— Minutes

Date: 2018-04-24

See also the Agenda and the IRC Log

Attendees

Present: George Kerscher, Murata Makoto, Tzviya Siegman, Avneesh Singh, Rachel Comerford, Bill Kasdorf, Wolfgang Schindler, Bill McCoy, Liisa McCloy-Kelley, Karen Myers, Brian O’Leary, Jun-ichi Yoshii, Garth Conboy, Dan Sanicola, Ric Wright, Dave Cramer, Paul Belfanti, Laurent Le Meur, Julian Calderazi

Regrets: Ivan Herman

Guests:

Chair: Luc Audrain

Scribe(s): Rachel Comerford

Content:

Dave Cramer: Title: Publishing Business Group Telco

Murata Makoto: present*

1. epubcheck

Luc Audrain: we are talking about fixing and updating epubcheck and are talking about the process of finding developers

Tzviya Siegman: Rachel Liisa and I are working on an RFP; Rachel and I are meeting tomorrow to discuss

Laurent Le Meur: when the RFP is done, EDRLab can look at it and possibly apply
… we could find a developer and project manager in Europe

Murata Makoto: Great! > Laurent

Laurent Le Meur: I think it would be interesting because it would be kept in the epub circle and it’s a complement to the readium work we’re doing now

Bill Kasdorf: we also need to decide what we’re doing on the fundraising side
… we should provide a scale based on company size

2. Use Cases and Business Cases

Tzviya Siegman: https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-publ-wg/2018Apr/0012.html

Tzviya Siegman: in the working group we talked about making sure the BG is more in line with what the WG is doing
… more frequent communication will ensure that the use cases and business cases are well aligned
… 3.2 led to a lot of interest that we hadn’t previously seen
… one area that we’re working on is improved references to the use cases
… we haven’t done much work with the use cases since switching from the IG
… how can we ensure interest in the WG and communication to the BG

Tzviya Siegman: use cases https://w3c.github.io/dpub-pwp-ucr/

Avneesh Singh: there are 3 questions. One is strong use case for WP/PWP/EPUB 4. If publishing industry in general do not find a strong reason to move to new specification then it may happen that only a subset of industry is using WP and other new specs. While others will continue with EPUB 3 and EPUB 2.
2nd is timeline, one major issue we may hit is EPUB 3.2, it will be out till end of this year, and just 1 / 1.5 years after that we will have WP/PWP/EPUB 4 coming out. How will industry perceive such rapid release of specs, would it be wise to delay WP/PWP/EPUB 4 a little so that industry is not confused. But then we will also have make sure of not loosing interest of web industry in PWG. I think we will need to clarify long term vision, and that we are addressing a part of it in 2020.
3rd question is about publishing membership in W3C. In case WP/PWP becomes relevant to a subset of publishing industry, then is there some effect expected on publishing membership in W3C. As per now, transitional membership ends at end of this year.

Murata Makoto: There will be much delay.

Dave Cramer: epub3.2 should not change how people build ebooks… our messaging should be about epub3 and not epub3.2

Tzviya Siegman: avneesh: We need to make sure that we keep the business case for WP/PWP documented

Bill McCoy: dauwhe just said much of what I wanted to say
… it’s important to note that 3.2 shows that W3C is continuing the custodianship of epub3

Murata Makoto: +1

Bill McCoy: it shows we’re continuing to get things done post IDPF work
… I think it was a conversation here last time; I think we should consider putting 3.2 on the formal recommendation track
… that will help membership and participation in the W3C - to see the work continue on both fronts

Luc Audrain: it’s not just epub 3.2 that’s important, it’s epubcheck
… we need to produce the latest version of epubcheck in line with the epub3.2 specs
… I also think that the rest of the pwg work - the wp/pwp work - will be of great interest to the community and will be available before epub4

Tzviya Siegman: I want to stress that one of the concerns with moving forward with WP is that we’re supposed to be in synch with the BG, but the BG seems largely focused on the trade industry
… we need business cases documented for different use cases
… including scholarly, etc
… please tell me if you have unique use cases

Bill Kasdorf: I share avneesh’s concern about confusion between epub3.2 and epub4
… our priority should be wrapping up 3.2 quickly
… so I don’t think we should go down the rec track
… once we have WP it should be embraced by communities that did not embrace epub
… while trade publishing stays with 3.2

Luc Audrain: me too

Laurent Le Meur: there is a need from this business group to consider the updates that EPUB4 could allow - 1) compatibility with WP 2) additional features - inclusion of audio books and the inclusion of enriched visual narratives

Luc Audrain: I think that what we discussed in terms of continuous channel from the WG to the BG, we should bring explicit business cases for each business vertical and each type - WP, PWP, EPUB4

Bill Kasdorf: the key difference will be HTML not XML

Garth Conboy: +1 to Luc

Avneesh Singh: +1

Luc Audrain: who will be working on these business cases

Bill Kasdorf: I can work on scholarly

Rachel Comerford: I can work on education

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: what if we created a task force?

