PROPOSED Internationalization (i18n) Interest Group Charter

Deliverables

The Interest Group as a whole does not produce any deliverables. Individual task forces may produce gap-analysis documents, and layout requirements documents, or other information that will be reviewed by and published by the Internationalization Working Group. See the GitHub pages for the individual task forces for links to such documents.

The IG produces no Rec-track documents. It only produces documents that are published as web pages or by the Internationalization Working Group as Working Group Notes.

Success Criteria

• Participation from a large group of people with knowledge in different languages and cultures as well as different aspects of Web architecture, to explore gaps in support for different languages and scripts on the Web, and to document requirements.
• Providing advice and opinions to the W3C Internationalization Working Group and external organizations like Unicode Technical Committee (UTC).
• Sharing of information and ideas for promoting internationalization.

This Interest Group expects to follow the TAG Web Platform Design Principles.

Coordination

The Internationalization Interest Group provides a forum for announcements, discussion and advice for the Internationalization Working Group. Members of the Internationalization Working Group are automatically subscribed to the Internationalization Interest Group. The WGs use the i18n IG to obtain input from a larger group of people with knowledge in different languages and cultures as well as different aspects of Web architecture, and to report progress on their work, and solicit feedback.

Communication

The main list of the Internationalization Interest Group is www-international@w3.org (public archive). There are also a number of specialised mailing lists for topics such as bidi, indic, CJK, etc. They are listed in the groups page of the i18n site. Technical discussions, however, normally take place on one of the GitHub repositories used for internationalization work at W3C. The IG mailing lists principally receive digests from those repositories notifying subscribers of changes to issues or of pull requests, and the minutes of the Internationalization Working Group are sent to www-international.

Task forces within the IG also have (publicly visible) administrative lists for internal, practical discussions.

Technical discussions for this Interest Group are conducted in public. Working Drafts and Editor's Drafts of documents will be developed in public repositories 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 Internationalization Interest Group home page.

The public is invited to review, discuss and contribute to this work.

Decision Policy

Task forces within this group will seek to make decisions through consensus and due process, per the W3C Process Document (section 5.2.1, Consensus). 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 and 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.

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.

This charter is written in accordance with the W3C Process Document (Section 4.3, Advisory Committee Review of a Charter) and includes no voting procedures beyond what the Process Document requires.

Patent Disclosures

The Interest Group provides an opportunity to share perspectives on the topic addressed by this charter. W3C reminds Interest Group participants of their obligation to comply with patent disclosure obligations as set out in Section 6 of the W3C Patent Policy. While the Interest Group does not produce Recommendation-track documents, when Interest Group participants review Recommendation-track specifications from Working Groups, the patent disclosure obligations do apply. For more information about disclosure obligations for this group, please see the licensing information.

Please note that the proceedings of this Interest Group (mailing list archives, minutes, etc.) are publicly visible.

Licensing

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

About this Charter

This charter has been created according to section 3.4 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.