XHTML for Conference Proceedings

From WWW2006

XHTML for ACM Conference Proceedings: Are We Nearly There Yet?

Researchers mainly create their articles in Word and LaTeX because math, symbols, bibliographies and the traditional double column formatting do not come easily in an interoperable environment. On top of that, the ACM production environment is completely oblivious to XHTML. The IW3C2 stylesheet for Web conference proceedings is a brave, but flawed attempt to force Web researchers to "eat their own dog-food". Tool support for translation into XHTML is still limited, leaving authors with a complicated, unwieldy and frustrating job to do.

Looking on the bright side, the task has become easier in recent years. CSS support is widespread, and a number of solutions for using maths are available (but not platform independent). WWW2006 papers and poster abstracts are all** available in XHTML on the DVD and conference web site.

Here's some questions I'd like to thrash out for the benefit of the conference:

• What steps can we take towards better XHTML proceedings for WWW2007
• What is the ideal process? Originating in or translating to XHTML?
• What';s the best we can achieve at the moment, from a pragmatic POV?
• Do we have to drop our standards for visual style?
• What will we be able to do 'Real Soon Now'?
• How do we engage the ACM and their production company "Sheridan Printing"?
• Just how Accessible are our Knowledge Products? Can we be sued? Should we be shot?

The outcome of the BOF will not be binding on next year's conference, but it should help the PC chairs to make appropriate decisions and to better integrate with the ACM's workflow. It should also help the IW3C2 to plan a short-term strategy for promoting the use of Web standards within the Web conference series.

Attending

• User:Christopher Gutteridge - Having been the poor sod which wrote the webpage for this years programme, I guess I have some insight into the problems, if not the solutions.

• User:Jirka Kosek - I can show how I generated both LaTeX and XHTML versions of my article from single source stored in DocBook XML if anyone is interested.