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2009-10-05: W3C and XBRL International, Inc. are co-sponsoring a Workshop on Improving Access to Financial Data on the Web today and tomorrow, hosted at the offices of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) in Arlington, Virginia (USA). The main goal of the Workshop is to identify opportunities and challenges for improving access to financial data on the Web. Participants will discuss how Extensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) and related XML data standards can best be utilized, and how using XBRL to provide financial data via the Web relates to broader opportunities for Semantic Web technologies. More than 15 speakers and 100 participants will discuss topics such as interoperability and harmonization of standard data formats and the impact of the increased transparency on the economy and society as a whole. For more information, see the Program Agenda and Media Advisory. Learn more about the Semantic Web Activity. (Permalink)
2009-10-01: The Rule Interchange Format (RIF) Working Group has published six Candidate Recommendations. Together, they allow systems using a variety of rule languages and rule-based technologies to interoperate with each other and with Semantic Web technologies.
Three of the drafts define XML formats with formal semantics for storing and transmitting rules:
The other drafts:
The group has also published a new version of RIF Test Cases, and three new First Public Working Drafts: RIF Overview, RIF Combination with XML data and OWL 2 RL in RIF.
The Working Group asks all developers to send implementation reports, and other comments, to public-rif-comments@w3.org by 29 October 2009. Learn more about the Semantic Web Activity. (Permalink)
2009-10-01: The SVG Working Group has published First Public Working Drafts of SVG Color 1.2, Part 2: Language and SVG Color 1.2, Part 1: Primer. The former defines features of the Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) Language that are specifically for color-managed environments, including document interchange, publishing, and high-quality display. SVG Color extends the control of color, relative to SVG Tiny 1.2, in three ways. Firstly by adding an additional color space for interpolation and compositing; this means that colors are no longer constrained to the sRGB gamut. Secondly by extending the syntax for Paint, thus allowing colors to be specified as calibrated (ICC and named) and uncalibrated ('device') color. Thirdly, it mandates the color management of embedded images. The Primer explains the technical background and gives guidelines on how to use the SVG Color specification with SVG 1.2 Tiny and SVG 1.2 Full modules. Learn more about the Graphics Activity. (Permalink)
2009-10-01: Browse W3C presentations and events also available as an RSS channel. (Permalink)
2009-09-29: The XSL-FO subgroup of the XSL Working Group has published a First Public Working Draft of Design Notes for Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL) 2.0, which contains initial and early work on XSL-FO 2.0. XSL-FO defines an XML vocabulary for formatting and layout of XML documents; use XSLT to transform documents into XSL-FO for on-screen or paper formatting, for example into PDF. Public comments are requested, both from users and implementors of XSL 1.x and from people who have been waiting for new features before using XSL-FO. Lean more about XML. (Permalink)
2009-09-29: The Web Applications Working Group has published the First Public Working Draft of WebSimpleDB API. User agents need to store large numbers of objects locally in order to satisfy off-line data requirements of Web applications. Whereas the Web Storage specification is useful for storing pairs of keys and their corresponding values, it does not provide in-order retrieval of keys, efficient searching over values, or storage of duplicate values for a key. The new WebSimpleDB API specification provides a concrete API to perform advanced key-value data management that is at the heart of most sophisticated query processors. It does so by using transactional databases to store keys and their corresponding values. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity. (Permalink)
2009-09-24: The Timed Text Working Group invites implementation of the Candidate Recommendation of Timed Text (TT) Authoring Format 1.0 - Distribution Format Exchange Profile (DFXP), used to represent timed text media for the purpose of interchange among authoring systems. Timed text is textual information that is intrinsically or extrinsically associated with timing information. The specification provides a standardized representation of a particular subset of textual information with which stylistic, layout, and timing semantics are associated by an author or an authoring system for the purpose of interchange and potential presentation. Learn more about the Video in the Web Activity. (Permalink)
2009-09-24: The Math Working Group has published a Last Call Working Draft of Mathematical Markup Language (MathML) Version 3.0. MathML is an XML application for describing mathematical notation and capturing both its structure and content. The goal of MathML is to enable mathematics to be served, received, and processed on the World Wide Web, just as HTML has enabled this functionality for text. Comments are welcome through 11 November. Learn more about the Math Activity. (Permalink)
2009-09-24: The Web Services Resource Access Working Group published updates to five Working Drafts: Web Services Enumeration (WS-Enumeration), Web Services Eventing (WS-Eventing), Web Services Resource Transfer (WS-RT), Web Services Transfer (WS-Transfer), and Web Services Metadata Exchange (WS-MetadataExchange). The first describes a general SOAP-based protocol for enumerating a sequence of XML elements that is suitable for traversing logs, message queues, or other linear information models. The second describes a protocol that allows Web services to subscribe to or accept subscriptions for event notification. The third defines extensions to WS-Transfer that deal primarily with fragment-based access to resources to satisfy the common requirements of WS-ResourceFramework and WS-Management. The fourth describes a general SOAP-based protocol for accessing XML representations of Web service-based resources. The fifth defines how metadata associated with a Web service endpoint can be represented as resources, how metadata can be embedded in endpoint references, and how metadata could be retrieved from a Web service endpoint. Learn more about the Web Services Activity. (Permalink)
