Advancing Portable Documents for the Open Web Platform: EPUB-WEB

EPUB-WEB is a vision for the future

The vision

• Portable documents are fully native citizen of the Open Web Platform
• 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.

EPUB at an inflection point

• EPUB 3 is getting adopted by publishers
• But rendering EPUB 3 requires:
• browser extensions; or
• significant development on top of “browser cores” for software/hardware solutions
• EPUB as “first class Web citizen” would mean an easier and quicker deployment

Web Platform at an inflection point

• Usage of (mobile) apps come to the fore (although often based on the same “browser cores”)
• EPUB-WEB development would go in parallel with the development of general issues like packaging, metadata, or offline support

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

For example: book in a browser (cont.)

• But:
• my book may be 2000 pages long
• conventional Web browsing may not be the right way to view content, a paginated view may be better
• I may also want to use a small dedicated reader device to read the book on the beach…
• All this should happen using the same book, and not a conversion from one format to the other!

For example: I may not be online…

• I may find an article on the Web that I want to review, annotate, etc., while commuting home on a train
• I want the results of the annotations to be back online, when I am back on the Internet
• Note: some browsers have an “archiving” possibility, but they are not interoperable
  • the content can definitely no be read on a dedicated reader

For example: scholarly publishing

• My paper is published, primarily, on-line, but people may want to download it for offline use
• The format of the paper should be adaptable to my reading environment
  • do not want a two column, fixed layout file that I cannot handle on my iPad…
• My “paper” may also contain video, audio, data, programs…
  • scholarly publishing is not text only any more!

For example: in-house publishing

• Major companies (IBM, Intel, Boeing, FAO, Renault,…) are specialized publishers through the publication of huge amount of documentation
• Delivering it on paper is not an option any more
• Fast refresh time is needed
• The same document should be available offline (e.g., in the cockpit) or online (e.g., on the work floor): there should be no difference between the two

For example: archival and preservation

• Archiving digital assets (i.e., Web pages with all dependencies) is a major problem
• There is a need to produce, easily, a complete version of a page to be stored through archival facilities

For example: educational materials

• What is an educational publication?
• A book of possibly long texts that requires offline access on dedicated devices?
• A packaged application with built-in interactive tests, animated examples?
• A Web client reaching out to Web services for assessing test results, to encyclopedia, …?
• An interactive data container storing various data for, e.g., demonstrations?
• The borderline between a “book” and a “(Web) Application” are becoming blurred!

Advantage for publishers‘ community

• Publishers want to concentrate on what they know better: how to produce, edit, curate, etc, great content
• Publishers are not technology companies, nor do they intend to be; they want instead to rely on the vibrant Web community!

Advantage for the Web community

• Publishers have a long experience in ergonomy, typography, paging, complex layout, etc.
• Publishing long texts, with the right aesthetics, readability, structure, etc., is an expertise the Web community can profit from
• Experience of publishers in the complete curatory workflow for producing content may become important for Web design

Some communities that may be affected

How do we get there?

• A strong cooperation between the different communities should be ensured
• Technical challenges must be identified
• A new generation of EPUB (“EPUB-WEB”) has to be specified

In what follows some of the main technical issues will be highlighted

Archival format

• EPUB is based on ZIP
• There is no standard packaging format for browsers yet…
  • although there is a need for, e.g., applications or data sets
• … but ZIP may not be the right approach on the Web
  • Multipart Mime may be an alternative
• There is a new work item at W3C on packaging standard whicht may affect EPUB-WEB

Overall document structure

• A complete, offline content needs additional information
  • list of all necessary content, default reading order, etc.
  • in EPUB these are stored in additional, auxilliary files (“spine”, etc.)
  • these may have to be adapted to EPUB-WEB (e.g., usage of JSON instead of XML)
• But these data may not be necessary for a simple Web page with a few CSS files
  • i.e., some sort of a default structure should be defined
• User interaction paradigms should also be developed to create documents from more complex Web sites easily

Identification

• A consise and unique identification for the document (e.g., the “work”) under various usage patterns is necessary
• i.e., what is the URI for…
  • Shakespeare's Hamlet?
  • its digital edition published by Publisher XYZ?
  • the copy I own and annotate?
• This is necessary to make a book a first-class citizen on the Web

B.t.w., this is already the topic for debates in the publishing and library communities…

Identification (cont.)

• Unique identification of the work is not enough
• A fragment identification framework is also necessary to link into the document
• There are fragments defined for various media, but a universal model, workable for browsers, is still missing
  • these should be agnostic to offline vs. online state, to media type, etc.

Works are already ongoing within the framework of activities around annotations

Metadata

• EPUB-WEB must make use of browser friendly metadata formats (RDFa, JSON-LD, µdata) to carry metadata
• EPUB-WEB should also provide means to link to external metadata
• A typical area where a solution for identification (including fragment identification) is essential

Improvement on styling

• Books usually need higher quality typesetting than average Web pages
  • control over fine aspects of drop caps, alignments, justification, hyphenation, bleeds, etc.
  • cf. http://www.w3.org/TR/dpub-latinreq/

Pagination, numbering, indexing

• What is a “page” for an electronic content?
  • is this a new CSS concept? Do we need an extension to the DOM?
• In general, content may be placed into linked regions
• References (page numbers, references to pictures or diagrams, bibliographic references, etc.) should have robust mechanism across several documents/regions
• e.g., if the book’s chapters are stored in different files
• page numbers can dynamically change as a result of user interaction, e.g., larger fonts
• numbering of items should be automatically continuous across documents

Security and Privacy

• The Web/browser mechanism is based on the control per “site”, or a ”web page”, largely based on user/password
• Current publishing practices are very divergent (strict DRM, watermarking, social DRM, etc.)
• A consensus solution will be needed

Presentation control

• What is the level of user control of the presentation?
• The Web and eBook traditions are vastly different:
  • In a browser, the Web designer is in full control
    • CSS alternate style sheets are hardly in use
    • some user interface aspects can be controlled but only for the browser as a whole
  • In an eBook reader, there may be more user control
    • foreground/background color
    • choice of fonts
• There is a need to reconcile these traditions

What is next?

• We collect comments on this vision
• collecting (public or private comments) to the White Paper
• discussions at various events with the communities at large
• internal discussions at IDPF and W3C
• Develop a more specific roadmap
• what are the specific technical specifications that have to be developed?
• what other work should be “influenced”?
• what groups should be set up at IDPF and/or W3C?
• Regular updates of the White Paper based on the comments

If there is a consensus

• Work with existing IDPF and W3C groups, where necessary, on specific details
• Set up a new group (or groups) to define the EPUB-WEB specific issues

Conclusion

• There is a great potential in a convergence between the Open Web Platform and Portable Documents
• It will require a common effort and cooperation of both communities
• But it is an exciting prospect!

Some pointers

White paper:

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

Issue list:

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

These slides:

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

Direct contacts:

Markus Gylling, IDPF

mgylling@idpf.org

Ivan Herman, W3C

ivan@w3.org