While the W3C heads to the WWW9 conference in Amsterdam, visitors to its site can explore a large number of cobwebbed Last Call working drafts on which progress appears to have slowed or ceased.

Though hopefully some progress will be made at meetings in Amsterdam, all of the 'Last Call' drafts listed at the W3C have reached the end of their last call period, some as much as four months ago:

• XML Pointer Language (XPointer) No new draft, but no longer listed as Last Call, which ended 27 December 1999. Issued 6 December 1999.
• Ruby Annotation Issued 17 December 1999; Last Call ended 14 January 2000.
• XML Information Set Issued 20 December 1999; Last Call ended 31 January 2000.
• Building XHTML(TM) Modules Issued 5 January 2000; Last Call ended 1 February 2000.
• Modularization of XHTML(TM) Issued 5 January 2000; Last Call ended 1 February 2000.
• XHTML(TM) 1.1 - Module-based XHTML Issued 5 January 2000; Last Call ended 1 February 2000.
• Canonical XML Version 1.0n Issued 19 January 2000; Last Call ended 22 February 2000.
• SMIL Animation Issued 28 January 2000; Last Call ended 27 February 2000.
• XHTML(TM) Basic Issued 10 February 2000; Last Call ended 15 March 2000.
• XML Base (XBase) Issued 21 February 2000; Last Call ended 20 March 2000.
• XML Linking Language (XLink) Issued 21 February 2000; Last Call ended 20 March 2000.
• Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) 1.0 Specification Issued 3 March 2000; Last Call ended 31 March 2000.

According to the W3C's Process Document, "Working Groups must update a Working Draft every three months." Some of the documents listed above are still within that time frame, but most are past. Many ordinary working drafts are also growing old, though the listing of requirements documents as working drafts may inflate that number.