CSS Working Group Charter

CSS Working Group Charter

The mission of the Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Working Group is to is to develop and maintain CSS.

Join the CSS Working Group.

Start date 16 Sept 2016
End date 30 Sept 2019
Chairs Alan Stearns, Rossen Atanassov
Team Contacts Chris Lilley (0.3 FTE);
Alternate: Fuqiao Xue (0.35 FTE), Thierry Michel, (Testing, 0.35 FTE)
Meeting Schedule Teleconferences: 1-hour calls will be held weekly.
Face-to-face: we will meet during the W3C's annual Technical Plenary week; additional face-to-face meetings may be scheduled by consent of the participants, usually no more than 3 per year.

Scope

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a style sheet language that allows authors and users to attach style (e.g., from fonts and spacing to filter effects and style animations) to structured documents and Web applications. By separating the presentation style from the content, CSS simplifies Web authoring and site maintenance. It supports media-specific style so that authors may tailor the presentation to different devices and capabilities.

The CSS WG develops a single deliverable, the CSS specification. It consists of the following, somewhat independent technologies, all of which are in scope for the CSS Working Group:

The CSS WG not only develops CSS, but also checks that properties needed by other working groups and which could occur in a style sheet together with CSS properties, are compatible with CSS in general and consistent in their naming schemes. This affects properties such as those of SVG and Device Independence (such as media features).

Part of the work of the working group is also to develop test suites for the various specifications it publishes.

Another part is to maintain errata and, when needed, publish revised versions of the various specifications.

Success Criteria

The CSS Working Group's work is considered a success if there are multiple, independent, interoperable implementations of its modules that are widely used.

In order to advance to Proposed Recommendation, each module is expected to have at least two independent implementations of each of feature defined in the specification.

Each module should contain a section detailing any known security or privacy implications for implementers, Web authors, and end users.

Each module should contain a section describing known impacts to accessibility and users with disabilities, ways the specification features address them, and recommendations for minimizing accessibility problems in implementation and use of such features.

Modules that reach W3C Recommendation, are considered successful when all of the following are present:

  • Production of stable documents addressing the work items listed in the Deliverables section.
  • Test suites for each module with conformance criteria.
  • Availability of multiple, independent, interoperable implementations of each feature with conformance criteria in each deliverable; as demonstrated by an implementation report (summarizing implementation status against the relevant test suite) for each testable class of product, including user agents.
  • Deployment on multiple types of platform (traditional computers, phones, tablets, accessibility aids, print formatters, and so on).
  • User community and industry adoption of the group deliverables.

Deliverables

There is a single deliverable, the CSS specification. The CSS specification is large, and is divided into a series of modules.

More detailed milestones and updated publication schedules are available on the group publication status page.

Draft state indicates the state of the module at the time of the charter approval. Expected completion indicates when the module is projected to become a Recommendation, or otherwise reach a stable state.

This list of modules is not exclusive: The WG may also create new CSS modules, within its scope. Also, it may split or merge CSS modules. If no participant in the group believes a proposed module is out of scope, and the group has consensus to add it, the group may add a new module. If the participants who object sustain their objection after discussion, a re-charter to clarify the scope may be needed.

Normative Specifications

The Working Group will deliver the following W3C normative specifications:

css-2016

This document collects together into one definition all the specs that together form the current state of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) as of 2016. The primary audience is CSS implementers, not CSS authors, as this definition includes modules by specification stability, not Web browser adoption rate.

Draft State: No draft, published annually.

Expected completion: Q4 2016

css-2017

This document collects together into one definition all the specs that together form the current state of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) as of 2017. The primary audience is CSS implementers, not CSS authors, as this definition includes modules by specification stability, not Web browser adoption rate.

Draft State: No draft, published annually.

Expected completion: Q4 2017

css-2018

This document collects together into one definition all the specs that together form the current state of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) as of 2018. The primary audience is CSS implementers, not CSS authors, as this definition includes modules by specification stability, not Web browser adoption rate.

Draft State: No draft, published annually.

Expected completion: Q4 2018

css-backgrounds-3

This draft contains the features of CSS level 3 relating to borders and backgrounds. It includes and extends the functionality of CSS level 2 [CSS21], which builds on CSS level 1. The main extensions compared to level 2 are borders consisting of images, boxes with multiple backgrounds, boxes with rounded corners and boxes with shadows.

