Draft WG charter

Here is a proposed draft charter for this working group, which will
be discussed at the Cambridge meeting.  Especially if you are
not attending, I welcome your feedback.

- Jim

WWW Distributed Authoring and Versioning (webdav) Charter

Draft, v0.1, September 15, 1996

Chair

   * Jim Whitehead, <ejw@ics.uci.edu>

Mailing List Information

   * General Discussion: <w3c-dist-auth@w3.org>
   * To Subscribe: <w3c-dist-auth-request@w3.org>
        o Send message with subject "subscribe"
   * Archived: http://www.w3.org/pub/WWW/Archives/Public/w3c-dist-auth/

Description and Purpose of Working Group

The HTTP protocol contains functionality which enables the editing of web
content at a remote location, without direct access to the storage media via
an operating system. This capability is exploited by several HTML
distributed authoring tools, and by a growing number of mainstream
applications (e.g. word processors) which allow users to write (publish)
their work to an HTTP server. Experience from the HTML authoring tools to
date has shown they are unable to meet their user's needs without adding
extensions to the HTTP protocol. Their extensions, developed in isolation,
are not interoperable.

The broad goal of the working group is to enable distributed web authoring
tools to be broadly interoperable, while supporting user needs.

It is assumed that user needs encompass the abilities currently found in
distributed authoring tools, which include versioning, listing and creating
directories, locking, and typed relationships. Other reasonable distributed
authoring functionality includes metadata capability, the ability to copy
and move web content from a remote location, and access to the unprocessed
source representation of content.

More concretely, the activity of this working group will be to develop
distributed authoring usage scenarios and requirements documents to
determine reasonable user needs. Wherever possible, these needs will be kept
simple, easy to implement, and general in their range of applicability.
Specifications for how these requirements can be met will then be generated.
These specifications will take the form of extensions to HTTP, and new media
types.

Deliverables and Milestones

Done
     Establish mailing list and archives.
Sep 96
     Draft working group charter.
Sep 96
     Submit distributed authoring requirements as Internet Draft and W3C
     Working Draft.
Sep 96
     Submit WWW versioning requirements as Internet Draft and W3C Working
     Draft.
Oct 96
     Submit distributed authoring and versioning scenarios document as
     Internet Draft and W3C Working Draft.
Nov 96
     Submit container media type specification as Internet Draft
Nov 96
     Submit initial distributed authoring and versioning specification as
     Internet Draft and W3C Working Draft
Jan 97
     Complete revisions to container media type specification Internet
     Draft. Move to W3C Proposed Recommendation.
Jan 97
     Complete final revisions to distributed authoring requirements
     document. Submit as Informational RFC.
Feb 97
     Complete final revisions to WWW versioning requirements document.
     Submit as informational RFC.
Feb 97
     Complete revisions to distributed authoring and versioning Internet
     Draft specification. Move to W3C Proposed Recommendation.
Jun 97
     Complete revisions to container media type specification based on
     implementation experience. Submit as standards track RFC.
Jun 97
     Complete revisions to distributed authoring and versioning
     specificaiton based on implementation experience. Submit as standards
     track RFC.
Aug 97
     Group terminates.

Received on Sunday, 15 September 1996 11:57:44 UTC