XML standarization at W3C

Hello folks,

As some of you may be aware, there was a breakout session at TPAC 2026 (the W3C’s annual technical plenary meeting) to discuss the topic of XML standardization at W3C. I originally thought that the team was setting up the session and inviting me to attend. It turned out that the team wanted me to make the proposal for the session and to chair it. I agreed, but I didn’t have a specific goal, so it wasn’t clear to me where the meeting was going to go.

At the last minute, it occurred to me that I should try to frame the discussion so I pulled together a few slides: https://nwalsh.com/tpac2026/

The minutes are public, I believe: https://www.w3.org/2026/10/27-xml-standardization-at-w3c-minutes.html (Thank you to Nigel for scribing!)

About 12-15 people came to the meeting. Broadly, I think it was a positive meeting. But it’s a little hard to summarize.

For the XML community, I think the key takeaways are that the W3C process has changed over time, there are no longer any “activities”. Starting up working groups to work on XML standards would not be especially difficult. The W3C is aware that there’s no place to do maintenance activity on XML specifications, so there is some interest from the team in moving forward in this area.

Random observations:

+ The historical antipathy between “the XML” community and “the HTML” community casts a long shadow.

+ Bringing CG work into a WG has some process hurdles. Anyone who contributed to the IPR of the CG but elects not to join the WG has to clarify the IPR in question.

+ I made the observation that the members of most of the XML-related CGs that I’m aware of are individual contributors or work for small companies. The W3C obviously wants fee-paying members, but having a large number of “invited experts” in an XML-related WG is not a priori a show stopper.

+ Several people at the meeting were utterly unaware of Invisible XML or the new work on QT4 because CGs are effectively invisible. One positive outcome from moving to Working Groups would be greater visibility.

Doing anything in this area would require approval from the W3C membership. That would start with a charter for some new work. The team is going to begin exploring that and I expect they will get back in touch with XML-related CGs in due course.

--
Norm Tovey-Walsh
Saxonica

Received on Wednesday, 28 October 2026 12:36:38 UTC