Draft State: CR / Stable

Expected completion: Q3 2018

css-conditional-3

This module contains the features of CSS for conditional processing of parts of style sheets, conditioned on capabilities of the processor or the document the style sheet is being applied to. It includes and extends the functionality of CSS level 2, which builds on CSS level 1. The main extensions compared to level 2 are allowing nesting of certain at-rules inside '@media', and the addition of the '@supports' rule for conditional processing.

Draft State: CR / Stable

Expected completion: Q1 2018

css-multicol-1

This specification describes multi-column layouts in CSS, a style sheet language for the web. Using functionality described in the specification, content can be flowed into multiple columns with a gap and a rule between them.

Draft State: CR / Stable

css-values-3

This CSS3 module describes the common values and units that CSS properties accept and the syntax used for describing them in CSS property definitions.

Draft State: CR / Stable

Expected completion: Q4 2018

css-cascade-3

This CSS module describes how to collate style rules and assign values to all properties on all elements. By way of cascading and inheritance, values are propagated for all properties on all elements.

Draft State: CR / Stable

Expected completion: Q4 2017

css-variables-1

This module introduces cascading variables as a new primitive value type that is accepted by all CSS properties, and custom properties for defining them.

Draft State: CR / Refining

Expected completion: Q1 2017

css-images-3

This module contains the features of CSS level 3 relating to the <image> type and replaced elements. It includes and extends the functionality of CSS level 2. The main extensions compared to CSS2.1 are the generalization of the <url> type to the <image> type, several additions to the <image> type, a generic sizing algorithm for images and other replaced content in CSS, definitions for interpolating several <image> types, and several properties controlling the interaction of replaced elements and CSS's layout models.

Draft State: CR / Testing

css-flexbox-1

The specification describes a CSS box model optimized for user interface design. In the flex layout model, the children of a flex container can be laid out in any direction, and can “flex” their sizes, either growing to fill unused space or shrinking to avoid overflowing the parent. Both horizontal and vertical alignment of the children can be easily manipulated. Nesting of these boxes (horizontal inside vertical, or vertical inside horizontal) can be used to build layouts in two dimensions.

Draft State: CR / Testing

Expected completion: Q3 2017

css-text-decor-3

This module contains the features of CSS relating to text decoration, such as underlines, text shadows, and emphasis marks.

Draft State: CR / testing

css-fonts-3

This CSS3 module describes how font properties are specified and how font resources are loaded dynamically. The contents of this specification are a consolidation of content previously divided into CSS3 Fonts and CSS3 Web Fonts modules. The description of font load events was moved into the CSS3 Font Load Events module.

Draft State: CR / testing

Expected completion: Q2 2019

css-writing-modes-3

CSS Writing Modes Level 3 defines CSS support for various international writing modes, such as left-to-right (e.g. Latin or Indic), right-to-left (e.g. Hebrew or Arabic), bidirectional (e.g. mixed Latin and Arabic) and vertical (e.g. Asian scripts).

Draft State: CR / Testing

Expected completion: Q2 2017

css-shapes-1

CSS Shapes describe geometric shapes for use in CSS. For Level 1, CSS Shapes can be applied to floats. A circle shape on a float will cause inline content to wrap around the circle shape instead of the float's bounding box.

Draft State: CR / Testing

css-masking-1

CSS Masking provides two means for partially or fully hiding portions of visual elements: masking and clipping.

Draft State: CR / Testing

css-counter-styles-3

This module introduces the ''@counter-style'' rule, which allows authors to define their own custom counter styles for use with CSS list-marker and generated-content counters. It also predefines a set of common counter styles, including the ones present in CSS2 and CSS2.1.

Draft State: CR / Testing

Expected completion: Q2 2018

css-break-3

This module describes the fragmentation model that partitions a flow into pages, columns, or regions. It builds on the Page model module and introduces and defines the fragmentation model. It adds functionality for pagination, breaking variable fragment size and orientation, widows and orphans.

Draft State: CR / Testing

compositing-1

Compositing describes how shapes of different elements are combined into a single image. There are various possible approaches for compositing. Previous versions of SVG and CSS used Simple Alpha Compositing. In this model, each element is rendered into its own buffer and is then merged with its backdrop using the Porter Duff source-over operator.

Draft State: CR / Testing

Expected completion: Q2 2019

css-syntax-3

This module describes, in general terms, the basic structure and syntax of CSS stylesheets. It defines, in detail, the syntax and parsing of CSS - how to turn a stream of bytes into a meaningful stylesheet.

