Create a place for gathering requirements from existing and potential users of XProc, research in this area, and for supporting and writing the community-driven effort to define an XProc 3.0 specification (formerly 1.1) .
xproc/Group's public email, repo and wiki activity over time
Note: Community Groups are proposed and run by the community. Although W3C hosts these
conversations, the groups do not necessarily represent the views of the W3C Membership or staff.
Chairs, when logged in, may publish draft and final reports. Please see report requirements.
Yes, the XProc Next group is still here, but most of the current discussion is around the test suite and happening on Github: https://github.com/xproc/3.0-test-suite.
This will result in implementations that better conform to the community group reports – one of which was published in September last year and that is being updated. See https://xproc.org/specifications.html for the current versions, as well as other related information.
The community group had a physical meeting at XML Prague last year, the first after the pandemic, and another is planned for Markup UK in June this year. The editors also still meet regularly to revise the specifications.
Also note that the community group’s efforts have resulted in a book about the current spec, two implementations and greater adoption, with multiple companies adopting the standard. XProc is proving to be just what we need.
As chair of the XProc Community Group, on behalf of the entire community group and the editorial team in particular, it is my very great pleasure to announce the publication of the final, official releases of _XProc 3.0: An XML Pipeline Language_[1] and _XProc 3.0: Standard Step Library_[2],
I’d like to extend my heartfelt thanks to the whole community for their help and support, especially my co-editors Achim Berndzen, Gerrit Imsieke, and Erik Siegel.
At the meetup during XML Prague this year, the community group decided to finalize and publish the 3.0 specifications (the core language specification and the standard step library; the additional step libraries aren’t final yet). We’ve had last call drafts out there for a while and there have been no new, substantive issues in ages.
On Friday, I published a “final” editorial draft of the language specification:
An informal XProc Community Group gathering and beer tasting closed the first day of XML Prague. Present were the editors sans Norm Tovey-Walsh (missed by all!), implementers, other interested parties, and yours truly. Thanks must go to the XML Prague organisers who kindly provided a room, and to Geert Bormans who summoned the meeting and provided the beer.
We concluded that there’s no need to do another last call – the remaining work is unlikely to fundamentally change anything, there’s been plenty of time for interested parties to make themselves heard, and the editors and implementers should be able to sort out the remaining issues in the core spec and step library without an additional last call. Once complete, and with everyone in agreement, the two should be published as final CG reports.
We think that publishing the final CG reports sooner rather than later is preferable to waiting for Calabash fixes; while a roundtable survey revealed a pleasing number of early success stories, everyone agreed that a published report will greatly aid end user adoption. Also, we do recognise that the editors and implementers have day jobs and non-XProc concerns.
Note that formally, we are not producing a recommendation and thus don’t have to follow the related W3C processes. We don’t have a charter that specifies this, and what we do – and how we produce the report(s) – is largely up to us as a community group.
Work does remain on the optional steps, of course, but again, the consensus was that waiting for them doesn’t benefit XProc as much as does publishing the reports that can be finished.
There’s going to be an XProc Community Group meeting in Cologne, Germany, on 9-10 November. For more details, including registering (for free!), head over to https://github.com/xproc/Workshop-2019-11/wiki.
There will be a half-day XProc 3.0 tutorial on Friday 7 June at Markup UK in London, held by Achim Berndzen and Norm Walsh. To join, you need to register at the conference.
If you are planning to attend, please (please!) add your name to the attendees list on https://github.com/xproc/Workshop-2019-06/wiki (If you can’t edit that page, or don’t wish to, please send me an email or open an issue and someone else will add your name.)
I need a complete attendee list by Monday, 3 June, in order to give the building security enough time to register folks and get badges printed. (Please bring ID with you.)
The next XProc Next Community Group meeting will take place in London on 10-11 June 2019, right after the Markup UK conference. Just as last year, MarkLogic will host the meeting in their London, Bank, offices.
Watch this space and https://github.com/xproc/Workshop-2019-06 for more information when it becomes available. And in the meanwhile, have a think about XProc 3.0 use cases, especially those involving non-XML formats such as JSON, and let us know.
We’ll convene at University of Economics (the XML Prague venue), room NB 468, in the same building as the main conference, on 5 February at 10 AM. There are lifts and stairs in front of the cloak room. Use the lift to go to the 4th floor and follow the corridor on your right. NB 468 is almost at the end of the corridor.
Please add your name to the attendee list at https://github.com/xproc/Workshop-2019-02/wiki/Community-group-meeting-2019-02 if you plan to attend.
It’s time to start planning for XML Prague on February 7–9 2019, so why not include an XProc two-day workshop, happening right before the conference on 5–6 February, in your travel plans? Just like last time, the conference will kindly provide us with a room for us at the conference site, the University of Economics (UoE) campus at nam. W. Churchilla 4, Prague.
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