W3C

Digital Comics TF

15 January 2026

Attendees

Present
CharlesL, DaleRogers, duga, Hadrien, MasakazuKitahara, shiestyle, toshiakikoike
Regrets
-
Chair
Hadrien Gardeur, Shinya Takami
Scribe
duga

Meeting minutes

Remaining non-normative work

Hadrien: There have been some items we covered that were normative and are in the spec (e.g. role, etc)

<Hadrien> w3c/epub-specs#2759

Hadrien: we still have a non-normative item
… This doesn't really need the WG, we can do it
… Then there were some non-normative issues, like images in spine
… at tpac we said we might want some examples of that
… If we don't have any normative items left, what do we do?
… maybe put the TF on hold, and just do the non-normative work in the CG
… which might give us more people
… By moving this to the CG we might have more input, to get a better output
… This is very tempting
… we would only need to meet maybe once a month
… There are some admin issues like timing of the meeting
… so moving this to the CG sounds like a good idea

shiestyle: We are planning to stop this TF for now and move to CG. Are there any comments or opinions?

Hadrien: Gautier, thoughts?

shiestyle: I spoke with Ivan, they can add a new calendar entry

DaleRogers: I understand the idea of the move, my question is if ideas come out of the CG, do those go directly to the WG?

Hadrien: For normative items, it could come to this TF, since we would just be paused
… but we haven't found anything that would apply

DaleRogers: I will look into joining that, as I would like to keep participating

shiestyle: We have two options, move to CG, or we can move to the main call. It depends on the status of the proposal

gautierchomel: We are happy to house this at the CG
… this would be a TF of the CG

Hadrien: That is what we wanted

gautierchomel: That is easy to do if we want to go this way
… I just have some minor things to do on the CG side

CharlesL: I have no problem with the move
… What about SMIL and comics? Should we move that incubation to the CG?

Hadrien: Anything related to incubation is great for the CG

shiestyle: 3.4 is basically closed, so if we do have normative changes, they may want to move to a later version

CharlesL: We have already approached adding more if SMIL to epub
… so if it does get added we could look at writing best practices on how to write such comics at the cg

Hadrien: Accessibility group is the most mature, since they have both normative and non-normative
… we should follow that

shiestyle: 3.4 is almost closed for normative changes, but we can add a WG note later

DaleRogers: In the community, a big issue is implementation
… Hadrien, you mentioned that there are already RSes experimenting with similar features
… will it be easy for them to switch to a SMIL version?

Hadrien: For specialized libraries, they worked mainly with DAISY files
… But gradually they are moving to epub
… epub with MO is becoming their core format
… so there expectation for comics with pre-recorded audio is outside this since there was no format
… but since they are already betting on epub, there is a likelihood that if they can do this, they will

Hadrien: ANother benefit to the CG is we won't be bound by time
… so we can continue to discuss comics issues even after the WG charter expires
… we have a gap that can be filled with best practices documents
… e.g. Japanese publishers have a best practices for Manga, it would be good to have a global best practices
… we can do that in the CG

shiestyle: That can be a CG or WG notes
… no objections?

Hadrien: so we will cancel the meeting in the calendar, but we should send an email to the group to explain we aren't closing down
… we are just pausing

shiestyle: Let's talk schedule for the CG TF
… when should we meet next

Schedule for new TF in CG

shiestyle: when is better for you?
… after WG call is currently midnight

Hadrien: Question for Americans - can we do it an hour before the call?
… I don't know where the American publishers are, NY?

CharlesL: That's early

DaleRogers: Yes, that is early for regular meetings

Hadrien: We would probably only do once per month

shiestyle: Or wednesday as the same time slot as the WG call

CharlesL: That could work

DaleRogers: I agree

duga: Should we wait until this moves?

Hadrien: Yeah, we should probably skip Feb, then we can see who else can join

Minutes manually created (not a transcript), formatted by scribe.perl version 248 (Mon Oct 27 20:04:16 2025 UTC).