Draft State: CR / Testing

Expected completion: Q1 2019

css-ui-3

This specification describes user interface related properties and values that are proposed for CSS level 3 to style HTML and XML (including XHTML). It includes and extends user interface related features from the properties and values of CSS level 2 revision 1. It uses various properties and values to style basic user interface elements in a document.

Draft State: CR / Testing

geometry-1

This specification provides basic geometric interfaces to represent points, rectangles, quadrilaterals and transformation matrices that can be used by other modules or specifications.

Draft State: CR / Testing

css-cascade-4

This CSS module describes how to collate style rules and assign values to all properties on all elements. By way of cascading and inheritance, values are propagated for all properties on all elements. New in this level are the ''revert'' keyword and <supports-condition> for the ''@import'' rule.

Draft State: CR / Testing

Expected completion: Q2 2018

css-will-change-1

This document defines the 'will-change' CSS property, which allows an author to inform the UA ahead of time of what kinds of changes they are likely to make to an element. This allows the UA to optimize how they handle the element ahead of time, performing potentially-expensive work preparing for an animation before the animation actually begins.

Draft State: CR / Testing

CSS 2.2

This is an updated version of CSS 2.1, including errata, removing sections which are obsoleted by later levels of CSS and ponting to their replacements.

Draft state: WD / Refining

Expected completion: Q4 2017

css-animations-1

This CSS module describes a way for authors to animate the values of CSS properties over time, using keyframes. The behavior of these keyframe animations can be controlled by specifying their duration, number of repeats, and repeating behavior.

Draft State: WD / Refining

web-animations

This specification defines a model for synchronization and timing of changes to the presentation of a Web page. This specification also defines an application programming interface for interacting with this model and it is expected that further specifications will define declarative means for exposing these features.

Draft State: ED / Refining

css-text-3

This CSS3 module defines properties for text manipulation and specifies their processing model. It covers line breaking, justification and alignment, white space handling, and text transformation.

Draft State: LC / Refining

css-transforms

CSS transforms allows elements styled with CSS to be transformed in two-dimensional or three-dimensional space. This specification is the convergence of the CSS 2D transforms, CSS 3D transforms and SVG transforms specifications.

Draft State: WD / Refining

css-transitions-1

CSS Transitions allows property changes in CSS values to occur smoothly over a specified duration.

Draft State: WD / Refining

css-box-3

This module contains the features of CSS relating to the alignment of boxes within their containers in the various CSS box layout models: block layout, table layout, flex layout, and grid layout.

Draft State: WD / Refining

css-grid-1

This CSS module defines a two-dimensional grid-based layout system, optimized for user interface design. In the grid layout model, the children of a grid container can be positioned into arbitrary slots in a predefined flexible or fixed-size layout grid.

Draft State: WD / Refining

css-page-3

This CSS module specifies how pages are generated and laid out to hold fragmented content in a paged presentation. It adds functionality for controlling page margins, page size and orientation, and headers and footers, and extends generated content to enable page numbering and running headers / footers. The process of paginating a flow into such generated pages is covered in css-break-3.

Draft State: WD / Revising

cssom-view-1

The APIs introduced by this specification provide authors with a way to inspect and manipulate the visual view of a document. This includes getting the position of element layout boxes, obtaining the width of the viewport through script, and also scrolling an element.

Draft State: WD / Revising

selectors-4

Selectors are patterns that match against elements in a tree, and as such form one of several technologies that can be used to select nodes in an XML document. Selectors have been optimized for use with HTML and XML, and are designed to be usable in performance-critical code. They are a core component of CSS (Cascading Style Sheets), which uses Selectors to bind style properties to elements in the document.

Draft State: WD / Revising

css-sizing-3

This module extends the CSS sizing properties with keywords that represent content-based "intrinsic" sizes and context-based "extrinsic" sizes, allowing CSS to more easily describe boxes that fit their content or fit into a particular layout context.

Draft State: WD / Revising

css-overflow-3

This module contains the features of CSS relating to scrollable overflow handling in visual media.

Draft State: WD / Revising

css-display-3

This module describes how the CSS formatting box tree is generated from the document element tree and defines the 'display' and 'box-suppress' properties that control it.

Draft State: WD / Revising

css-scroll-snap-1

This module contains features to control panning and scrolling behavior with “snap positions”.

Draft State: WD / Revising

css-pseudo-4

This CSS module defines pseudo-elements, abstract elements that represent portions of the CSS render tree that can be selected and styled.

