W3C

Publishing Maintenance Working Group

25 September 2025

Attendees

Present
Avneesh Singh, Charles LaPierre, Dale Rogers, Brady Duga, Gautier Chomel, Ivan Wong, Matt Garrish, Romain Deltour, Shinya Takami, Toshiaki Koike
Regrets
-
Chair
Wendy Reid
Scribe
Susan Neuhaus, Wendy Reid

Meeting minutes

Wendy Reid: @ivan noticed that we have 44 outstanding issues, we have closed 2, so let's take a look at some of the older ones

Issue #428 - w3c/epub-specs#428

Wendy Reid: … this issues is about media overlays and the pause class
… this was deferred. No work hasn't been done since an earlier discussion

Brady Duga: The media pause makes sense, on a previous project we wished we had it. I'm not sure there is still a desire for it
… but we should pause this if there are no implementers interested in it
… can we pause this since there is no community interest?

Wendy Reid: we have already marked this issue deferred
… so keeping the issue open isn't helping anyone
… perhaps we could close the issue and open a new one if an implementer wants it in the future

Avneesh Singh: perhaps we can give notice and then close the issue in two weeks if there is no response

Gautier Chomel: this may run into complications with reading systems allowing users to specify styles
… I think we should make a note of this and then close the issue

Wendy Reid: I like AvneeshSingh approach, add a comment like "speak now" or we will close it

Shinya Takami: We can simply close this and see if there is any reaction

Wendy Reid: The problem with just closing it is that it might be overlooked since the issue is so old
… we have over 2500 issues in our repository, most of which are closed

*wendyreid added a comment to #428 asking for comments before closing the issues

Issue #2216 - w3c/epub-specs#2216

<Wendy Reid> w3c/epub-specs#2234

Wendy Reid: Issue 2216 this is concerning language we use to describe creators may be a little to narrow

Matt Garrish: I think people are not confused about the difference between "must" and "epub creators must set it"
… we don't really have the time to rewrite all of the specifications when the issue was raised
… how much time will this take vs the benefits it will bring

Brady Duga: I agree with Matt Garrish, I don't think anyone will notice and this change won't improve any ebooks
… at the same time, the language is wrong, and it bugs me
… we don't care if the creator adds the metadata, we just want to be sure it is there
… but on the other hand, no one has ever gotten this wrong

Gautier Chomel: I see confusion about who is the "creator" when I am doing trainings.
… I would like to see that addressed
… I think it would be worth the work

Avneesh Singh: can we do this in EPUB 3.4 or not?

Wendy Reid: or can we do this in Accessibiliy 1.2

Avneesh Singh: can we take this on in the time frame we have?

Wendy Reid: we haven't seen confusion in the past, but we may see it in the future
… we spend a lot of time with the spec, but most people rely on the tools or the trainings
… as long as those are clear, is this really required

Matt Garrish: the problem hasn't been in how we word things
… the definition of "epub creator" is more the problem
… maybe there is a compromise in looking at that definition rather than rewriting all the specifications

Brady Duga: You just made a good case for rewriting it
… we've spent years trying to define "creator"
… maybe we should try to get rid of it
… but because of the timeline, maybe we just defer this again until epub accessibility 1.3

Matt Garrish: maybe we start with the accessibility specs and see how much is involved
… then if it is too complex we can dump out of it

Wendy Reid: I like that approach. Try in the accessibility document first
… to see how hard it is to make the change
… see how useful it is in 1.2 and abandon it if it is too hard

Matt Garrish: I don't mind taking a stab at this and seeing how it goes

Issue #2508 - w3c/epub-specs#2508

Wendy Reid: we talked about this before 3.3 was published
… it didn't make sense to put it into 3.3 in a rush
… mostly it was about datasets that could be used in scripts
… should we close this? Epub check already has notifications for this

Matt Garrish: we added the ability for things to travel in the container without being in the manifest
… EPUB check does flag this if they appear to not being used
… I don't think anyone has complained about unused issues being flagged in EPUB check

<Romain Deltour> I confirm, no feedback related to that received in EPUBCheck

Matt Garrish: Perhaps we could close it off and wait until there is a complaing

Gautier Chomel: for demonstration I had an EPUB with a resource linked in the metadata
… and that's when it happened to me
… but this is an edge case

Brady Duga: I think cleaning up people's unused files is beyond the scope of the spec
… I bet most publishers send EPUBs with unused fonts
… we could write something that finds those and it would save us lots of file size

<Romain Deltour> for the record, the current behavior in EPUBCheck was implemented and described in that PR: w3c/epubcheck#1465

Brady Duga: I don't see the utility for this

Dale Rogers: Is there a use case for something that needs to be there and is not referenced?

