W3C

Publishing Maintenance Working Group Telco

05 March 2026

Attendees

Present
Abe Jellinek, Charles LaPierre, Dale Rogers, Brady Duga, Gautier Chomel, George Kerscher, Grigorily Manucharian, Gregorio Pellegrino, Hadrien Gardeur, Ivan Herman, Laurent Le Meur, Masakazu Kitahara, Shinya Takami, Susan Neuhaus, Toshiaki Koike, Wendy Reid
Regrets
-
Chair
Wendy Reid
Scribe
Grigorily Manucharian

Meeting minutes

Annotations - model to add audiovisual comments

<Wendy Reid> w3c/epub-specs#2925

Laurent Le Meur: the question is about audio/images annotations
… ... Ivan Herman tried to modernize the body format property annotation which go beyond text e.g. audio
… yet another problem: where to start?
… after segmenting and sending to the system, the epub export make problems to emerge

Ivan Herman: is it realistic to transfer an ebook model for export/import?

Laurent Le Meur: the audio annotations storage solution will not be in the epub itself

Ivan Herman: when exporting annotations, the zip is exported with json+audio, which works

Laurent Le Meur: which implies an internal structure inside zip
… the use case i'm worried about the annotations exposrted as part of the file

Hadrien Gardeur: open domain content will not arise issues and the file sharing is ok
… authors writing their own annotations is a possibility hence making this solution a standalone is not the best, having both is the best

Brady Duga: adding audio etc is not new and feasable
… relative urls are already present, zipping the annotation will change the input format requirement, and might be confusing
… zip content should be transparent, if json is there it must be clearly stated

Laurent Le Meur: the issue is that the section 6 of current draft state a singe file usage

Hadrien Gardeur: OPF shouldn't be touched, by principle

... it will be wierd if multiple things are able to be exported/imported, zip at least open up an extension possibility, which is nice

Wendy Reid: packaging up and embedding into epub, beyond OPF, do we run up into valdiation issues?
… otherwise, outside of meta, should we target another new location?

Laurent Le Meur: not sure if another folder can be put into meta

Hadrien Gardeur: audio and other files in the back of epub is more part of an export action process

Laurent Le Meur: the wording would be extended then

Ivan Herman: nothing in there forbids creation of a subdir for annotation
… with nothing inside, a flat tree structure
… on the other hand, the complications are overruled by user cases

Charles LaPierre: the security is not to be overlooked
… the injection disguised as annotation is a posibility

<Susan Neuhaus> +1 Charles LaPierre

Laurent Le Meur: it's true

Ivan Herman: the scope of accepted base media files should stay the same

Brady Duga: anything appropriate for epub must be definition be acceptable fo epub

Wendy Reid: there are reading system out there that support images not matching the dimensions showing screenshot of annotation in case of problem

Hadrien Gardeur: I'm more worried about images than audio, sure mic needed etc
… but for example the text layout can be changed completely, the view too, the interoeprable fashion setting might not work as a result

GeorgeK: the annotation access for future use must be exportable too

Wendy Reid: export of annotation only or export of the whole book annotated co-exist

Ivan Herman: from specing POV, meta and data handling is not of our problem

Laurent Le Meur: even if only text annotations exist, we export a zip, with json structure

Abe Jellinek: zip works with export and import as it's widely used

Wendy Reid: there's a consensus, strcutre is to be defined

Laurent Le Meur: once data is stored inside epub, the encryption poses a problem

Hadrien Gardeur: in case of authored annotations, they must be encrypted

seuneu: +1 for authored annotations encrypted
… namely for copyright reasons, if though it might not be our problem

Charles LaPierre: what about the superposition problem, i.e. annotation on annotation problem?

Ivan Herman: it's for the future given the can of worms this discussion opens up
… the publishers allows for export of annotations importable by the peers, which just gives the authorization
… a single file without a book containing annotations is ok

Brady Duga: DRM annotation: exportable or not exportable? that is the question

Charles LaPierre: the other point: multiple students in front of the same book, does this situation produces a set of subdirs?

Hadrien Gardeur: the attribution becomes a tricky issue now, should we open the Pandora's box?

Wendy Reid: the difference between new annotations and responding to existing ones are two different problems
… the recursivity of annotations is not a topic for now for the current model

Laurent Le Meur: to be clear, each annotation has its own author
… all the annotations, whatever the author, are thrown into one universal bag
… i have a bigger cocnern with authored annotation in a DRM context because the encryption key makes the annotations intrinsic to the book itself

seuneu: authored annotations must be processed differently from non authored ones?

Laurent Le Meur: Yes

Wendy Reid: annotated editions encapsualte annotations (i.e. they are part of the book by definition, by essence), thus are treating the annotations as integral to the book as a feature?

<Ivan Herman> +1 to what Wendy Reid said

Brady Duga: annotation mechanism should not be used in a DRM context

<Gregorio Pellegrino> +1 to Brady Duga

<GeorgeK> +1 to what Brady is saying

<Ivan Herman> +1 to Brady Duga

<Susan Neuhaus> +1 to Brady Duga

Brady Duga: annotations that are part of the content is not a valid use case here
… if we ignore it, the DRM problem goes away

Hadrien Gardeur: mixed feelings here
… footnotes are horrible
… media overlay via authored audio is possible too
… people's creativity is without boundaries, thus we must be careful in our spec

Wendy Reid: i don't disagree, but the line must be drawn somewhere
… and it's : Authorized (created by author feat. publisher) vs Unauthorized (the other use cases)

seuneu: agree with Authorized vs Unauthorized idea
… but with improvements of already existing features

Shinya Takami: the old footnnote feature and this annotation feature are two distinct things

Laurent Le Meur: improving footnotes with the annotation methodology is complex
… reading systems capabilities are dictated by the market
… and annotations can be DRM protected just in case

Wendy Reid: the thing to figure out: where to store these annotations, inside or outside?

Ivan Herman: my feeling -- this issue is PR-ready
… that's the next step

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