The Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Working Group and the SVG Working Group have published a Last Call Working Draft of Compositing and Blending Level 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 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. This specification will define a new compositing model that expands upon the Simple Alpha Compositing model by offering additional Porter Duff compositing operators; advanced blending modes which allow control of how colors mix in the areas where shapes overlap; and compositing groups. Please send Last Call comments by 8 November 2013. Learn more about the Style Activity.

The Web Events Working Group has published a W3C Recommendation of Touch Events. The Touch Events specification defines a set of low-level events that represent one or more points of contact with a touch-sensitive surface, and changes of those points with respect to the surface and any DOM elements displayed upon it (e.g. for touch screens) or associated with it (e.g. for drawing tablets without displays). It also addresses pen-tablet devices, such as drawing tablets, with consideration toward stylus capabilities. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity.

The Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Working Group has published a Last Call Working Draft of CSS Text Module Level 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. Comments are welcome through 07 November. Learn more about the Style Activity.

The Audio Working Group has published a Working Draft of Web Audio API. This specification describes a high-level JavaScript API for processing and synthesizing audio in web applications. The primary paradigm is of an audio routing graph, where a number of AudioNode objects are connected together to define the overall audio rendering. The actual processing will primarily take place in the underlying implementation (typically optimized Assembly / C / C++ code), but direct JavaScript processing and synthesis is also supported. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity.

The XML Core Working Group invites implementation of the Candidate Recommendation of XML Inclusions (XInclude) Version 1.1. Many programming languages provide an inclusion mechanism to facilitate modularity. Markup languages also often have need of such a mechanism. This specification introduces a generic mechanism for merging XML documents (as represented by their information sets) for use by applications that need such a facility. The syntax leverages existing XML constructs – elements, attributes, and URI references. Learn more about the Extensible Markup Language (XML) Activity.

The Internationalization Working Group has published a Group Note of Use Cases & Exploratory Approaches for Ruby Markup. This document was designed to support discussion about what is needed in the HTML5 specification, and possibly other markup vocabularies, to adequately support ruby markup. It describes a number of use cases associated with ruby usage, and then examines a number of possible ruby markup approaches for each use case, listing pros and cons for each approach. Learn more about the Internationalization Activity.