Draft State: WD / Exploring

css-device-adapt-1

This specification provides a way for an author to specify, in CSS, the size, zoom factor, and orientation of the viewport that is used as the base for the initial containing block.

Draft State: WD / Exploring

css-exclusions-1

CSS Exclusions define arbitrary areas around which inline content can flow. CSS Exclusions can be defined on any CSS block-level elements. CSS Exclusions extend the notion of content wrapping previously limited to floats.

Draft State: WD / Exploring

filter-effects

Filter effects are a way of processing an element’s rendering before it is displayed in the document. Typically, rendering an element via CSS or SVG can be conceptually described as if the element, including its children, are drawn into a buffer (such as a raster image) and then that buffer is composited into the elements parent. Filters apply an effect before the compositing stage. Examples of such effects are blurring, changing color intensity and warping the image.

Draft State: ED / Exploring

css-gcpm-3

Books and other paged media often use special techniques to display information. Content may be moved to or generated for special areas of the page, such as running heads or footnotes. Generated content within pages, such as tab leaders or cross-references, helps readers navigate within and between pages.

Draft State: WD / Exploring

css-page-floats-3

This document describes floats that move to the top or bottom of content passages. This feature has traditionally been used in print publications in which figures and photos are moved to the top or bottom of columns or pages, along with their captions. This draft describes how to achieve this effects for floats within pages, columns, regions and elements.

Draft State: FPWD / Exploring

css-line-grid-1

This module contains CSS features for aligning content to a baseline grid.

Draft State: WD / Exploring

css-lists-3

This draft contains the features of CSS level 3 relating to list styling. It includes and extends the functionality of CSS level 2. The main extensions compared to level 2 are a pseudo-element representing the list marker, and a method for authors to define their own list-styles.

Draft State: WD / Exploring

css-position-3

This module contains the features of CSS level 3 relating to positioning and stacking of elements.

Draft State: WD / Exploring

css-regions-1

The CSS Regions module allows content from one or more elements to flow through one or more boxes called CSS Regions, fragmented as defined in css-break-3. This module also defines CSSOM to expose both the inputs and outputs of this fragmentation.

Draft State: WD / Exploring

css-ruby-1

“Ruby”, a form of interlinear annotation, are short runs of text alongside the base text. They are typically used in East Asian documents to indicate pronunciation or to provide a short annotation. This module describes the rendering model and formatting controls related to displaying ruby annotations in CSS.

Draft State: WD / Exploring

css-tables-3

This CSS module defines a two-dimensional grid-based layout system, optimized for tabular data rendering. In the table layout model, each display node is assigned to an intersection between a set of consecutive rows and a set of consecutive columns, themselves generated from the table structure and sized according to their content.

Draft State: ED / Exploring

cssom-1

CSSOM defines APIs (including generic parsing and serialization rules) for Media Queries, Selectors, and of course CSS itself.

Draft State: WD / Exploring

css-font-loading-3

This CSS module describes events and interfaces used for dynamically loading font resources.

Draft State: LC / Exploring

css-scoping-1

This specification defines various scoping/encapsulation mechanisms for CSS, including scoped styles and the ''@scope'' rule, Shadow DOM selectors, and page/region-based styling.

Draft State: FPWD / Exploring

mediaqueries-4

Media Queries allow authors to test and query values or features of the user agent or display device, independent of the document being rendered. They are used in the CSS @media rule to conditionally apply styles to a document, and in various other contexts and languages, such as HTML and Javascript. Media Queries Level 4 describes the mechanism and syntax of media queries, media types, and media features. It extends and supersedes the features defined in Media Queries Level 3.

Draft State: WD / Exploring

selectors-nonelement-1

Non-element Selectors extends selectors-4 and allows selecting other kinds of document nodes than elements. This is useful when selectors are used as a general document query language. Non-element Selectors are not intended to be used in CSS, but only as a separate query language in other host environments.

Draft State: ED / Exploring

css-inline-3

The CSS formatting model provides for a flow of elements and text inside of a container to be wrapped into lines. The formatting of elements and text within a line, its positioning in the inline progression direction, and the breaking of lines are described in css-text-3. This module describes the positioning in the block progression direction both of elements and text within lines and of the lines themselves. This positioning is often relative to a baseline. It also describes special features for formatting of first lines and drop caps. It extends on the model in CSS2.

Draft State: WD / Revising

motion-1

Motion paths allow authors to animate any graphical object along an author specified path.

Draft State: FPWD / Exploring

css-round-display-1

This document describes CSS extensions to support a round display. The extensions help web authors to build a web page suitable for a round display.

