W3C

Publishing Maintenance Working Group Telco

01 November 2024

Attendees

Present
Avneesh Singh, Ben Dugas, Brady Brady Duga, CharlesL2, George Kerscher, Ivan Herman, Masakazu Kitahara, Matt Garrish, Shinya Takami, Toshiaki Koike, Wendy Reid
Regrets
-
Chair
Wendy Reid
Scribe
Brady Duga, Wendy Reid

Chartering discussions

<Ivan Herman> Date: 2024-11-01

Wendy Reid: Welcome Ben

Ben: At Kobo for a long time, I lead the rendering side of things
… we have a few
… I used to be on these calls, then wandered off as I wasn't contributing, but Wendy talked me into coming back
… I may also get someone more technical to join
… I am mostly interested in webtoons and related

<Wendy Reid> https://w3c.github.io/publ-maintenance-wg-charter/

Wendy Reid: We are back into rechartering
… there have been some modifications
… content hasn't changed much, mostly wordsmithing
… new scope has webtoons, annotations, a11y, some fixed layout properties, some script/wasm stuff, and a sprinkle of future things
… biggest change is a11y of comics/manga has changed to broader fixed layout
… This will be EPUB 3.4

<Wendy Reid> w3c/publ-maintenance-wg-charter#37

Wendy Reid: some outstanding issues

Issue 37: changes in A11y

… Start with accessibility - is there anything else we need, particularly with an eye toward upcoming legislation

Ivan Herman: To clarify, we have a scope item that says work with the Publishing CG a11y group
… but do we need to add any specific language

George Kerscher: US legistlation may require some metadata, but no change needed

Wendy Reid: from Avneesh Singh, there was a comment about looking at gaps
… do we want to consider an update to the crosswalk doc that includes title 2?

Avneesh Singh: We have been discussing with a similar table would be nice or not, we did decide we need to do some gap analysis, but may not want to be a crosswalk table
… With title 2 it may be more of a strategic issue
… It would be good to mention whether we should do more of this work in the CG or add a note from the WG (mention in charter)

George Kerscher: It would really help adoption to have better communication, not much of a spec issue

Ivan Herman: I propose we add something to the charter, but it may not be rec track work
… Maybe in the first block of scopes say we will look at legislation and consider a note or changes to the spec
… for political reasons that is a good idea
… we need links to the various legislation
… can someone send me that info? EU, US, maybe Canada? And mention Japan and India if they have anything

Matt Garrish: Second Ivan. Getting into legislation is a bad thing to do in spec. It should be notes, etc that aren't on the rec track
… Probably shouldn't be in epub a11y

Wendy Reid: Agree. I can try and put together some text. We might not even reference them explicitly by name
… exhaustive list will be hard

Avneesh Singh" Maybe just EAA and Title II as an example

Epubcheck clarification

<Wendy Reid> w3c/publ-maintenance-wg-charter#31

Wendy Reid: Issue 31, mentioning epubcheck

Wendy Reid: We will need changes in epubcheck if we change the spec, so we need to refer to epubcheck somehow

Ivan Herman: We had it as an extra exit requirement, basically epubcheck must support epub 3.3
… So adding that is easy, but are we shooting ourselves in the foot?
… Will there be enough work on it?
… there are some complex issues for it (annotations)

Brady Duga: I don't know what the current state of funding is?
… I remember contributing, and asking organization, but I don't know where that stands

Avneesh Singh: In the previous charter it was there because we had the fundraising going, but at this point I don't see anyone raising funds
… We have reached out to w3c for funding, but no response yet
… There is no guarantee. We need a proper project if we add it as exit criteria
… we could add it as a "will work with the maintainers"
… and send to steering committee

Ivan Herman: I did not understand, is there a separate task force

Avneesh Singh: Yes, we made a TF when we joined w3c

Ivan Herman: I had no idea

Avneesh Singh: Maybe ask Romain

Ivan Herman: Currently I don't think we should add it. Let's talk to the steering committee, etc, first

Ivan Herman: I will update the issue

Wendy Reid: Anything else?

