ISO/IEC JTC1/WG4 N1991

International Organization for Standardization

International Electrotechnical Commission

ISO/IEC JTC1/WG4 - Document Description Languages

Report on W3C HTML Futures workshop, San Francisco May 4-5th, 1998.

The W3C organized a workshop for its members and other interested parties to address the question "Should the HTML WG be reconstituted to progress HTML". The workshop was chaired by by Steven Pemberton of the CWI (Netherlands) and addressed the issues

• The relationship of HTML to XML. Many attendees expressed interest in defining HTML in terms of XML. The workshop also considered embedding HTML in XML and XML in HTML.
• The relationship of HTML to database applications and standards.
• The needs of small devices and mobile user agents.

20 position papers were presented.

We were invited to attend as ISO-HTML editors, and were asked to present the current status of ISO/IEC 15445. The ISO/IEC work on ISO-HTML was welcomed by W3C management and staff, and by W3C members.

ISO-HTML now appears to be influential in its role of defining and stabilizing the core of the language, particularly in the internationalization (I18N) and accessibility (WAI) areas. Many participants in the W3C activities already accept the latest draft of ISO/IEC 15445 as if it were already an IS. The W3C move quickly and we believe that one of the lessons of this workshop is that it is important to progress ISO-HTML quickly to ensure its continued relevance to the Web community.