The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) released the HTML Working Group Roadmap Note today, presenting a vision for work that will take the working group up to XHTML 2.0.

While HTML 4 may receive some "corrections and bug fixes", "W3C has no intention to extend HTML 4 as such. Instead, further work is focusing on a reformulation of HTML in XML."

XHTML 1.0 has been completed, and work is now proceeding on the Modularization of XHTML, with eventual support for XML Schemas. Other tasks to be addressed include supporting the DOM Level 2 Event Model, creating document profiles that allow servers to supply clients with content authored to meet their capabilities, and large scale revision of forms.

A formal schedule, including some notable unspecified dates, is included in the document, as are descriptions of each project. The February 2001 Recommendation date for XHTML 2.0 may seem optimistic, but it certainly sets a target.

Update: Murray Altheim posted a clear summary of the various phases of XHTML on the www-html mailing list.

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