(Pack­aged) Web Pub­li­ca­tions (PWP)

Ivan Her­man, W3C

EU In­terin­sti­tu­tional Dig­i­tal Pub­lish­ing Com­mit­tee Ple­nary Meet­ing, Brus­sels, Bel­gium

2016-10-11

(Packaged) Web Publications

Ivan Her­man, W3C

EU In­terin­sti­tu­tional Dig­i­tal Pub­lish­ing Com­mit­tee Ple­nary Meet­ing, Brus­sels, Bel­gium

2016-10-11

These Slides are Avail­able on the Web

See:
http://w3c.github.io/dpub/2016/IDPC/index.html

(Slides are in HTML)

A for­mat to rep­re­sent dig­i­tal pub­li­ca­tions: EPUB 3

Cloned Milk­men, Flickr

EPUB 3 is a very mature specification

A wide variety of books have been created

Books with of il­lus­tra­tions…

An extract of the 'Petit Prince' with a typical drawing
An­toine de Sain-Exupéry: “Le Petit Prince”, Ebooks li­bres et gra­tu­its
An extract of Winnie the Pooh with a typical drawing
A.A. Milne: “Win­nie-the-Pooh”, Egmont UK Ltd.

Art books

Page with an annotated high quality reproduction of a Dutch painting
In­grid Koe­nen: “Dutch Golden Age”

Man­gas

Page of a typical Japanese manga
“ハルコさんの彼氏”, IDPF EPUB3 Sam­ple

Tech­ni­cal books

Extract of a CSS book, with codes and figures
Lea Verou: “CSS Se­crets”, O'Reilly
Extract of a Javascript book with figure and code
Michael Fogus: “Func­tional Pro­gram­ming”, O'Reilly

Books with different character sets and writing directions

An extract of a text in arabic
“Régime Anti-Can­cer Ara­bic”, IDPF EPUB3 Sam­ple
An extract a text in Japanese, written in vertical
Murasaki Shik­ibu: “The tale of the Genji”, Ao­zora Bunko

It is not only for books! It can be…

…journals or magazines (articles)

Cover of the JEP journal
Table of content of the JEP journal

…of­fi­cial re­ports of all kinds

EU brochure in English
Eu­ro­pean Com­mis­sion — Gen­eral Re­port 2015
EU brochure in Bulgarian
Eu­ro­pean Com­mis­sion — Gen­eral Re­port 2015

In fact, just about anything!

Screendump of gdrive saving a document as EPUB
Screendump of Apple Pages saving a document as EPUB

What is the se­cret?

James Ar­boghast, flickr

Well, at least one of the secrets…

Rough structure of an EPUB file

EPUB Packaging structure diagram

A good example

Figure with a complex image processing done, in fact, in CSS
Lea Verou: “CSS Se­crets”, O'Reilly

Bottom line: relationships of EPUB with OWP is fundamental

Are we all done?
I.e., are OWP and EPUB a perfect match?

There are two major areas that need work:

  1. bring OWP and Dig­i­tal Pub­lish­ing closer
  2. bring the Web and Dig­i­tal Pub­lish­ing closer

Bring OWP and Dig­i­tal Pub­lish­ing closer

Missing OWP features

Bring the Web and Dig­i­tal Pub­lish­ing closer

What is, in fact, a (dig­i­tal) book?

“This should not be the case!”
what does this mean?

Portable Web Publication at a glance

ibta ara­bia

For example: book in a browser

Joseph Reagle's book as a web page
Joseph Rea­gle: “Good Faith Col­lab­o­ra­tion”, PhD The­sis, MIT Press

For example: book in a browser

Joseph Reagle's book as an ebook in reader
Joseph Rea­gle: “Good Faith Col­lab­o­ra­tion”, PhD The­sis, MIT Press

For example: I may not be online…

Person sitting in a station with a mobile in hand
Bryan Ong, Flickr

For example: scholarly publishing

Screen dump of an article on F1000
Jul­lien Colomb et. al: “Sub-strains of Drosophila Can­ton-S…”, F1000Re­search

For example: in-house publishing

Bookshelf full of documentation
Peliro Agüera, Flickr

How do we get there? (Technically)

Moyan Brenn, Flickr

Let us con­cen­trate on the Web only for now
(for­get about “tra­di­tional” e-books)

Need for the concept of a “publication” of many resources

What does that mean technically?

a collection of resources with different URL pointer

What does that mean technically?

a collection of resources in a 'blob' with one URL pointer

Why do we need the WP concept?

Why do we need the WP concept?

(Some) tech­ni­cal chal­lenges

The “on­line” vs. “of­fline” issue

What kinds of documents are we talking about?

What kinds of documents are we not talking about?

Pack­aged Web Pub­li­ca­tions (PWP)

A layer “on top” of WP-s

a collection of resources in a 'blob' in a rectangle with one URL pointer

But what about
EPUB???

PWP vs. EPUB3.1

Most things are the same!

Other synergy effects of convergence

Advantage for the publishers‘ community

Photo of a bookshelf with lots of technical books
Jef­frey Zeld­man, Flickr

Advantage for the publishers‘ community

Photo of a bookshelf with lots of technical books
Jef­frey Zeld­man, Flickr

Advantage for the Web community

image of a medieval manuscript
Oliver Byrne's edi­tion of Eu­clid, Uni­ver­sity of British Co­lum­bia

Some references

Lat­est PWP Use Cases and Re­quire­ments draft:
https://w3c.github.io/dpub-pwp-ucr/
Lat­est PWP Ed­i­tors’ draft:
https://w3c.github.io/dpub-pwp/
PWP Issue list:
https://github.com/w3c/dpub-pwp/issues

Some references

Lat­est PWP Use Cases and Re­quire­ments draft:
https://w3c.github.io/dpub-pwp-ucr/
Lat­est PWP Ed­i­tors’ draft:
https://w3c.github.io/dpub-pwp/
PWP Issue list:
https://github.com/w3c/dpub-pwp/issues

Con­stantly evolv­ing…

Thank you for your at­ten­tion!

This pre­sen­ta­tion:
http://w3c.github.io/dpub/2016/IDPC/index.html
(PDF is also avail­able for down­load)
My con­tact:
ivan@​w3.​org