W3C Office please visit http://w3c.org.au/newsletters/ If you are a W3C Member and would like to contribute relevant news please email us at w3c-australia@w3.org If you know of others who would like to receive this newsletter please direct them to http://w3.org.au