Draft State: WD / Exploring

css-ui-4

This specification describes user interface related properties and values to style HTML and XML (including XHTML). It includes and extends user interface related features from the properties and values of previous CSS levels. It uses various properties and values to style basic user interface elements in a document.

Draft State: FPWD / Exploring

css-text-4

This module defines properties for text manipulation and specifies their processing model. It covers line breaking, justification and alignment, white space handling, and text transformation.

Draft State: FPWD / Exploring

css-paint-api-1

This specification describes an API which allows developers to paint a part of an box in response to geometry / computed style changes with an additional <image> function.

Draft State: FPWD / Exploring

css-properties-values-api-1

This CSS module defines an API for registering new CSS properties. Properties registered using this API are provided with a parse syntax that defines a type, inheritance behaviour, and an initial value.

Draft State: FPWD / Exploring

css-typed-om-1/

Converting CSSOM value strings into meaningfully typed JavaScript representations and back can incur a significant performance overhead. This specification exposes CSS values as typed JavaScript objects to facilitate their performant manipulation.

Draft State: FPWD / Exploring

worklets-1

This specification defines an API for running scripts in stages of the rendering pipeline independent of the main javascript execution environment.

Draft State: FPWD / Exploring

css-color-4

This specification describes CSS <color> values and properties for foreground color and group opacity.

Draft State: FPWD / Exploring

CSS Layout API Level 1
The layout stage of CSS is responsible for generating and positioning fragments from a tree of boxes. This specification describes an API which allows developers to layout a box in response to computed style and box tree changes.

Draft State: FPWD / Exploring

Box Tree API Level 1
Layout as described by CSS produces boxes that control how content is displayed and positioned. This specification describes an API for accessing information about these boxes.

Draft State: FPWD / Exploring

Font Metrics API Level 1
The API exposed by this specification is designed to provide basic font metrics for both in-document and out-of-document content.

Draft State: FPWD / Exploring

The expected completion dates listed above assume not only progress in specification and implementation work, but also in testing work. While the first two are expected to progress at a steady pace, testing has historically been understaffed. In order to avoid delaying specifications reaching the REC stage, Members are encouraged to commit resources to the testing effort. Failure to do so may make it difficult for specifications to progress beyond CR, even when they are being implemented and generally interoperable.

Deliverables without an estimated date may lack tests, test results, implementations, or may require additional editing effort. Dates may be assigned if additional editing or testing resources are identified.

Maintenance of existing CSS Recommendations (gathering of errata, publication of new editions incorporating errata) is also in scope.

Other Deliverables

Other non-normative documents may be created such as:

  • Use case and requirement documents;
  • Test suite and implementation report for the specification;
  • Primer or Best Practice documents to support web developers when designing applications.

Timeline

  • Q1 2017: REC for CSS Variables Level 1
  • Q2 2017: REC for Writing Modes Level 3
  • Q3 2017: REC for Flexible Box Layout
  • Q4 2017: REC for Cascading and Inheritance Level 3
  • Q4 2017: REC for CSS 2.2
  • Q1 2018: REC for Conditional Rules Level 3
  • Q2 2018: REC for Counter Styles Level 3
  • Q2 2018: REC for Cascading and Inheritance Level 4
  • Q3 2018: REC for Backgrounds and Borders Level 3
  • Q4 2018: REC for Values and Units Level 3
  • Q1 2019: REC for Syntax Level 3
  • Q2 2019: REC for Fonts Level 3
  • Q2 2019: REC for Compositing and Blending Level 1

Coordination

For all specifications, this Working Group will seek horizontal review for accessibility, internationalization, performance, privacy, and security with the relevant Working and Interest Groups, and with the TAG. Invitation for review must be issued during each major standards-track document transition, including FPWD and CR, and should be issued when major changes occur in a specification.

Additional technical coordination with the following Groups will be made, per the W3C Process Document:

In addition to the above catch-all reference to horizontal review which includes accessibility review, this Working Group will work with the Accessible Rich Internet Applications Working Group to produce CSS Accessibility API Mappings draft as well as best practices of authoring accessible documents with CSS. A taskforce will be the primary venue for this work, and those specifications will be published jointly.

