It’s hard to believe, but there currently isn’t a standard way to represent text over time for things like closed captioning. Last week the W3C created the Timed Text Working Group as part of its SMIL activities, and their charter is to develop an XML-based format for representing temporal text. The first working draft is scheduled to be available by March 15, and the final recommendation by July 2004 (!).

• Timed Text Working Group charter
• News.com story