Foreword

ISO (the International Organization for Standardization) and IEC (the International Electrotechnical Commission) form a specialized system for worldwide standardization. National bodies that are members of ISO or IEC participate in the development of International Standards through technical committees established by the respective organization to deal with particular fields of technical activity. ISO and IEC technical committees collaborate in fields of mutual interest. Other international organizations, governmental and non-governmental, in liaison with ISO and IEC, also take part in the work. See http://www.iso.org for information on ISO and http://www.iec.ch for information on IEC.

In the field of information technology, ISO and IEC have established a joint technical committee, ISO/IEC JTC 1. Draft International Standards adopted by the joint technical committee are circulated to national bodies for voting. Publication as an International Standard requires approval by at least 75% of the national bodies casting a vote. See http://www.jtc1.org for information on JTC 1.

International Standard ISO/IEC 19776 was prepared by Joint Technical Committee ISO/IEC JTC 1, Information technology, Subcommittee 24, Computer graphics and image processing, in collaboration with The Web3D Consortium, Inc. (http://www.web3d.org) and the moderated X3D contributors email list (x3d-contributors@web3d.org).

ISO/IEC 19776 consists of the following parts, under the general title Information technology — Computer graphics and image processing — Extensible 3D (X3D) encodings:

Part 1: XML encoding (this part)
Part 2: Classic VRML encoding
Part 3: Binary encoding

Further parts will follow.

Annex A forms an integral part of this part of ISO/IEC 19776. Annexes B and C are for information only.