W3C has provided a robust framework for the open development of technical specifications for many years. The status of W3C's Technical Reports, including Recommendations, draft specifications, Working Group Notes, and other documents, has inspired others to copy the structure, layout, and even the distinctive style of our documents. The intent of these ranges from proposals intended as submissions to W3C, to wish lists, to personal projects. Imitation being the sincerest form of flattery, W3C does not want to discourage people from using our documents as inspiration, and even welcomes the direct involvement of the community. However, because folks sometimes inadvertently copy our logo, copyright notices, and document status sections, this may lead readers to become confused as to the status of a document that is not actually affiliated with W3C.
To help interested parties get started on writing their own specifications, we have created a blank specification template that provides hints for the structure of a W3C-inspired specification, while still clearly indicating that the document is not a W3C specification. We hope that this serves potential editors well in guiding them to create specifications, particularly those intended as proposals to the W3C. This template may be used and modified by anyone, but we do ask that you retain those sections that explain the informal status of the document.
Feel free to use the W3C Official Unofficial Specification Template (WOUST). The template is also available as a zip file that includes the stylesheet and associated images.
If you intend it as a proposal to W3C, then you should post it to some stable public location, such as your own or your organization's Web site. If you don't have a Web site where you can post it, you should attach it to an email and send it to www-archive@w3.org (archives), W3C's archive list. Please do not send attachments to other W3C lists, because it may clog subscriber's email inboxes; instead, send it to the archive list, and send a follow-up email to the relevant list with a link to the specification on the page for www-archive.
If your specification is not intended as a proposal to W3C, you can post it wherever you like. In this case, please be sure to use a local copy of the stylesheet and images, to save W3C's bandwidth.
In either case, we are interested how people use our template, so feel free to send a message to us to let us know.
Maybe. W3C takes contributions from its Members and the larger community very seriously, but it also takes its stewardship role seriously. No matter where a proposal comes from, it is subject to review, critiques, and improvement from the larger community in our consensus-based forums. Your original proposal may grow to be a standard, but it may look different than the document you started with; it may be that only the best parts of your specification are used. But regardless, you will have a say in how it develops, along with the rest of the community. However, using the structure and tips in the template will help people review and consider your ideas, so it does help.
Yes and no. First, you should be careful not to reuse the existing content of any specification in a way that violates the copyright of that specification. Second, you must be careful to remove anything that may lead readers to think that your specification is a W3C document, which includes the copyright notifications, the content in the Status section, the W3C logo, and the background images, and any other confusing content throughout the body of the specification. Many smart people miss some of this. This is why we took the effort to provide a template just for this use, so we encourage you to use the template instead.
No! We are providing this template merely as a community service, which helps both authors and readers. W3C makes no claim to any original content you put in this specification.
Here are some other useful resources that may help specification authors: