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+# Goals and Non-Goals
+
+This document defines the purpose of the Message Format Working Group (MFWG)
+and informs the decisions about the scope and the priorities of its efforts.
+
+## Goals
+
+The primary task of the MFWG is to develop an industry standard for the
+representation of localizable message strings. The design goals are listed
+below.
+
+ 1. Express grammatical features, such as plurals, genders, and inflections.
+
+ 2. Express other variance in translation, due to linguistic and regional
+    features, the presentation media, context, circumstance, and other factors.
+
+ 3. Express formattable data, such as numbers, dates, currencies, and units.
+
+ 4. Represent structured data alongside translations, such as markup, comments,
+    and metadata.
+
+ 5. Be capable of localization roundtrip.
+
+ 6. Enable the creation of implementations, frameworks and tools building on
+    top of the standard, manifesting different ideas and programming paradigms,
+    and optimized for different uses and audiences.
+
+
+## Deliverables
+
+ 1. A formal definition of the canonical data model for representing
+    localizable message strings.
+
+ 2. A formal definition of the canonical syntax for representing the data
+    model, with well defined rules for handling text, special characters,
+    escape sequences, whitespace, markup, as well as parsing errors.
+
+ 3. A specification for a one-to-one mapping between the data model and XLIFF.
+
+ 4. A specification for resolving translations at runtime, including
+    interpolated data types and runtime errors.
+
+ 5. A conformance test suite for parsing and formatting messages.
+
+
+## Non-Goals
+
+The following is a list of potential goals which are explicitly excluded from
+the scope of the MFWG.
+
+ 1. Design a _general interchange format_ for storing and transferring
+    translations. Instead, ensure compatibility with the existing interchange
+    formats.
+
+ 2. Support _all grammatical features of all languages_. Instead, focus on
+    features most commonly encountered in user interfaces, textual, graphical
+    and spoken ones alike.
+
+ 3. Create an _automated engine_ capable of transforming parts of speech in
+    a grammatically-correct fashion. Instead, allow interfacing with such
+    automatic and non-automatic engines from within the data model.
+
+ 4. Create optimized and efficient _implementations of the standard_.  Instead,
+    create specifications, compliance test suites, recommendations and good
+    practices to support implementors.
+
+ 5. Build a _framework for localizing software_. Instead, design the standard
+    as a building block to be used by third parties to create localization
+    frameworks.