Meeting minutes
EPUB Blog Post
<Wendy Reid> https://
Wendy Reid: the blog post about HTML survey has been posted
<Wendy Reid> https://
Wendy Reid: feel free to share it. There is a translation into Chinese, and a Japanese translation is coming
Annotations Vocabulary
Wendy Reid: first up the annotations vocabulary
Ivan Herman: this is a technical thing we must do
… the annotation work relies on the W3C annotation done in JSON LD
… any change we do on vocabulary we have to publish a proper vocabulary
… and define terms in a formal way
… I have a tool to do that
… we have put the vocabulary and tools in the repository
… at some point we need to decide if this is published as a W3C note or leave it as a document on github
… publishing it as a note indicates stability and I am in favor of it
<Ivan Herman> current version of the vocabulary
Wendy Reid: any thoughts?
GeorgeK: with the previous vocabulary from annotations, are we extending it?
@Ivan Herman: we are not changing the semantics, but we are creating some restrictions
… when it comes to EPUB only certain values are permitted as sub properties
… there is one new concept, the annotation set, that we have defined for ourselves
@Ivan Herman: is there anyone who opposes publishing this as a note when the time comes?
Brady Duga: just to clarify, what is the timing of the note?
@Ivan Herman: when we publish the first working draft, and both documents will evolve in parallel
@Ivan Herman: the official name will be a draft note
Grigorily Manucharian: there are several segments of the text where it is explicitly stated that they are placeholders
@Ivan Herman: those are there because in the current iteration of the spec they are not designed
<img> in SMIL - w3c/epub-specs#2883
@Hadrien Gardeur: SMIL allows references to text, audio, and video
… currently in epub we only use text. It references IDs. We also use the audio element without a time fragment
<Ivan Herman> strictly speaking, 'img' and the others are defined as "alias" of 'ref'
@Hadrien Gardeur: a number of specialized libraries have experimented with narrated comics using pre recorded audio
… the current spec doesn't provide a good way to do this, so the current experiments are in proprietary formats
… I have been investigating how much work it would be to support this in EPUB
… we would need a way to specify a fragment of an image
… we can either use regions or spacial fragments, which I think is much easier
… we already use this in a few other pages
… there is interest for this, there is no format to do this either in DAISY or EPUB
… it is a pretty small gap to allow this feature in EPUB
@Ivan Herman: for the record, the SMIL specification predates the specification for media fragments
… I agree that in 2025 we should use media fragments
… are there any prospects of real epub readers that would implement this
… we need two independent implementations for a new feature
Brady Duga: I think there were RS that were offering implementations
Hadrien Gardeur: there is support in readium to support this, once it is in the Readium toolkit it is pretty easy to support
… Thorium will support this
… I have asked the maintainer of StoryTeller to support this also
… it is mostly used by people who do this on their own, who offer this to their library patrons
… I cannot commit on the timeline for Storyteller but Thorium will support it this year
@Ivan Herman: Thorium is clear, Storyteller, from the official point of view, the AC would ask for an EPUB Reader like Thorium
… to really implement and use this
… Colibrio would be fine, it doesn't need to a big player
Hadrien Gardeur: I expect specialized libraries to use this
@Ivan Herman: if I have an EPUB that uses this, I should be able to read it in another system
Brady Duga: what are the implications for existing implementations for Read Aloud?
… could a publisher just reference portions of an image and not have the audio overlay? The image would then be the synced media?
… is that a potential use here? are we worried about it
Hadrien Gardeur: I don't think it would be a good thing to overload text
… wrapping an image in text is a bad thing for accessibility
… the benefit of having image, is opening the door to image based content
… it also opens the door to something highly visual in nature, plus audio, and a textural element
… it opens the door to more things without negatively impacting the current system
… media support in EPUB remains more limited than we wish
… even with the current take on media overlays things could be better with RS support
GeorgeK: …read aloud means to me, taking the text and playing it into the system, different than audio overlays
… if we have a fixed image, and there are four audio clips in parallel with that image
… the media fragment shifts focus on the image, would you have something like
… two people in an image, a focus on one person, then a shift to the other person like a conversation
Hadrien Gardeur: that is one way you could implement it
… currently they can zoom into a panel and play the audio from that panel
Charles LaPierre: about implementation concerns, I don't think we need explicitly two reading system implementations
… just two implementations of the technology so a tool would be fine
… if you had a screen reader enabled, and you have the textural part overlayed on audio, I'm trying to understand
GeorgeK: I think the SMIL implementation would play and the screen reader would be silent
… if you pause the screen reader
Brady Duga: when I said Read Aloud I meant reading the included audio
… to Hadrien 's point, we have a flow for children's books
… the publisher adds audio to existing images/media
… the reading system then takes that and plays it
… is it expected now that Reading Systems must synchronize the audio?
