The XML 1.0 Specification was developed by a working group at the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), an industry consortium with over 130 corporate members. One of the goals of the W3C is to develop specifications that promote interoperability on the Web. A specification that is reviewed and approved by W3C members becomes a W3C Recommendation.
The XML 1.0 specification is a W3C Recommendation which indicates that the specification is stable and is recommended for adoption by industry. There are many specifications related to, or dependent upon, XML at the W3C, so you might want to become more familiar with the W3C development process.
Any member company of the W3C can submit a proposal for a specification to the W3C. If the subject matter and contents of the spec are deemed relevant, the submission can be officially "accepted" by the consortium, where it will reside on the site as a Note. If the subject of an accepted submission fits in with current work or merits new work, it will be further developed in a W3C Working Group.
Working Drafts are "snapshots" of the work-in-progress that have been posted to the public site in order to give the Web development communities-at-large a chance to comment, participate, experiment, and meaningfully contribute to the development.
Working Drafts and the mailing lists associated with each area of technology development at the W3C are also great forums for experimental implementations as well as platform-specific porting and tuning. Documentation issues that often are brought to light through this open, collaborative process. Ideally, besides being a forum for critiquing a draft's general value, independent developers are encouraged to try out the specs within their own real-life implementations. Examples are becoming increasingly important and, very often, quite hard to come by.
After numerous edits and technical clarifications, the Working Drafts eventually become Proposed Recommendations. Finally, if all goes well, after being reviewed, refined, and voted on by the members of the consortium, the specs can become Official Recommendations.
HTML 4.0
This specification defines the latest version of the HyperText Markup Language (HTML), version 4.0.
CSS2 Cascading Style Sheets Level 2
March 24, 1998
This specification defines Cascading Style Sheet, level 2 (CSS2). CSS2 is a style sheet language
that allows authors and users to attach style (e.g. fonts, spacing and aural cues) to structured
documents (e.g. HTML and XML). The CSS2 language is human readable and writable, and
expresses style in common desktop publishing terminology.
Resource Description Framework (RDF) Model and Syntax
February 16, 1998
This document represents the RDF Model and Syntax Specification. There is also an RDF Schema Working Group that will be publishing a document later in the spring. Here's some more background on RDF.
Introduction to RDF Metadata
by Ora Lassila
A W3C Note written in the hopes of explaining the motivation behind creating the Resource Description Framework (RDF). The W3C's RDF Working Group includes representatives from: Netscape, Microsoft, IBM, Nokia, DataChannel, OCLC, webMethods, Digital, Reuters, and many more member organizations.
Large scale deployment of tools which understand RDF will hopefully lead to the widespread adoption of RDF on the Web.
Searching on the Web will become easier and can be more focused, and automated software agents can be more easily enabled.
"Local" (domain-centric) or "remote" agents (mobile agent applications that not only conceptually, but physically travel away from their host domain) will soon become commonplace. These agents will either be information gathering, conducting business transactions, or any other numerous other semantic "missions" on behalf of humans.
Extensible Markup Language (XML): Part 2. Linking
July 1997
This document specifies a simple set of constructs that may be inserted into XML documents to describe links between objects. It is a goal to use the power of XML to create a structure that can describe both the simple unidirectional hyperlinks of today's HTML, as well as more sophisticated multi-ended, multiple datatyped "smart" bi-directional hyperlinks of tomorrow.
SMIL(Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language)
February 2, 1998
This XML application is designed to facilitate synchronized (potentially real-time) coding of multiple disparate multimedia sources. In theory, these source could reside in different locations on the Web. SMIL includes a universal syntax for real-time synchronous cues, effects like fade-ins and outs and more.
XML-Data
January 5, 1998
The XML-Data NOTE focuses on a
schema syntax, defining, expanding, and restricting content models, and describing the varying structures of different datatypes. Contrary to popular belief, and previously my own belief, the XML Data NOTE isn't really about legacy database conversion, but rather it suggests a syntactical practice for describing the structure of complex datatypes.
Channel Definition Format March 1997
This document describes an application of XML that is gaining more and more usage all the time. Internet Explorer 4 will read this format natively...Communicator 4 can read it using John Tigue's XML/CDF Viewer applet.
Web Architecture: Extensible Languages
February 10, 1998
This document explains how object properties defined in different languages can be used in conjunction with each other It also explains the different kinds of emerging "schema" vocabulary languages and the similarities and differences between them.
Name Spaces in XML
January 19, 1998
XML Namespaces provide universal names for document constructs whose scope extends beyond their containing document. These XML documents may contain markup defined in multiple schemas which may have been authored independently or comprised of reusable parts from existing, well-designed schemas. Using this approach search engines and other tools can operate over a range of documents that vary in many respects but use common names for common element types.
The Open Software Description Format (OSD)
August 13, 1997
This document provides an initial proposal for the Open Software Description (OSD) format. OSD, an application of the Extensible Markup Language (XML), is a vocabulary used for describing software packages and their dependencies for heterogeneous clients.
Web Collections using XML
March 1997
This document has the specification, the syntax, examples and Web Collection DTDs a formal submission was made to the W3C by Microsoft in March. Web Collections is an application of XML.
A Proposal for XSL
XSL is different than CSS in that it incorporates a system of inheritance based on factors other than presentation. XSL is a new style language, which, like CSS (a W3C Recommendation) enables the separation of web content from presentation when browsing or printing. Both XSL and CSS provide a declarative syntax which eases development of interactive editing and design tools. XSL goes beyond CSS in providing document transformation, calculation and content generation capabilities that are essential for the presentation of custom views of highly structured, data-rich XML documents.