The Future of W3C Digital Publishing

These Slides are Available on the Web

See:
http://w3c.github.io/dpub/beijing-2015/index.html/

(Slides are in HTML)

About W3C: “Leading the Web to its Full Potential”

• Founded in 1994, and directed by Tim Berners-Lee, the Inventor of the Web
• Member organization with over 400 members
• Cca. 80 staff bound to “hosts” in the USA (MIT), China (Beihang University), Japan (Keio University), and France (ERCIM)
• Focuses on Web ecosystem: users, developers, browsers, as well as specific industry requirements brought by industry segments

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 this 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 many 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 Interest Group was formally created in May 2013
• DPUB IG has weekly teleconferences and bi-annual face to face meetings

DPUB IG Mission

• 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
• Goal is to raise issues to W3C working groups who can update or develop specs based on the needs of the publishing community.
• Work on a future vision of Digital Publishing called “Portable Web Publications (PWP)”

See our website for more detail.

IDPF and W3C

IDPF	W3C
Standards for the Electronic Publishing and Content Consumption (EPUB)	Standards for the General Web Technologies
Builds on lower level Web (e.g., W3C) Standards	Builds on lower level Internet (e.g., IETF, ECMA) Standards
Does not develop standards beyond publishing	Does not develop industry specific standards if there is another home for those

The key is collaboration.

Relationships to some other organizations

• BISG: represented in the Interest Group; joint discussions in the areas of metadata and accessibility.
• EDItEUR: represented in the Interest Group.
• IPTC: not a member of W3C yet, but there are some new activites on right expressions at W3C where they may participate.
• Daisy Consortium: one of the most active members of the W3C Accessibility work.

Layout and Styling

• An evolving document: “Requirements for Latin Text Layout and Pagination”
• Describes issues like hyphenation, spreads and bleeds, drop caps, pagination, etc.
• Has greatly influenced some current CSS Work, e.g. “CSS Inline Layout Module Level 3” (handling initial letters, dropcaps), or “CSS Generated Content for Paged Media Module” (handling running heads and footers)

Priorities for CSS

• Another evolving document: “Priorities for CSS from the DPUB IG”
  • major emphasis on pagination-related features
• Provides a list of the top CSS priorities, and their current availability
• Also influences the work of the CSS Working Group

Content and Markup

• Goal: identify the semantics of the HTML elements
  • “abstract”, “indexed term”, “footnote”, "chapter", …
• Express structural information (“where can that element be used”)
• Do it in a forward looking way in terms of W3C standards.
  • i.e., move away from epub:type used in EPUB 3
  • the resulting HTML should be valid
• These terms may be useful for the Web at large!

Content and Markup: Approach Chosen

• Use “Accessible Rich Internet Applications (WAI-ARIA)” as a basic mechanism:
  • use specific attributes in HTML
  • attribute values convey a specific semantics
  • values mapped on Assistive Technologies interfaces

Content and Markup: DPUB ARIA module

• A Digital Publishing ARIA module is in development
• Publishing terms become part of ARIA

<section role="doc-appendix">
  <h1>Appendix A. Historical Timeline</h1>
   …
</section>

What does this mean?

• Separation between publishing “online”, as Web sites, and offline/packaged 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
  • contents are mostly authored regardless of where they are used
  • these should be doable smoothly, solely based on the user’s interaction

What does this mean?

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)!

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 not 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: Educational Materials

• What is an educational publication?
• a book that requires offline access?
• 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 Publishers‘ Community (cont.)

• OWP is more than “just” HTML, CSS, MathML, etc.
• It also defines a large number of facilities that provide access to, e.g., system resources or utilities
  • index database, Web storage, battery status API, real-time communication, geolocation,…
• Aligning more on OWP means that publishing oriented devices, software, services, etc, can rely on those
  • instead of possibly re-inventing the wheel…

Advantage for the Web Community

• Publishers have a long experience in ergonomics, typography, paging, …
• 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 workflow for producing content may become important for Web design

• A strong cooperation between the different communities should be ensured
• Technical challenges must be identified
  • note that some of the challenges are not PWP specific, but Digital Publishing in general (e.g., pagination control)
• Some examples follow…

Advances in modern browsers: Web and Service Workers

• A browser has a hidden, truly parallel engine attached to it
• That engine “catches” all calls out to the Web, and:
  • either lets it through and the original request happens;
  • or performs local processing (e.g., gets content from a cache) and returns that content instead
• The “main” rendering engine is unaware of the underlying proxy process
  • it operates as if it was connected to the Web in a traditional way

Advances in modern browsers: Web and Service Workers

• A browser has a hidden, truly parallel engine attached to it
• That engine “catches” all calls out to the Web, and:
  • either lets it through and the original request happens;
  • or performs local processing (e.g., gets content from a cache) and returns that content instead
• The “main” rendering engine is unaware of the underlying proxy process
  • it operates as if it was connected to the Web in a traditional way

Work in progress

Envisioned Architecture:
unpacked state

Envisioned Architecture:
cached state

Envisioned Architecture:
packed state

Envisioned Architecture:
packed state

Draft…

Rough structure of an EPUB3 file

Archival Format

• There is a growing interest at W3C for a Web friendly packaging format:
  • should be streamable
  • should rely, as much as possible, on existing Web technologies (e.g., HTTP)
• Use cases include:
  • retrieve an HTML file with related CSS files, images
  • access Web Applications (“Widgets”) with all libraries involved
  • Portable Web Publications are a clear use case
• But: current Web Packaging proposal is not OPF based
  • this may lead to a different packaging in future for Digital Publishing

PWP packaging structure

• 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 is more user control
    • foreground/background color
    • choice of fonts
• There is a need to reconcile these traditions

DPUB IG and Portable Web Publications

• “Portable Web Publications” was, originally, a separate “vision” document (under the name “EPUB+WEB”)
• Was adopted, formally, as part of the group’s work in September 2015, and is now published as an IG document
• The group will contribute to the formulation of the PWP technical challenges, to a better understanding of the requirements
• PWP is the guiding principle for the group’s further work

IDPF, W3C, and others

• On long term, some PWP related standard-track specification work may have to be done
  • this requires a consensus and agreement of different communities
• IDPF and W3C (and maybe others?) may create the necessary groups, eventually

However…

• PWP does not replace EPUB 3 (and upcoming EPUB 3.1) at this moment
• Many of the new features may also be part of EPUB 3.1 (e.g., structural semantics)
• The vision is a convergence of the EPUB 3.* specifications and PWP, eventually

Conclusion

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

Some references

DPUB IG Wiki

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

Latest PWP Draft:

http://www.w3.org/TR/pwp/

PWP Issue list:

https://github.com/w3c/dpub-pwp/issues

This presentation:

http://w3c.github.io/dpub/beijing-2015/index.html (PDF is also available for download)

Direct contact

ivan@w3.org