HTML Working Group Charter

The mission of the HTML Working Group, part of the HTML Activity, is to continue the evolution of HTML (including classic HTML and XML syntaxes).

Join the HTML Working Group.

End date	31 December 2014
Confidentiality	Proceedings are Public
Chair	Sam Ruby, IBM, Paul Cotton, Microsoft, Maciej Stachowiak, Apple
Team Contact (FTE %: 45)	Michael Smith, W3C/Keio
Usual Meeting Schedule	Teleconferences: up to 1 per week, as needed Face-to-face: up to 2 per year

Scope

This group will maintain and produce incremental revisions to the HTML specification, which includes the series of specifications previously published as XHTML version 1. Both XML and 'classic HTML' syntaxes will be produced.

The Group will define conformance and parsing requirements for 'classic HTML', taking into account legacy implementations; the Group will not assume that an SGML parser is used for 'classic HTML'.

The Group will monitor implementation of and conformance to the HTML specification, construct test suites, and from them produce interoperability reports.

The Group may hold Workshops, Interoperability Meetings, and other events as required to fulfill its mission.

Data and canvas are reasonable areas of work for the group. On the one hand, they elaborate areas touched on in HTML4. On the other hand, these elaborations are much deeper than the features of HTML4, but also they form separate subsystems, and these subsystems have strong overlaps with other design areas.

It is important that:

the design be modular;
the specifications be kept modular;
the communities of expertise of the respective fields (graphics and data) be involved in the design process.

Success Criteria

The HTML Working Group's work will be considered a success if there are multiple independent complete and interoperable implementations of its deliverable that are widely used.

Production of stable documents addressing the work items listed in the Deliverables section.
Test suites for each deliverable with conformance criteria
Availability of multiple, independent, interoperable implementations of each deliverable with conformance criteria;, as demonstrated by an implementation report (summarizing implementation status against the relevant test suite) for each testable class of product, including user agents
Availability of authoring tools and validation tools.
User community and industry adoption of the group deliverables.

Deliverables

New publications and Milestones

There is a single specification deliverable for the HTML Working Group, the HTML specification, a platform-neutral and device-independent design with the following items in scope:

A language evolved from HTML4 for describing the semantics of documents and applications on the World Wide Web. This will be a complete specification, not a delta specification.
An extensible, serialized form of such a language, using XML.
A serialized form of such a language using a defined, non-XML syntax compatible with the 'classic HTML' parsers of existing Web browsers.
Document Object Model (DOM) interfaces providing APIs for such a language.
Forms and common UI widgets such as progress bars, datagrids, menus, and other controls.
APIs for the manipulation of linked media.
Editing APIs and user-driven WYSIWYG editing features.

The following is a non-restrictive list of the documents that are part of the deliverables of the Working Group:

The HTML WG is encouraged to provide a mechanism to permit independently developed vocabularies such as Internationalization Tag Set (ITS), Ruby, and RDFa to be mixed into HTML documents. Whether this occurs through the extensibility mechanism of XML, whether it is also allowed in the classic HTML serialization, and whether it uses the DTD and Schema modularization techniques, is for the HTML WG to determine.

The following features are expected to be obtained by integrating deliverables of the Web APIs Working Group. They are listed here so that they may be developed in the case where the Web APIs Working Group is not able to produce the specifications.

Data storage APIs.
Networking APIs for server-push, asynchronous two-way client-server communication, peer-to-peer communication, and client-side cross-domain communication.

Note that some of the features mentioned above may be obtained by integrating deliverables of the Web APIs Working Group.

Other Deliverables

The Group will create a comprehensive test suite for the HTML specification.

The Group will ensure thatvalidation tools are available, possibly from third parties, for the HTML specification. Validation does not mean DTD validation; validation using schemas (such as W3C XML Schema, RelaxNG, Schematron) and validation which is tolerant of extensions in other namespaces (for example using NVDL) is encouraged, as well as automated checking of items from the specification prose.

The Group will monitor, track, and encourage implementation of HTML, both during Candidate Recommendation and afterwards, to encourage adoption.

Milestones

Milestones
Specification	FPWD	LC	CR	PR	Rec
Note: The group will document significant changes from this initial schedule on the group home page.
HTML5 and other deliverables	N/A	2011 Q2	2012 Q2	2014 Q1	2014 Q2

Dependencies and Liaison

The following is a list of known dependencies and liaisons with other W3C groups at the time this charter was written. Liaison with other W3C groups can take advantage of a broad range of mechanisms such as cross membership, reviews of drafts produced by other groups, joint meetings etc., and whenever appropriate, the HTML Working Group will also coordinate with groups not listed here.

Dependencies

Liaisons

Relationship to External Groups

Participation

To be successful, the HTML Working Group is expected to have active participation of a diverse community for its duration. If fewer than three implementors (i.e., browser vendors) are participating in the Working Group, its charter should be re-examined by the W3C.

The co-chairs and specification Editors are expected to contribute one to two days per week towards the Working Group. There is no minimum requirement for other Participants. The Team Contact is expected to spend 0.5FTE for the duration of the Working Group, which will be supplemented by other members of the W3C team (management, communications, systems support) in order to support participation by a large community.

W3C Members may join the Working Group using the regular W3C process.

The HTML Working Group also welcomes participation from non-Members. This may take the form of questions and comments on the mailing list or IRC channel, for which there is no formal requirement, or technical submissions for consideration, for which the participant must agree to Royalty-Free licensing under the W3C Patent Policy.

Decision Policy

As explained in the Process Document (section 3.3), this group will seek to make decisions when there is consensus. We expect that typically, an editor makes an initial proposal, which is refined in discussion with Working Group members and other reviewers, and consensus emerges with little formal decision-making. However, if a decision is necessary for timely progress, but after due consideration of different opinions, consensus is not achieved, the Chair should put a question (allowing for remote, asynchronous participation using, for example, email and/or web-based survey techniques) and record a decision and any objections, and consider the matter resolved, at least until new information becomes available.

This charter is written in accordance with Section 3.4, Votes of the W3C Process Document and includes no voting procedures beyond what the Process Document requires.

About this Charter

This charter for the HTML Working Group has been created according to section 6.2 of the Process Document. In the event of a conflict between this document or the provisions of any charter and the W3C Process, the W3C Process shall take precedence.

2011-02-14: Removed old chair names, updated charter end date, list of specifications, and milestones.