W3C

Publishing Maintenance Working Group Telco

13 March 2025

Attendees

Present
dlazin, gpellegrino, ivan, MasakazuKitahara, mgarrish, shiestyle, SueNeu, toshiakikoike, wendyreid
Regrets
-
Chair
wendy
Scribe
mgarrish, wendyreid

Meeting minutes

Publication Admin

wendyreid: today's meeting is one part admin and one part discussion about footnotes
… the latest version of 3.3 is now published so we can move on 3.4

ivan: no, what we have now is the proposed corrections
… there has been an ac vote on whether this is okay and it closed on Tuesday and it passed
… we have to publish the final draft still where we integrate the changes and that will be the final version
… this is informational as Matt and I will take care of publishing it - I have put in the request to publish
… we can publish next week or week after but that's still to be determined
… so one more version to publish before it's all done

wendyreid: when 3.3 is published the next thing to do is publish the first public working draft of the 3.4 specs
… but we have to resolve to publish and establish the new short names
… we will publish epub 3.4, reading systems 3.4, and accessibility 1.1.1

<wendyreid> Proposed: Publish the FPWDs of EPUB 3.4, EPUB Reading Systems 3.4, and EPUB Accessibility 1.1.1, with the shortnames epub-34, epub-rs-34, and epub-a11y-111

mgarrish: it's problematic to start the accessibility at 1.2 because it involves creating new conformance identifiers

<mgarrish> +1

<ivan> +1

<gpellegrino> +1

<wendyreid> +1

<toshiakikoike> +1

<shiestyle> +1

<MasakazuKitahara> +1

<SueNeu> +1

<dlazin> +1

RESOLUTION: Publish the FPWDs of EPUB 3.4, EPUB Reading Systems 3.4, and EPUB Accessibility 1.1.1, with the shortnames epub-34, epub-rs-34, and epub-a11y-111

ivan: to create the short names we need an approval to publish the FPWDs of the specifications
… recommend we publish 3.3 at the same time to signal that 3.3 is done and we're starting the 3.4 line
… I would propose the 27th to publish so that we have time to prepare
… it is a significant message to get out that 3.3 is final and will no longer change
… would be good to have a blog post to point this out

SueNeu: I can write a post but need info on how to do it

ivan: w3c has a blog that we use - Coralie likes to have a review before anything goes out

wendyreid: let's work together on this
… the last thing in terms of admin is to request a current link to the latest epub 3 version
… propose to add TR/epub3 and TR/epub-3
… would redirect to 3.3 for now and then 3.4 when it becomes the new standard

ivan: it will point to 3.3 as long as we are in working draft. once we reach candidate recommendation then it will point to 3.4
… if we want to be stricter and only change at REC I can try and push for that but otherwise it would change at CR

wendyreid: I think it's worth asking because publishing likes to see RECs and don't consider CRs stable enough
… that's if it's not too much work for the w3c team to do this

<SueNeu> +1

SueNeu: I agree with Wendy that it makes me nervous to look at the less-than-final spec as current version

<wendyreid> Proposed: Request new URL redirects for w3.org/TR/epub3 and w3.org/TR/epub-3 to always point to the latest recommendation status version of the EPUB3 specification

<wendyreid> Proposed: Request new URL redirects for w3.org/TR/epub, w3.org/TR/epub3 and w3.org/TR/epub-3 to always point to the latest recommendation status version of the EPUB3 specification

<ivan> +1

<SueNeu> +1

<shiestyle> +1

<dlazin> +1

<gpellegrino> +1

<toshiakikoike> +1

<wendyreid> +1

<mgarrish> +1

<MasakazuKitahara> +1

RESOLUTION: Request new URL redirects for w3.org/TR/epub, w3.org/TR/epub3 and w3.org/TR/epub-3 to always point to the latest recommendation status version of the EPUB3 specification

mgarrish: /epub would always point to the latest version of EPUB, 3 or a future version

ivan: Yes

Footnotes in EPUB3 - w3c/epub-specs#2690

wendyreid: there has been a discussion on the mailing list about footnotes
… I don't know that we have to worry about the pop-up part but there is not a single recommended way to tag footnotes in epub
… reading systems have had to figure out the tagging to create their interfaces
… on kobo we have a very convoluted system to create footnotes
… we've never made a recommendation on how to create footnotes in a standard way
… can we do something about this and what do we recommend?