… are we breaking children's books by enabling this?
Hadrien Gardeur: I don't think this is very likely. Producing an audio layer is much more work than including text
… the kind of org that will produce this media overlay is one that cares deeply about accessibility
… the cost is much higher to produce them
Brady Duga: these are not text to speech books, but with media overlays
Dale Rogers: I wonder if there would be a smooth transition from one image fragment to another?
Hadrien Gardeur: this is not about controlling visual presentation. A lot of movement can be hard for people with certain sensitivities
wendreid: for example, a lot of RS have settings for page turn behavior. I think this would fall in that same class
… especially on mobile, where you can have multiple page turns actions
@Ivan Herman: we may be getting into areas that are not covered by this proposal
… the original SMIL spec refers only to the ref element
… the spec doesn't say anything about transitions
… it is always a trick discussion about the AC and how they accept implementation reports
… I think beyond the legal terminology for the process, they ask
… if I create a book with this feature, am I stuck with only one reading system?
… if we decide to put this in the spec, we mark it as an at risk feature
… so if we don't get enough implementation we can easily remove it at the end without triggering reviews
Matt Garrish: you want to see two similar implementations, like two Reading Systems and two authoring systems
… is this incubation material? Where are we going with this?
… is it at the point we want to implement this?
… what are the knock on implications? I'd like to be sure of this before we add this to the implementation at the end of the process
… maybe the at risk implementation or a cg note would be the way to do this
GeorgeK: what is the relationship of this technique to other ways to make comics?
… it seems like an alternative to other developments for comics
Hadrien Gardeur: this is directly a response to a number of specialized libraries have implemented especially in Northern Europe
<Grigorily Manucharian> Hadrien the proprietary use cases in Scandinavia are comics only?
Hadrien Gardeur: they have produced files that do this, and everyone does it slightly differently
… I look at what people are using, and what people need
… this is quite specialized, mostly about adaptive content, but it is missing
… this is different than adding something no one asked for
GeorgeK: I have seen the US Library of Congress dabbling with this too
Hadrien Gardeur: this is one way we can support this
@Ivan Herman: I don't see this as an incubation matter because we don't have to create new vocabulary
… we are just allowing a tiny bit of what is already in SMIL in EPUB
… it is defined already, we just allow it here
Charles LaPierre: I get your point about two implementations on one side or another, and the
… Readium implementation could go out to multiple readers
… in a comic, could you have it read each panel in the correct order
… if you click a Read button in the RS, would it do that? Is this a potential use case
Hadrien Gardeur: yes, you could have a panel with a textural and/or an audio equivalent
Grigorily Manucharian: another potential use case is language acquisition/application. Having two audio setups in a Manga
Grigorily Manucharian: you could switch between the translations
… this kind of use case could be studied a bit further
Hadrien Gardeur: I think this is different. You are talking about having two images in two languages?
Grigorily Manucharian: SMIL doesn't support multiple track?
Hadrien Gardeur: not as we use it, no
Wendy Reid: that gets into something we are also discussing, parallelized content
… we may have an open Issue about that where we do want to talk about language acquisition
<Gautier Chomel> Parallels content is a discussion at https://
Wendy Reid: this is where text to speech might be better than SMIL so they can choose their narration voice
… SMIL is fixed, referencing specific content
… it sounds to me like we want to keep exploring this
… it might not be a huge change to the spec
… the major question is if we have the right amount of implementations
… I'm concerned about industry uptake, if it will be supported by most major reading systems
… we need to make sure that there is more than one reading platform available
… just for the sake of user choice
Brady Duga: I'm not convinced, I'm still worried about breaking existing workflows.
… there is nothing tying this to specific content, and I would need more reassurance that people
… won't start making children's books that would break on current reading systems
wendreid: we have a greenlight to keep studying this. Can we get sample files to study?
Hadrien Gardeur: Nota has public examples. We might get the files in JSON
@Ivan Herman: I'd like to explore what it means editiorialy, can Hadrien do a draft PR for the author and RS specs?
Hadrien Gardeur: I can do this, but not immediately, maybe in February
<Grigorily Manucharian> Hadrien on one of these sleepless nights
Wendy Reid: we will carry over our last topic, selectors, next week