The Big Picture graphic (last updated June 15, 1999; imagemap not yet ready) shows the interrelationship among the various efforts of the W3C and its members in the ever expanding areas that I call "Next Generation HTML". Colors indicate the current state of each effort: red indicates a fully mature W3C Recommendation, pink represents a Proposed Recommendation, brown indicates a Working Draft, aqua represents a W3C Note, and black labels specifications which are not presently part of W3C's purview. (If these terms are not clear, see my description of the W3C Process.) As an imagemap, the graphic also functions as a launching pad for each of the topics depicted.
On the extreme left of the diagram, the vertical labels Scripting, Markup, Style, and Linking partition the diagram into the major divisions which are discussed next. As we move from left to center of the diagram, we first see the mostly red Recommendations, then the mixed status of the three XML specifications (XML, XSL, and XLL), and finally the black non-W3C specifications, SGML, DSSSL, HyTime and TEI. This progression (left to center) indicates increasing complexity. It is not a coincidence that these more complex specifications are outside of the realm of the W3C; they represent efforts, primarily from the publishing industry, that pre-date the World Wide Web.
The entire right side of the diagram depicts specifications that are related to XML. In this portion of the diagram, left to right does not imply anything about complexity. It may help to think of the right side of specifications as being "behind" XML in a 3D sense.
Since this is a static view of some very dynamic targets, please refer to the W3C Technical Reports & Publications page for the final word concerning the status of any W3C Recommendation, Proposed Recommendation, Working Draft, or Note.
Note: The W3C has a related Data Format Architecture diagram by Tim Berners-Lee on their W3C Data Formats page. The W3C diagram emphasizes the relationship between XML and RDF, in which the former provides the syntax and structure while the latter provides the semantics; RDF is viewed as a layer on top of XML.
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