W3C Digital Publishing Interest Group, EPUB-WEB

DPUB IG Origins

• The publishing industry is, probably, the most important user of W3C’s Web technologies after (traditional) browsers:
  • almost all journals, magazines, etc, have an online version these days
  • scholarly publishing cannot exist without the Web any more
  • EPUB is, essentially, a frozen and packaged Web site
• The quality requirements of the publishing industry are very high:
  • high quality typesetting, graphics, etc.
  • new forms of publishing will be based on high level of interactions, rich media, …
  • common document and data publishing comes to the fore

DPUB IG Origins (cont.)

• But… the publishing industry had been in an entirely “passive” mode v.a.v. Web technologies
  • no participation in the development of fundamental Web technologies
  • W3C (and other standard bodies) hardly know about the requirements that this industry may have
  • the potential synergy between Web developers and publishers is missed out
• Consequence: Working Groups at W3C set their priorities without knowing about, and considering, the publishing industry

DPUB IG Origins (cont.)

• W3C and IDPF organized a series of exploratory workshops in 2012 to create a missing synergy among communities
• The W3C Digital Publishing Activity and the Digital Publishing Interest Group was formally chartered in May 2013
• DPUB IG has weekly teleconferences and annual face to face meetings
• next in 2015 – semi annual F2F: 26 May in NYC

DPUB IG Mission

The mission of the Digital Publishing Interest Group (DPUB IG) […] a forum for experts in the digital publishing ecosystem […] for technical discussions, gathering use cases and requirements to align the existing formats and technologies (e.g., for electronic books) with those used by the Open Web Platform […] 

DPUB IG Mission Explained

• Experts familiar with the ins and outs of digital publishing and its associated industry groups identify issues that are not addressed by the Open Web Platform
• Our goal is to raise issues to W3C working groups who can update (or develop) specs based on our information. We often delegate members to the WGs as well
• DPUB IG has task forces with leads to focus attention on specific issues and collaborate with other WGs

See our website for more detail.

Everybody Does the Work!

• IDPF has been writing specs for digital publishing for 15+ years, using W3C standards as a basis
• DPUB IG highlights issues in OWP (W3C) that do not support the needs of digital publishing and learns from the W3C
• W3C WGs update specs as needed to reflect needs of digital publishing and the broader web community

(Current) DPUB IG Task Forces

• Annotations: led by Rob Sanderson
• Layout and Styling (aka Pagination): led by Dave Cramer
• Metadata: led by Bill Kasdorf and Madi Solomon
• Content and Markup: led by Tzviya Siegman
• Accessibility: led by Deborah Kaplan and Charles LaPierre
• STEM: led by Peter Krautzberger

Annotations

• Published an Annotation Use Cases
• Activity and work has shifted to the Web Annotations Working Group
  • the work aims at annotation for all forms of Web Documents, whether in a browser or an eBook
  • the first Working Group at W3C joining forces of both browser and publishing industries from the start

Pagination and Layout

• Published Requirements for Latin Text Layout and Pagination
• requirements for print and digital publishing from HTML and CSS using the Latin alphabet
• not a static document, new releases will come
• Work with CSS WG to publish the CSS Inline Layout Module Level 3, a draft that enabling drop caps and stick-up caps in CSS
• Participation (and gathering requirements) in the CSS WG’s new work standard pagination control
  • as opposed to the current, wildly differing solution used by the industry

Metadata

• Interviewed publishing experts in metadata
• Published DPUB IG Metadata Task Force Report
• a note summarizing findings in interviews
• discovered that OWP has the tools that publishers seek, but many in publishing are not familiar with tools
• this group can aid the publishing industry in using OWP tools to implement existing vocabularies

Content and Markup

• Goal is to provide a standard way to add a logical structure on top of (but staying compatible with) HTML
  • e.g., identification of various types of sections, index terms, glossaries, etc.
• Working with a W3C Working Group that develops such extensions for accessibility purposes (called ARIA)
• Proposed preliminary list of terms to as a module of ARIA
  • terms provide native HTML elements with specific semantic meaning appropriate to digital publishing
  • working in the context of ARIA provides increased accessibility

Accessibility

• Drafted use cases related to accessibility and personalization in digital publishing
• Reviewing W3C accessibility documentation (UAAG, WCAG, and ATAG) to assess whether the documents reflect the needs of digital publishing and whether publishers are using the documents

STEM

• Conducted initial interviews with STEM experts to get an idea of major pain points in digital publishing
• Preparing pointed survey to refine information gathered in interviews

What's Next?

