The "W3C is pleased to announce the advancement of the XML Base specification to Candidate Recommendation status". This short specification describes "a mechanism for providing base URI services to XLink and to other XML applications benefiting from control over relative URIs."

XML Base is also the first specification to add a new attribute using "xml:" as a prefix and therefore bound to the XML namespace (http://www.w3.org/XML/1998/namespace). The xml:base attribute will have the same granularity and scope as its predecessors, xml:lang and xml:space, which have been available since the XML 1.0 recommendation.

Unlike its predecessors, xml:base comes after other recommendations which could have benefited by using it and the (non normative) Appendix C lists the impact on other standards.

Per W3C policy, each Working Group is independent and cannot interfere within the specifications covered by other Working Group and most of this appendix lists the recommendations that "might want to require support for XML Base".

The exceptions are XML 1.0 and Namespaces in XML (not affected at all) and the XML Infoset and Xlink (supporting XML Base). Although XInclude is not listed here, it should also support XML Base.

RDF, which also allows relative URIs is not listed either but might be concerned by the paragraph about namespaces:

Higher level processes which dereference namespace URIs are not covered by the namespaces specification and might at their option specify that xml:base is honored for the purposes of fetching resources at those URIs.

As usual for a Candidate release:

The Working Group invites implementation feedback during this period. Comments on this document should be sent to the public mailing list www-xml-linking-comments@w3.org (archive) by December 8 2000."

Related stories:

• XML Base returns to Last Call
• New XLink, XBase