Re: W3C Roadmap

Hmmm. I don't think there is a grand plan that minutely details each step
W3C will take, and I think that's a good thing. The world is not so very
predictable and a lot of W3C's work now takes years to go from interesting
idea to widely-deployed technology (that's not such a change - in the days
of instant adoption it already took years...).

But there is indeed a group called the technical architecture group (TAG),
whose role is to write down the W3C vision of Web Architecture, and get
agreement on it, essentially following the normal W3C process. This has
been around for a few years. Before that the guiding principle was Tim
Berners-Lee's decisions, advised by the W3C members formally and
informally by the public review process that specs go through.

You can even read and review the last call draft of their major work -
Architecture of the World Wide Web, First Edition -
http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/WD-webarch-20040816/ for the document. Comments
are due by 17th September. The TAG has worked in public, like many WAI
groups do, has a public mailing list, and has received a lot of comments
from people (not surprisingly). They have also published "findings" -
decisions on particular issues, as they have gone along. This is actually
something that it would be nice to see the WCAG group do in particular,
with respect to the various interpretation issues for WCAG 1 (does
checkpoint 3.1 allow layout tables in a double-A site? Do User Agents
still not find form fields if there is no default text in them?).

Cheers

Chaals

-- 
Charles McCathieNevile           charles@sidar.org
                 http://www.sidar.org

<quote who="Geoff Deering">
>
> Hi,
>
> Is there any document or set of documents that map out the vision of the
> W3C
> to show why we need separate technologies like;
>
> HTML/CSS (with aural.css)
> SSML
> VoiceXML
> & everything else.
>
> and how they all fit together as a whole to address the various needs and
> requirements of users.
>
> I'm sure there may be very good arguments why such diverse technologies
> are
> required, I can think of some myself, but I just need to be able to see
> the
> vision that is taking us all forward in this regard, cause I want to be
> able
> to see the forest, not just the trees.
>
> If there is no such document clearly explaining this vision, the how,
> whens
> and whys of all the diverse technologies, the question has to be asked;
> who
> is guiding this vision?
>
> Regards
> Geoff Deering
>
>

Received on Sunday, 12 September 2004 11:00:41 UTC