W3C Groups

Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) Working Group
The Group coordinates closely with the SVG WG on common features (such as the CSS Animations, CSS Fonts, CSS Object Model, CSS 2D and 3D Transformations, and CSS Transitions Modules) to meet the needs of HTML/CSS, SVG, and mixed HTML/CSS/SVG content, and to ensure compatibility at the functionality level for ease of implementation and authoring. The FX Task Force is the primary venue for this work, and those specifications are published jointly.
The CSS WG is aware of normative references to CSS specifications from SVG and will endeavor to maintain their stability, for example by avoiding breaking changes to the referenced portions.
WebFonts Working Group
The Group coordinates with the WebFonts WG to enable high quality Web typography with downloadable fonts, in particular WOFF and WOFF2.
Digital Publishing Interest Group
The group coordinates closely with the DPub IG on requirements for various aspects of CSS in all types of digital publishing, including for e-books and publications on paper.
Web Platform Working Group
The group coordinates with the Web Platform WG to ensure that HTML only contains constructs that can be rendered with CSS.
The Group reviews the Selectors API specification, being developed by the Web Platform Working Group.
The CSS WG is aware of normative references to CSS specifications from HTML5 and will endeavor to maintain their stability, for example by avoiding breaking changes to the referenced portions.
Web Platform Incubator Community Group
The CSS WG may incubate speculative new work in the WICG, and may adopt promising CSS work developed in WICG, provided that RF patent commitments are in place for such work.
Technical Architecture Group
The group coordinates with the TAG on architectural review of CSS specifications and to develop an extensible CSS architecture. The Houdini taskforce is the primary venue for this work, and those specifications are published jointly.

External Organizations

The International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF)
The Group liaises with the IPDF, who develop the EPUB standards for eBooks, to ensure interoperability and convergence between Web and eBooks in the area of styling.

Participation

To be successful, this Working Group is expected to have 6 or more active participants for its duration, including representatives from the key implementors of this specification, and active Editors and Test Leads for each specification. The Chairs, specification Editors, and Test Leads are expected to contribute half of a day per week towards the Working Group. There is no minimum requirement for other Participants.

The group encourages questions, comments and issues on its public mailing lists and document repositories, as described in Communication.

The group also welcomes non-Members to contribute technical submissions for consideration upon their agreement to the terms of the W3C Patent Policy.

Communication

Technical discussions for this Working Group are conducted in public: the meeting minutes from teleconference and face-to-face meetings will be archived for public review, and technical discussions and issue tracking will be conducted in a manner that can be both read and written to by the general public. Working Drafts and Editor's Drafts of specifications will be developed on a public repository, and may permit direct public contribution requests. The meetings themselves are not open to public participation, however.

Information about the group (including details about deliverables, issues, actions, status, participants, and meetings) is available from the CSS Working Group home page and wiki.

Most CSS Working Group teleconferences will focus on discussion of particular specifications, and will be conducted on an as-needed basis.

This group primarily conducts its technical work via the GitHub issues list, with more general discussion on the public mailing list www-style@w3.org (archive). The public is invited to review and discuss issues, and to post messages to this list.

The group may use a Member-confidential mailing list for administrative purposes and, at the discretion of the Chairs and members of the group, for member-only discussions in special cases when a participant requests such a discussion.

Decision Policy

This group will seek to make decisions through consensus and due process, per the W3C Process Document (section 3.3). Typically, an editor or other participant makes an initial proposal, which is then refined in discussion with members of the group and other reviewers, and consensus emerges with little formal voting being required.

However, if a decision is necessary for timely progress, but consensus is not achieved after careful consideration of the range of views presented, the Chairs may call for a group vote, and record a decision along with any objections.

Decisions are made by consensus of the Working Group. In addition to decisions made on teleconferences or face to face meetings, decisions may also be made by a call for consensus on the public mailing list; consensus to be determined by the chairs after some reasonable interval for objections.

All decisions made by the group should be considered resolved unless and until new information becomes available, or unless reopened at the discretion of the Chairs or the Director.

This charter is written in accordance with the W3C Process Document (Section 3.4, Votes), and includes no voting procedures beyond what the Process Document requires.

Patent Policy

This Working Group operates under the W3C Patent Policy (5 February 2004 Version). To promote the widest adoption of Web standards, W3C seeks to issue Recommendations that can be implemented, according to this policy, on a Royalty-Free basis. For more information about disclosure obligations for this group, please see the W3C Patent Policy Implementation.

Licensing

This Working Group will use the W3C Software and Document license for all its deliverables.

About this Charter

This charter has been created according to section 5.2 of the Process Document. In the event of a conflict between this document or the provisions of any charter and the W3C Process, the W3C Process shall take precedence.

Note: