The Keystone Application Framework implements a number of industry application standards, implemented from the World Wide Web Consortium Recommendation documents.
The W3C standards have been chosen for this framework because:
Industry application standards break the boundary between competing applications of the same class, meaning a software producer cannot tie end users into a specific product because their work is stored in a proprietary format. They in fact bring end users the option of using several possibly competing products alongside to produce an environment with a complete feature set. For the software industry this will mean a shift in focus in product development towards high quality, rather then feature driven software
As a result of the Application Framework design pattern, industry standards implemented by the framework become immediately accessible for use by software developers in applications. As a result of the W3C working groups legal policy, software developers can be assured that the use of their work will not be restricted by licensing issues
A text based language for describing application data. Object trees in Keystone applications can be loaded and stored to XML as a basic function of the framework.
XML W3C HomeA language for addressing the content of an XML document. XPath can be used to select objects and object attributes within an object tree in a Keystone application.
XPath W3C HomeAn XML based language for describing 2d graphics with extensive scope. Primariy contributer is Adobe.
The Keystone framework extends SVG to allow it to be uses easily to create user interface for applications. In particular, these extentions cover binding SVG animations to application data using XPath syntax
SVG W3C HomeThe best XML based langauge so far for describing user interfaces.
Mozilla XUL reference