Tim Bray, one of the authors of the XML specification, presents this annotated version to make the complicated jargon slightly easier to understand.

Allows a style sheet to be associated with an XML document by including one or more processing instructions with a target of xml-stylesheet in the document's prolog. (W3C Recommendation 28 October 2010)

Any XML document is part of a set of XML documents that are logically equivalent within an application context, but which vary in physical representation based on syntactic changes permitted by XML 1.0 and Namespaces in XM. Describes a method for generating a physical representation, the canonical form, of an XML document that accounts for the permissible changes. (W3C Recommendation 15 March 2001)

Enables generic SGML to be served, received, and processed on the Web in the way that is now possible with HTML. XML has been designed for ease of implementation and for interoperability with both SGML and HTML. (W3C Recommendation 26 November 2008)

Links to W3C Recommendations, Proposed Recommendations, Candidate Recommendations, Working Drafts, and Notes. In addition, links to Translations of W3C Documents and Acknowledged Submissions.

This document proposes a facility, similar to that of HTML BASE, for defining base URIs for parts of XML documents. (W3C Recommendation 28 January 2009)

Design principles, scope and requirements of XML Encryption, including the encryption syntax, data model, format, cryptographic processing, and external requirements and coordination. (W3C Note 04 March 2002)

This document specifies a process for encrypting data and representing the result in XML. The data may be arbitrary data (including an XML document), an XML element, or XML element content. The result of encrypting data is an XML Encryption element which contains or references the cipher data. (W3C Recommendation 10 December 2002)

Specification that provides XML languages with the ability to uniformly integrate event listeners and associated event handlers with DOM2 event interfaces. The result is to provide an interoperable way of associating behaviors with document-level markup. (W3C Working Group Note 16 December 2010 )

Attempts to define a way to send fragments of an XML document-regardless of whether the fragments are predetermined entities or not-without having to send all of the containing document up to the part in question. (W3C Candidate Recommendation 12 February 2001)

Specifies a processing model and syntax for general purpose inclusion. Inclusion is accomplished by merging a number of XML Infosets into a single composite Infoset. Specification of the XML documents (infosets) to be merged and control over the merging process is expressed in XML-friendly syntax (elements, attributes, URI References). (W3C Recommendation 15 November 2006)

Provides a set of definitions for use in other specifications that need to refer to the information in an XML document. (W3C Recommendation 4 February 2004)

Provide integrity, message authentication, and/or signer authentication services for data of any type, whether located within the XML that includes the signature or elsewhere (W3C Recommendation 10 June 2008).