mgarrish: Don't know if I have good answers, I was just going to say is that the unfortunate part is that this is by design, but the vocab was there for people to do something
… we left it open intentionally, but now it's probably time to standardize on something
… how do we consolidate in a way that doesn't invalidate prior implementations

wendyreid: this is broader epub trap we set for ourselves in terms of not telling people how to create their content and only giving them tools to help them
… we have a constellation of options for creating footnotes
… we should say how to create footnotes but not invalidate previous methods - have to avoid MUSTs that would invalidate content
… reading systems will have to support the old ways that people have used
… we can give guidance on the new best way to create footnotes

ivan: as an outsider, what is the difference between footnotes and the footer element

wendyreid: footnote is more like an aside

SueNeu: as someone who creates ebooks I would appreciate clarification - hard to explain to customers that we don't know how these will work
… constraints aren't always bad for creativity
… can we do human testing to see what works best for people?

wendyreid: interesting questions - it would be helpful to look at how the different platforms handle footnotes
… some pop the content up rather than taking you to another place in the book but it may not be the only way
… is there feedback on the accessibility of the pop ups

gpellegrino: skippability is an important issue with them
… one issue here is that indesign is tagging these and not getting the right semantics but we've been working with them so they are just footnotes and not specifically pop ups
… we should give maybe guidelines on how to author and display footnotes - what happens with backlinks for example if it is a pop up
… should the backlink be hidden in these cases

wendyreid: one challenge we've run into in making them inclusive is if there is an internal link we would sometimes assume short text was a footnote reference
… some more research on this would help to establish the current landscape for footnotes

gpellegrino: I opened an issue about extended descriptions that is similar to this
… we should have guidance for all these general elements

mgarrish: One thing we might also want to look at is errors, do they need to be in the same file, a different file, do we need to make this clear?
… potential confusion point, do you expect the RS to go to a different place

wendyreid: some publishers make a file for each footnote and put them at the end of the spine

mgarrish: Similar to descriptions too, put at the end of the file

mgarrish: this also happens with image descriptions

ivan: what can the epub specification do about this? reading systems tend to go their own way

wendyreid: as an implementor it would be helpful to have a reliable way to detect footnotes and creat behaviours

SueNeu: knowing what markup is easiest to display will help

mgarrish: The more technical, document writing approach to the question, is this something that goes into the specification or into notes or best practices
… we're trying not to invalidate anything
… where does this belong, should we look at notes, but we can figure that out as we go

wendyreid: there are probably several other things that fall into this category of how best to do these things
… when we have that list of items and the expectations then we can decide if it is best practices or new sections in the specifications
… we can go either way but we've identified a need for clarification
… please log more issues if you know other content types with the same kinds of problems

ivan: we'll probably want to pick this up again when more people on the mailing list are present

wendyreid: we should also take this to the community group to get their input

AOB

gpellegrino: I have a question about the w3c calendar - if I download the invitation is points me to the first meeting we had - not updating to the weekly meeting

ivan: I subscribe to the calendar in apple calendar and you should get automatic updates

Summary of resolutions

  1. Publish the FPWDs of EPUB 3.4, EPUB Reading Systems 3.4, and EPUB Accessibility 1.1.1, with the shortnames epub-34, epub-rs-34, and epub-a11y-111
  2. Request new URL redirects for w3.org/TR/epub, w3.org/TR/epub3 and w3.org/TR/epub-3 to always point to the latest recommendation status version of the EPUB3 specification
Minutes manually created (not a transcript), formatted by scribe.perl version 244 (Thu Feb 27 01:23:09 2025 UTC).