• Continue our task forces with targeted deadlines and deliverables
• Involve DPUB IG members in the planning and development of EPUB-WEB
  • this may lead to the creation of new task forces

What's Next? EPUB-WEB

• IDPF and W3C published joint vision of future of digital publishing in a white paper entitled “Advancing Portable Documents for the Open Web Platform: EPUB-WEB”
  • White Paper is available at http://w3c.github.io/epubweb/
  • Provide feedback at https://github.com/w3c/epubweb/issues

EPUB-WEB is a Vision for the Future

The EPUB-WEB Vision

• Portable documents are fully native citizen of the Web
• Separation between online (i.e., the “Web”) and portable (i.e., “EPUB”) is diminished to zero
• This means:
  • content authored for primarily offline use can be used online by loading it into a browser
  • content authored for primarily online use can be easily saved as a portable document for offline use
  • these should be doable smoothly, solely based on the user’s interaction

The Vision

• Publishers can choose to utilize either or both of these publishing modes
• Users can choose either or both of these consumption modes
• Essential features flow seamlessly between on-line and off-line modes, like
  • cross-references, user annotations, access to on-line databases
  • licensing and rights management
  • etc.

For Example: Book in a Browser

• On a desktop I may want to read a book just like a Web page:
  • easily follow a link “out” of the book
  • create bookmarks “into” a page in a book
  • use useful plugins and tools that my browser may have
  • create annotations

For Example: Book in a Browser (cont.)

• But:
• sometimes I may need the computing power of my desk-top for, e.g., interactive 3D content
• at other times I may also want to use a small dedicated reader device to read the book on the beach…
• All these on the same book (not conversions from one format to the other)!

Other Use Cases for “Offline” and “Online” usage

• Scholarly publishing, including data sets, audio, video, programs, etc.
• In-house publishing: companies (IBM, Boeing, Renault, etc.) publish digitally, with fast refresh time, and need both offline and online
• Archiving and preservation of complete Web documents
• Education materials including “book” content, interactive assessments, animations, a Web client for assessing test results, data for demos, and more

How Do We Get To EPUB-WEB?

• A strong cooperation between the different communities should be ensured
• Technical challenges must be identified

Some technical challenges

• Packaging format better adapted to Web needs (e.g., streaming), see Packaging on the Web draft
• Document Structure: the current EPUB3 structure (“spine”, etc.) may have to be adapted to Web browsers, with possible defaults and possibility for user interactions
• Identification:
  • general structures for unique ID-s so that documents would really be Web citizens
  • IDs for fragments so that it is possible to link into documents

Some technical challenges (cont.)

• Metadata: use of webby methods to identify products, provide means for rich metadata carried with the EPUB-WEB document
• Further improvements on styling and pagination
• Security, access control, and privacy
• Presentation control: reconcile the different traditions of user control (e.g., font size) for documents

DPUB IG and EPUB-WEB

• DPUB IG already has task forces dedicated to working on many of the EPUB-WEB issues
• The group will contribute to the formulation of the EPUB-WEB technical challenges, to a better understanding of the requirements
• this may mean new task forces, e.g., for identification or packaging
• EPUB-WEB will become a guiding principle for the group’s further work

However…

• EPUB-WEB does not replace EPUB3 (and upcoming EPUB3.1) at this moment
• Many of the new features will also be part of EPUB3.1 (e.g., structural semantics)
• The vision is a convergence of the EPUB3.* specifications and EPUB-WEB, eventually

Upcoming events

• 26 May, 2015: DPUB Face to Face @ Hachette Book Group, New York, NY, USA
• 27 - 28 May, 2015: IDPF Digital Book 2015, New York, NY, USA

Some references

DPUB IG Wiki

https://www.w3.org/dpub/IG/wiki/Main_Page

EPUB-WEB White paper:

http://w3c.github.io/epubweb/

EPUB-WEB Issue list:

https://github.com/w3c/epubweb/issues

This presentation:

http://w3c.github.io/dpub/edupub-2015-03 (PDF is also available for download)

Direct Contacts

Tzviya Siegman, Wiley

tsiegman@wiley.com

Ivan Herman, W3C

ivan@w3.org