Meeting minutes
Wendy Reid: Susan is joining the chairs as a new co-chair!
<Wendy Reid> https://
Wendy Reid: And a blog post about epub went out on the w3c website
… thank you SueNue for writing it
Ivan Herman: Before the main topic, there is a pending PR on epub that has been around for a while with no feedback
Wendy Reid: 2708? I though we agreed to merge it. I just didn't want to touch it due to merge conflicts
Matt Garrish: Yeah, I just had not gotten back to it
Changing XHTML to HTML - w3c/epub-specs#2709
Wendy Reid: Started this discussion last week, there is a open PR
… There was an idea to just replace XHTML with HTML and change mention to the XML serialization
Brady Duga: I haven't commented more on the PR, I think Ivan was looking for something to add for HTML to see if people reacted
… if there was a problem, we could just pull it out before it gets released. Easy to revert.
… I'm worried no matter what we do, it'll be hard to pull this out, particularly the way its written now
… the current PR is only changing some of the stuff, its resulting in a broken build, a broken spc
… we want to get the changes in, but the more we breakup the change, the harder it is to pull it out later
… the spec is broken in the midst of the changes, that's less important, it leaves us in a weird place
… the downside of doing anything is that it will be hard to pull it out
… we'll add things to the spec over time, it'll be difficult to fix in the end
… and room for significant errors if we pull it out
… I don't think it's possible for us to do this in a way that's easy to revert later
… I just worry about rushing to this change and doing it in multiple parts, but we might be fooling ourselves if we think it's fixable later
… it's a radical solution too to change XHTML to HTML
Ivan Herman: Let me pick it up from there
… My understanding is that our current spec is wrong
… because at w3c there is no such thing as XHTML
… there is just html, just xml serialization of xhtml
… So the right thing to do is to refer to html
… and then say that only the xml serialization is accepted
… This is more work, but even if we don't do raw html, as it makes the spec more in line with the other w3c specs
Matt Garrish: I disagree, we aren't wrong, as we define xhtml ourselves
… But if we suddenly take the X out after so long, people won't read the definition and will think html is allowed
… But it requires people to pay attention to definitions to understand what really happened
… I do agree that the farther we go down that harder it is to back out
… But I am not that worried to back out what we have, it is just a few changes at the moment
… but yes once it is everything this will be really hard to back out
Susan Neuhaus: I think there are two competing ideas, one is supporting our community, the other is matching the w3c
… I think we owe it to the community to leave the X in
George Kerscher: We should move forward until we get responses from the survey
… And then we can have tools to support our decision (e.g. epubcheck)
Wendy Reid: This spec is used by people who aren't web people. What is a survey here asking?
… I think a lot of people who get such a survey won't know the difference between XHTML and html
… The big problem is toolchains, tools, and rendering systems
… Is it just pulling a few blocks of html? Or bigger?
Avneesh Singh: I think we need to get the survey out ASAP
… we need to get this to aggregators
… Focus on them and reading systems
Dale_R: Back to the notion of who is the audience
… When I first looked at making my book, I looked at the spec and saw xhtml
… I was surprised that I had to go back to xhtml
… So from my point of view it threw me off
… I would love to go forward with html
… I think there is a question if people are using an authoring system they may never see the difference
Susan Neuhaus: That was really interesting to hear that perspective
… I wonder if we change the doc and remove the X, will they make a document that works
… do we have people that make large quantities of epubs?
Brady Duga: Interesting, and I want to home in on something SueNue said, and question for Dale Rogers, if you had read the spec it said HTML and buried somewhere it said "XML serialization", what would you have done with your first book ?
Dale_R: I would have used modern HTML tools and code, and just followed the rest of the spec for other files
Brady Duga: And I think that's the problem, it would not work
… the XHTML is such a speed bump because it says it everywhere, you know you have to do it. If we say HTML we'd get a lot of upset authors and broken content
… as much as I like the purity of saying HTML, I just worry we'll create more confusion than we want
… I also disagree that we're wrong, we could call it anything we want, as long as we define it we're fine
Charles LaPierre: To SueNue point, are the major players who are tool providers
… Adobe is one
… as far as the other vendors, we have agreements with a lot of them
… if we do a survey, I can make sure they see it, as well as gca publishers
Matt Garrish: I just threw out the idea of the survey this morning
… We did this before.
… Are authors using xhtml just because they have to?
… It would be great to have data that shows that
Wendy Reid: I like the idea of a survey
… We want to target to specific stake holders
… for instance targets are content authors, another for conversion houses, distributors, renderers
Ivan Herman: I understand all the arguments
… to be precise we do not define xhtml (I just checked)
… We just refer to the html spec, which at the end of a link chain takes us to a place in the html specification that says don't use it
… The spec itself still looks strange
Wendy Reid: One thing we can clarify now for the survey is what a no-go point is
… we will hear that people don't want to do this
… tools and tech evolve, so more companies may be forced into it eventually
… is it too hard to really do, vs we can, but we don't want to
Avneesh Singh: Let's get it out, maybe there will be less pushback
… This isn't really a show stopper as I understand it, maybe it will just inform how we approach the change
… back to what SueNue said, people have to pay to be on this group, hence the need for outreach
Brady Duga: Thinking about the survey, thinking about the change, and the reality, the reality is that XHTML is dead, it's been dying for a while, no new features are making it from HTML to XHTML
… so if anything changes in HTML, it won't make it to the XML serialization
… because XHTML is dead, we need to make the change, and it will only make using the spec harder if we don't make the change
… the survey is also a PR or marketing push to tell people "we're doing this eventually, now might be the time" and we need them on board
… unless there are literal fires, telling them this is coming
… we need to use the wording of the survey to convince people to do it
Dale_R: Listening to this, it reminds me of current news events (e.g. cobol used in government)
… And it reminds me of the browser wars, and sticking to the spec regardless of outcome
… Is our job to say how it is done, or how it should be done?
George Kerscher: two things - there are a11y innovations around complex images, etc that would benefit from html
… And people working on that are in html world
… Second, maybe our survey should be targeted at "what is the difficulty of switching" instead of "s hould we"
Wendy Reid: we should use this as a pr tool. E.g. as we are making this change how will this impact you? What will the problems be? How can we help?
… I will take up the task of making a doc to brainstorm on this
Ivan Herman: I propose we merge the current pr with the minimal change
… Then we can reference that
… Then someone has to take point on the survey, and we need to decide how long we have for submittals
… No matter what we have to make some changes
… as the current spec is a bit dirty in this regard
<Avneesh Singh> Just to remind July and August are holidays season in Europe and US. So, ideally we should have most responses within June
Charles LaPierre: Some publishers are making EPUB 2 files.
… So this will be a big shock
… If we did this is it an epub 3.4 vs 4 change
Susan Neuhaus: I like the idea of this is happening and how can we help as the focus
Susan Neuhaus: As a group it would help to have our talking points ready
Tzviya Siegman: I understand this is a big processing change, but if we market this as a "don't panic" change
… then we are covered from the publisher side. For reading system side we need to document how to do this
… We can't stay in 1988 forever! Documentation is our friend, and we have to do this
Ivan Herman: One thing, if this is epub 3.4 or 4, I push back on it being 4
<Tzviya Siegman> +1 - this is not EPUB 4
Ivan Herman: It is still a gradual improvement
… We need to make sure it is not major change, XHTML is still allowed, 3.3 doc is still valid
Wendy Reid: I will start the doc and share it for comments and addition
… We will help wrap peoples heads around what the change means
Brady Duga: If we merge the PR can I review first?
<George Kerscher> +1
<Brady Duga> +1
Wendy Reid: AOB?