Meeting minutes
<Ivan Herman> Date: 2024-03-01
Webtoon PR
<Tzviya Siegman> w3c/
Shinya Takami: we contacted amazon on the issue, they responded being neutral.
Ivan Herman: i have a quetsion after last week discussion. I understand the technical proposal in the PR may not be the best approach. Does the solution in the PR reflects current practices in implemetation or not? It is an important argument
david_hall: I think yes
Shinya Takami: in japan, not only amazon, also major Reading system vendors.
david_hall: what would be process to write a new specification?
Ivan Herman: that would mean a new charter.
Hadrien Gardeur: originaly webtoons were invented in Korea, then adopted in Japan, China, and elsewhere. In France they meet with traditional "Bande Dessine" who are not using EPUB, they prefer other formats. I would like to have someone from Korea in this discussion. I know that there's a new format being used there, for an ISBN related issue, they considered EPUB and went on another solution. We are missing the overall picture.
Shinya Takami: this PR approach is not the best one to me, but as japan is the biggest market for webtoons, EPUB based webtoon is used.
br
Brady Duga: this is a change to allow EPUB to be used for webtoon. Using different format is a great option, but if someone distrbutes webtoons as EPUB. We shall accept different formats.
Gregorio Pellegrino: we are not getting to consensus. As previously suggested, should'nt we move to community group to get more incubation work?
Ivan Herman: the change proposed offer an aditional way of displaying fixed layout. We may see that angle, not a webtoon specific one.
Avneesh Singh: is it so important to get it in the rec now? we could start with a community report with what's inside the PR as a starting point to further collect feedback on uses. Would it be an acceptable proposal?
Hadrien Gardeur: I agree with Gregorio and Avneesh propoasl, a wider group discussion would be good.
Hadrien Gardeur: it's problematic for reading system implemtation as it may break things. we're introducing complexity not necesary. That complexity will be on reading system developpers shoulders.
Brady Duga: we went community group one year ago, nothing happened. Japan moved, they are producing and consuming that way. It's late for incubation.
Brady Duga: I agree this is not the best property to use, it was not designed for it, but it works.
david_hall: i see uses out of the webtoon context
<Tzviya Siegman> 1 to david_hall
<Tzviya Siegman> s/1 to david_hall /+1 to david_hall
Shinya Takami: if we don't have any approach, maybe even japanese market will not accept EPUB for webtoons. Time is important.
Hadrien Gardeur: if EPUB is not the right format and we need to twist it's arm for that, it's not a good option. Again, we need a larger group. Different extensions and property have been used in the past, I see no difference today. It can still be used withou being in the specification. Is it because Apple or Amazone will use them?
Tzviya Siegman: for consensus, the question is can you live with it.
Brady Duga: we need to do that because actually the way they use this property is illegal, we have to fix that.
<Tzviya Siegman> Proposal: Adopt PR #2602
<Tzviya Siegman> +1
<david_hall> +1
<Brady Duga> +1
<George Kerscher> 0
<Gregorio Pellegrino> 0
<Hadrien Gardeur> -1
<Toshiaki Koike> 0
<Shinya Takami> +1
<Charles LaPierre> 0
<Ivan Herman> 0.5
<Masakazu Kitahara> 0
<Avneesh Singh> 0
-1
Gautier Chomel: I don't have enough information. I need more time / information.
Tzviya Siegman: it is a "May"
Gautier Chomel: I feel it may block a solution.
… this is 1/2 a solution.
Hadrien Gardeur: I agree as described by the folks in Japan, I don't think this is any different from what others have done.
… even "may" solution
Tzviya Siegman: we are not trying to create a new specification.
… so so you think we don't need to change the spec to package webtoons.
Brady Duga: suggesting that we should go back to Japaneses publishers to come up with some new metadata?
… similar to this but would not cause epubcheck to complain.
<Tzviya Siegman> acl Shinya Takami
Hadrien Gardeur: even in Japan there isn't any consensus. maybe status quo is acceptable.
Shinya Takami: this will not define a new webtoon format.
… current spec is prohibited for fixed layout for reading system. current epub spec allow to use for fixed layout for content creators but not allowed for reading systems. we want to improve for Japanese market.
Ivan Herman: I find it difficult to accept. in Japan there are a number of different publishers their own way with metadata to solve this issue. argument is this is already done we might as well just leave this alone since they have already done it, but we are a standards company and there will be zero interoperability. We should have a larger community to work together to develop webtoons.
… but this is not the group to do that.
<Tzviya Siegman> +1 to Ivan Herman
Ivan Herman: but if this makes things illegal -> legal then I am for it.
… year ago talked about setting up a CG, but we haven't done anything to do that, but I don't know the players.
… no membership fee to join the CG.
Tzviya Siegman: we have heard that W3C must figure out relevance to prevent fracturing.
… getting into EPUBCheck is important.
Hadrien Gardeur: We are trying to reframe it but useful for fixed layout but if we have to justify it we go back to webtoons.
Brady Duga: I dont this we agree, this is about webtoons. how you do webtoons in epub.
… webtoons in epub is what we are doing, we are not doing webtoons just how to get webtoons into EPUB.
Tzviya Siegman: we are at an impasse.
… we are waiting for feedback from Amazon.
Ivan Herman: I would like to have feedback from other publishers / RS in or outside of W3C.
… where we are today we should not publish it. we must get other publishers reactions to this. emphasizing webtoons IN EPUB specifically.
… we were discussing PRH and there may be others we need to reach out to.
Hadrien Gardeur: I can reach out to Média on our side manga publisher in Europe.
Ivan Herman: we can talk to PRH.
Tzviya Siegman: I have an email out to Liisa.
Ivan Herman, we need more feedback.
<Charles LaPierre> s/xyz/Média Participations
Tzviya Siegman: PRH is dealing with this, once Liisa responses. She will know who to reach out to.