Security addition

<Ivan Herman> w3c/strategy#481 (comment)

Ivan Herman: Yes, a PR, not an issue
… There is a required review
… The PR has approvals from 4 people, including the w3c security reviewer
… but I like to leave it open for a little while
… This is just some blanket language about security issues that may be raised, we promise to look at it
… I would like to merge, objections?

Wendy Reid: Not from me

Ivan Herman: Ok, I will merge it

TDM

… I would like to close without further action the TDM issue
… I was wondering if there was anything to add, it seems to me the answer is no
… Ok, I will close it since there are no objections

Additional Metadata; out of scope section

George Kerscher: Is there anything we need to be thinking about with metadata?
… We have the xwalk, is there any other metadata, particularly a11y, we need to add? And is it in scope?

Ivan Herman: If you are talking about new metadata vocabs, then it is out of scope
… If you are talking about references, none of those things are normative and can be done now anyway
… so I don't know what we would add

George Kerscher: So if we want to add values to schema that is out of scope for us

Ivan Herman: yes

Avneesh Singh: There are some vocabs we created. Is such an addition of epub domain vocab in scope or not?

Matt Garrish: We have some metadata, that is what some of the text in the charter is about
… We could incubate something, but not add it to the charter now

Avneesh Singh: Q: if something comes in, can we add it? Sounds like yes

Ivan Herman: There is an explicit out of scope section, which includes vocab
… I just copied it from the last version, I don't know why we had it at all
… some make sense (e.g. DRM), but I don't know where that comes from
… we could just remove the new metadata vocabs from out of scope and we are fine

CharlesL2: I agree. We may also need to add more metadata with the new fixed layout work

Wendy Reid: In mentioning the out of scope section, I agree the new metadata stuff doesn't need to be there
… we also have something about things that impact viewports

Brady Duga: I assume that's there because of the pain we experienced from our custom CSS properties and this is our promise to the world we'll never do it again
… I noticed it as well, it's very vague, we can get around it by saying "we needed to", and removing it feels like removing our promise to the CSS working group
… I think we can leave it, we have ways around it when we need it

Ivan Herman: Echoing that, that bullet and the previous one was an answer to some people who say we don't need epub at all
… We do get those types of remarks

Wendy Reid: Anything else?

ARIA issues

Ivan Herman: I proposed two to be closed, both refer to dpub aria
… I propose closing because it isn't in our scope
… and not something we want to take over (aria wg has taken that over)

George Kerscher: Should they go to CG?

Ivan Herman: I would think since these are so specific they need to go to aria wg

Matt Garrish: We propbably need a new tf. I don't think that group can move on those at this point

Avneesh Singh: We have an official liason, what we need to do is create strong use cases so we can push it in the aria wg
… that is all we really need to do

wendyreid + Avneesh Singh: Better to come through WG rather than CG

Educational interactions

George Kerscher: One attribute was "exercise", would it be good for the cg (wg?) to work on an interactive question/answer mechanism
… clearly it is something the industry needs

Ivan Herman: Reminds me of edupub
… I think it would be premature for the wg, it requires a lot of incubation
… The right thing is to get a TF in the CG going, just like a11y group
… then in a few years bring it back to the wg
… But needs some strong leadership

Timeline

CharlesL2: When will we start voting on the charter?

Ivan Herman: Need horizontal review, we have 2 (international and security)
… may be a few weeks for the others
… so charter to AC in mid Dec? Or hold to Jan 1
… which means if there are no formal objections, then the new charter would start in Feb

CharlesL2: APA has some potential additions

Ivan Herman: The sooner the better, since it is being actively reviewed

Avneesh Singh: I don't expect many surprises

Minutes manually created (not a transcript), formatted by scribe.perl version 238 (Fri Oct 18 20:51:13 2024 UTC).