Wendy Reid: the case gautierchomel brought up is probably the most common
… so the certifier report may need to be hidden from the reader

Matt Garrish: one use case is a dataset that travels with a scientific publication that may be needed by the user

Romain Deltour: in anycase epub check cannot verify a resource that is used as a script
… if we add this rule it cannot be enforced by epub check

Brady Duga: I propose we close the issue

wendreid: yes, let's close it until someone comes to us with a clear use case and a proposal for fixing it, this looks like a black hole
… is anyone opposed to closing it?

Wendy Reid: I will close the issue since no one is objecting

Issue #2641 - w3c/epub-specs#2641

Wendy Reid: this is opened by someone running into inconsistency in footnotes among browsers
… I don't think there is anything we can do spec-wise to fix this
… but we have talked about writing and testing best practices for footnotes and similar

<Brady Duga> +1

Wendy Reid: I'd like to close this in favor of our other issue to write something about this

<Susan Neuhaus> +1

<Dale Rogers> +1

<Matt Garrish> +1

<Shinya Takami> +1

Wendy Reid: alright
… we're closing it

Issue #2664 - w3c/epub-specs#2664

wendreid: we don't have playorder officially from documents since we got rid of the NCX
… playorder is inferred from the spine

Brady Duga: I assumed this was to put play order inside elements within the document?

wendreid: are they talking about reading order within the HTML itself, that comes from the DOM

Matt Garrish: without George here we aren't sure

Gautier Chomel: maybe we can tag it with fixed layout
… in my experience in training, we have never had a problem with at fixed layout reading order
… it is doable for now
… let's tag it for fxl and discuss it in the fxl a11y context

Wendy Reid: yes, let's do that

Gautier Chomel: if you have two html files, and the title is part on one page, and part on the other, you may need to do this
… but it can be achieved with code now

Matt Garrish: this sounds like rendition mapping
… he wants to move from fxl to something else
… which is a huge issue we've never solved
… and he wants a new mechanism for moving around within content

Wendy Reid: I'll leave this alone until we can talk to George
… are there any more things to discuss

Gautier Chomel: some of the issue topics can be pushed into discussion

Wendy Reid: we didn't consider that, we didn't have that option in Github before
… we have used issues for everything. Now that we do have discussions as an option
… we could explore this
… we could set up guidelines about when to set up a discussion and when to open an issue

Avneesh Singh: multiple channels of communication can be trouble
… we already have internal reading list, public reading list

Susan Neuhaus: What is the functional difference between a discussion and an issue in GH that makes discussions a better idea?

Wendy Reid: discussions are designed to be a bit more like talking to people
… the accessibility group uses them, responses can be threaded
… one of the problems can be hard to follow comments when they overlap
… it makes for a better flow of discussions

Matt Garrish: the threaded replies don't always work the way they are intended
… we would want some guidance for people about when to open discussions and how to respond
… if you don't have a specific problem you want addressed in the spec it makes sense to set up a discussion even if the discussion threading isn't perfect

Wendy Reid: I'll do some research on GH about discussions
… this might be more geared toward opensource projects
… there is some merit giving people space to ask a question that isn't a direct issue

AOB

Wendy Reid: is there anything else people wanted to talk about?

https://www.w3.org/2025/11/TPAC/registration.html

Wendy Reid: please register for Tpac if you are attending remotely or in person
… we will be putting our agenda together soon
… fyi there is a fee for remote participation, $90 US except for invited experts

If for whatever reason that doesn't work for you, you can apply for a fee waver
… it is usually a simple process

<Brady Duga> https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1dlfG9mX2mWSGf_Q1LB67OJ_d2UD3IG_X1rfAOTjmb3g/edit?usp=sharing

Brady Duga: we have a spreadsheet of people who are planning to attend
… if you post here people will know that you are coming

Minutes manually created (not a transcript), formatted by scribe.perl version 244 (Thu Feb 27 01:23:09 2025 UTC).