Meeting minutes
Remove the draft edupub terms - w3c/epub-specs#2744
Wendy Reid: We discussed this a little last week, dropping the draft edupub terms
… This is from the note, I think we agreed to remove things that are deprecated
Ivan Herman: We did not decide that on this specifically
… should we start on edupub first, then move on to deprecated?
Matt Garrish: Sure. For edupub we created a new vocab, then started to move them back to the main spec
… So they are stuck in draft status, and people keep thinking we are still working on them
… We will just remove the draft terms, and leave epubcheck alone, so this change just clarifies things
Ivan Herman: There was a separate list of bugs on FL raised by Hadrien which also raised the question of what deprecated means
… Currently the charter says "deprecated stuff will be removed", but we didn't say when
… And this PR does at least move the deprecated stuff to the end
Wendy Reid: Issues with merging?
… Ok, no objections, we will merge it
HTML Survey
Wendy Reid: We sent out the survey and already have over 25 responses
Ivan Herman: I scanned through them, there is one aspect that often comes up
… There is confusion of what XHTML really means
… We mean what is in the HTML spec, not the older version of XHTML
… we have a bunch of responses that says HTML is governed by the big browsers, etc
… But people don't seem to notice we moved in 3.0 from XHTML 1.1 to the living HTML standard
… Maybe we can make that more clear in the spec
Hadrien Gardeur: In 3.0 we decided we couldn't fork the web
… The people working on it knew this was a big change, but thought it was a good thing
… So it is weird people lost that memo, because it was very important and positive
… 3.0 was all about not making our own content format
… that was a good 15 years ago, and we certainly knew about it back then
George Kerscher: When I am in VSCode and I have XHTML extensions enabled, is that HTML or the older XHTML?
Matt Garrish: What exactly are they upset about? We didn't go with WhatWG, we adopted W3C specs, but have people missed our gradual alignment with WhatWG?
… There are a lot of benefits to keep our spec fluid and adapting to HTML. Are people just upset because it is related to browsers?
Ivan Herman: WhatWG only came up in one case. The main issue was the complexity of the spec and html parsing
… One answer to Hadrien is that we are talking about standards buffs. But these comments come from people who aren't.
… so I am wondering if there is something we can do to make this more explicit
… So for instance XHTML is a name only we use
Susan Neuhaus: Hadrien said, correctly, we don't want to fork the web
… There are some RSes that would be very happy to fork the web, if it made their process easier or gave them an advantage
… and we can't control that
Wendy Reid: sue-neu you aren't wrong, but it has already happened
… I don't think we need to worry too much about the lack of understanding on these terms
… we have a broad range of responses, but they are overall very positive
… There was also comments about updating, which today is more of a user behavior issue
… Some just don't want to touch their toolchains
… So just to bring it back to overall comments, everything has been pretty positive
Matt Garrish: We aren't the only ones with the confusion issue
… I think we should leave it alone until we move to HTML
… but back to what ivan said, why don't we just update the non-normative sections and explain things?
… Informative seems ok, let's just do it
Brady Duga: Just to add on, Ivan you said "people knew about this but only the spec buffs", I don't think there's anything we can do to communicate outside the buffs
… I forget exactly how we state our relationship, but the people we're trying to inform don't read the specs
… it's not even the XML serialization, it's the XML syntax
… it's never going to make sense to anyone
Avneesh Singh: Do we see a lot of responses from Europe?
… holiday just started there, so maybe the results are skewed
Ivan Herman: I don't know, and the worst answer is we won't know
… so all I know is the email address
… we had 2 or 3 in Japanese, but we need those translated, but at least we do have responses from them
… but mostly we don't know where they are from
Wendy Reid: I lost all my email addresses when I switched jobs, so I can't forward to everyone who should get it
… so I haven't sent it directly to any European orgs
Gregorio Pellegrino: We are going to send it on, we have discussed in our monthly meetings, they are a lttle afraid, but we will talk to them some more
… Have we talked to Amazon? Will it be disruptive for them?
Wendy Reid: They are on our mailing list, but I don't have a good Kindle contact
George Kerscher: DAISY has contacts with accessibility people
Wendy Reid: Maybe they are a good place to start
Laurent Le Meur: We will send an email to our list of a hundred orgs.
… We will send an explanation with it, as we are already seeing people being confused
Wendy Reid: Maybe we should make clear this opens up the next step in epub development
Overview of the Digital Publishing Summit
Laurent Le Meur: The publishing summit was in Dublin, same place as the Book of Kells is
… it's a very technical summit, it had a lot of participation
… there were two main drivers - EAA and AI
… Vital source talked about interactive ebooks for students
… Colibrio talked about an EPUB CFI library that is open source
… we have seen a lot about metadata extraction tools
… there is a tool for this, which is helping with A11y metadata
… We heard from Hachette, there is a new internal format for all their publications types
… there were also publication tools presented, a couple of new tools were presented including wysiwig editing of A11y
… Also some presentations about the importance of ToC in audiobooks
… anyone else with updates?
Hadrien Gardeur: We heard other people doing the same as Hachette, some technical, some related to UX
Wendy Reid: We hear that a lot of people start with HTML and back port to XHTML
Ivan Herman: We concentrate on epub, but web publications is also on our charter
… should we reach out to people and see if that needs to be revived?
Gregorio Pellegrino: These are good B2B formats, but not B2C
… I see this for web publications and epub as well
… maybe discussing the use of this for b2b may be interesting
Hadrien Gardeur: We see they are not using the w3c spec, they are using the readium version.
… readium version is older, but also there is better tooling, e.g. a tool to take EPUB and produce a web publication from it
… We don't really push this, but on their own they have come to it
… so if we want to tackle that question, then we need to decide on which serialization to use. It might be easier to move the spec than the users
Laurent Le Meur: Also index.html is important to web publications
… they want to use it for b2b, and some b2c, they don't want to deal with a single xml file
… so yes, if we go that path we should converge the specs
Wendy Reid: We had this discussion before, but are we really that far apart?
… they are nearly the same
Laurent Le Meur: They are similar, I have a table somewhere
Hadrien Gardeur: I think it is possible to overcome them
… there was a pressure for xml, but people don't really want to use it
… the current spec is where it is due to arguments like this, but the industry has spoken and they want a single json file
… it is also more powerful as it can support images, text, etc
… There are some things that it is hard to argue why they are there
Brady Duga: I was just going to say, there's a reasonably good example of a spec following reality in HTML, which has been relatively successful in speccing reality instead of the perfect spec
… it doesn't seem like a bad idea to revisit pub manifest and align it with reality
Ivan Herman: I may be misremembering that we pulled web publications from the manifest
… The maifest is just a JSON thing, it doesn't mention xml, so I am not sure what we are talking about
Wendy Reid: I am checking, I don't recall
… audiobooks has the requirements
Matt Garrish: we left it with a pointer to the manifest
… because we couldn't resolve it
Ivan Herman: We should discuss later
Matt Garrish: ToC is an easy change
Wendy Reid: We could make it an either or
… Like NCX and Nav in epub
Hadrien Gardeur: Another thing that is different, the thoughts around pub manifest is that it applies to pubs natively on the web and we put something on top
… But in reality that isn't what we see. it is people who want something like epub that is more b2b focused
… The reason that the readium version is doing well is due to the easy conversions between epub
Wendy Reid: This sounds interesting, we need to do some research. But specing reality seems doable