The W3C Consortium and Standards

There have been a number recent events in the standards community that will almost certainly be very consequential for computing humanists. These include most obviously the completion or near-completion of important W3C standards like Schema, XLink and Xpointer and SVG; and the considerable recent commotion around RDF and the "Semantic Web", including related debates about how things like ontologies and Topic Maps fit in. These are definitely things our community should know about.

Among other things, SVG and XSL-FO promise new powerful purchase on image data and non-linquistic codes, and the current RDF/ontologies/Semantic Web activities are primarily focused on knowledge representation of non-textual material.

Fortunately we have available to us someone who can speak authoritatively on these events, and who also knows our community and its interests, namely Michael Sperberg-McQueen, Chair of the W3C Schema Working Group. We have proposed that the "ACH Session" be an update on W3C activities of interest to humanists, lead and coordinated by Michael. In addition John Unsworth, Chair of the TEI Consortium, has agreed to describe how the new TEI fits into this picture.