2009-09-22: With more than a dozen implementations of OWL 2 reported, the OWL Working Group has published its OWL 2 Web Ontology Language as a Proposed Recommendation. An ontology is a structured set of terms that a particular community uses for organizing data, such as "title", "author", and "ISBN" for data about books. OWL 2 is a compatible extension to OWL 1, providing additional features for people using ontologies. The OWL 2 document set contains 13 documents, of which 4 are instructional: overview , primer, new features and rationale, and quick reference. The rdf:PlainLiteral datatype, developed for use by OWL 2 and RIF, is also a Proposed Recommendation. Learn more about the Semantic Web. (Permalink)
2009-09-22: W3C invites people to participate in a Workshop on Access Control Application Scenarios on 17-18 November 2009 in Luxembourg. This Workshop is intended to explore evolving application scenarios for access control technologies, such as XACML. Results from a number of recent European research projects in the grid, cloud computing, and privacy areas show overlapping use cases for these technologies that extend beyond classical intra-enterprise applications. The Workshop, co-financed by the European Commission 7th framework program via the PrimeLife project, is free of charge and open to anyone, subject to review of their statement of interest and space availability. Position papers are due 23 October. See the call for participation for more information. Learn more about the Privacy Activity. (Permalink)
2009-09-22: W3C is pleased to announce the creation of the Provenance Incubator Group, whose mission is to provide a state-of-the art understanding and develop a roadmap in the area of provenance for Semantic Web technologies, development, and possible standardization. The group will be chaired by Yolanda Gil. The following W3C Members have sponsored the charter for this group: Renssealaer Polytechnic Institute, Talis Information Limited, University of Manchester, University of Southampton, University of Southern California Information Sciences Institute (USC / ISI), and Vrije Universiteit. Read more about the Incubator Activity, an initiative to foster development of emerging Web-related technologies. Incubator Activity work is not on the W3C standards track. (Permalink)
2009-09-21: As part of its efforts to broaden participation opportunities in W3C, W3C announces today its first Developer Gathering, to be held 5 November, 2009 during the W3C Technical Plenary Week (TPAC) in Santa Clara, California. Registration is open to the public; W3C is seeking in particular developers and designers who may not participate regularly in W3C groups. Arun Ranganathan (Mozilla), Fantasai, Philippe Le Hégaret, and others will speak on a variety of hot topics with a goal of feeding back comments to the groups developing the relevant technology standards. Learn more about the Developer Gathering. (Permalink)
2009-09-16: W3C announces today the new RDB2RDF Working Group, whose mission is to standardize a language for mapping relational data and relational database schemas into RDF and OWL, tentatively called the RDB2RDF Mapping Language, R2RML. From the beginning of the deployment of the Semantic Web there has been increasing interest in mapping relational data to the Semantic Web. This is to allow relational data to be combined with other data on the Web, to link semantics directly to relational data and to aid in enterprise data integration. The creation of this Working Group follows the work of a previous W3C Incubator Group in this area. Read the RDB2RDF Working Group Charter and learn more about the Semantic Web. (Permalink)
2009-09-15: The WebCGM Working Group invites implementation of the Candidate Recommendation of WebCGM 2.1. Computer Graphics Metafile (CGM) is an ISO standard, defined by ISO/IEC 8632:1999, 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, electronic documentation, geophysical data visualization, and similar fields. The Working Group has adopted a public test suite for WebCGM 2.1 and has produced a preliminary WebCGM 2.1 implementation report. Learn more about the Graphics Activity. (Permalink)
2009-09-15: The Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Working Group invites implementation of the Candidate Recommendation of Media Queries. HTML4 and CSS2 currently support media-dependent style sheets tailored for different media types. For example, a document may use sans-serif fonts when displayed on a screen and serif fonts when printed. "screen" and "print" are two media types that have been defined. Media queries extend the functionality of media types by allowing more precise labeling of style sheets. Learn more about the Style Activity. (Permalink)
2009-09-10: The Web Applications Working Group has published Working Drafts of Web Storage and Web Database (a First Public Draft). The former defines an API for persistent data storage of key-value pair data in Web clients. The latter defines an API for storing data in databases that can be queried using a variant of SQL. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity. (Permalink)
2009-09-10: The Protocol for Web Description Resources (POWDER) Working Group has published a Group Note of Protocol for Web Description Resources (POWDER): Test Suite. This document presents test cases for the POWDER technology, which helps to build a Web of trust and make it possible to discover relevant, quality content more efficiently. The tests facilitate and exemplify the creation of POWDER documents of varying complexity and provide a means to assert the conformance of software applications designed to handle POWDER documents. Learn more about the Semantic Web. (Permalink)
2009-09-09: Today, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) announces a draft work plan for the eGovernment Interest Group, whose mission is to document, advocate, coordinate and communicate best practices, solutions and approaches to improve the interface between citizens and government through effective use of Web standards. The draft charter, in review by the W3C community until the end of September, focuses on two topics: Open Government Data (OGD), and Education and Outreach. In line with its anticipated focus on Open Government Data, the group also announces today a first draft of Publishing Open Government Data, which provides step-by-step guidelines for putting government data on the Web. Sharing data according to these guidelines enables greater transparency; delivers more efficient public services; and encourages greater public and commercial use and re-use of government information. Learn more about the W3C eGovernment Activity. (Permalink)
Marden Edwards Ltd provides the manufacturing of bespoke packaging equipment and machines, and works toward creating an accessible workplace in the industrial sector. This is reflected online with its support of Web standards and the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI). (Member testimonials)
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