Tzviya Siegman: would it violate rules to put a task force across BG and WG?

Bill McCoy: ideally the task force members are held to the patent policy
… we the BG can invite people more easily

Julian Calderazi: Hi all. can’t log in for some reason. But I’m here.

Bill McCoy: to comment on scholarly thing - I’ll be at the atypon user group meeting in June
… I will expressing some vision, but likely a personal vision of scholarly unless this task force moves ahead quickly

Luc Audrain: have we answered tzviya’s question about volunteers?

Bill McCoy: thanks Tzivya!

Tzviya Siegman: I had been planning to meet with people from the WG. I volunteer to lead the task force from the business group and invite WG members as needed

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: I would recommend that you write up what the task force is doing and send it to the business group as an invitation to participate

3. epub3.2

Dave Cramer: we are having weekly calls, closed an issue or two

Garth Conboy: I’m guessing 3.2 will be closer to mid this year

Murata Makoto: I would like to have some official review period.

Garth Conboy: Yea, done enough for real review.

Murata Makoto: after the completion of the first draft I plan to ask multiple publishers to carefully review - please have 1-2 month for this review period

Tzviya Siegman: how do we advance this note to CR or PR?
… do we want to try to outline these for 3.2?

Dave Cramer: I think we sort of make it up
… starting with a draft report, and then a review period
… and then the BG may meet to approve in an informal way

Bill Kasdorf: what about the rec track?

Bill Kasdorf: we should have formal stages like the rec track

Dave Cramer: we have 0 new features

Bill Kasdorf: it shouldn’t be a challenge since it’s a mild change

Dave Cramer: no new features, but also no test suite
… so there is problem checking implementations

Luc Audrain: if we can validate to epub3.2 in epubcheck then we have implementation covered. This is why the epubcheck update is so important for validation

Murata Makoto: I would like to make a lot of noise to support completing the creation of 3.2
… can we announce the completion at an event?

Laurent Le Meur: march/may 2019 for the digital publishing summit

Bill Kasdorf: in encouraging support of 3.2, we should get reading systems to say that they accept 3.2

Dave Cramer: I think that’s confusing the issue - we don’t want to change the details

Luc Audrain: we should share a list of events (a google doc?) were 3.2 should/could be announced?

Brian O’Leary: I need to excuse myself from this call to moderate a BISG webinar at 1 p.m. ET. My apologies.

Murata Makoto: I will start the document

Garth Conboy: I’m planning on an update in Berlin next month.

George Kerscher: I’ll be promoting 3.2 (as well as epub3 in general) at accessibility events
… I’m promoting the heck out of it for education

Murata Makoto: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1rpjFsVplR3f_ppNnCsJfWiPGq9atQ8sSONqGNUJzDWE/edit?usp=sharing

Bill Kasdorf: thank you Avneesh

Avneesh Singh: a little bit of confusion in communication - dauwhe suggested promoting epub3 and others are talking about announcements for 3.2

Dave Cramer: I’m not sure what to say at this point - every 3.0.1 file in the world will be compatible with 3.2
… as people who work on the specs I think we are more deeply invested
… I don’t know how we focus the encouragement to move to epub3 from epub2 but also announce these smaller changes in 3.2

Bill McCoy: it’s the same old thing but now it’s “W3C EPUB 3” not “IDPF EPUB 3”

Bill Kasdorf: that’s the most important messaging when epub3.2 comes out - don’t misconstrue the new decimal point, it’s what you’re used to

4. FXL workshop - manga and comics

Bill McCoy: we are working out the details - it will be sept 10th in Japan
… we are soliciting participants
… it will be a technical workshop but the program committee doesn’t need to be technical experts
… as long as they understand the market and it’s needs
… please email Ivan and myself to participate in the program committtee
… W3C members are preferred but not required

Murata Makoto: I volunteer

Murata Makoto: I volunteer to be a co-chair

5. Accessing Higher Ground (AHG)

Luc Audrain: there is an accessible epub track at the conference
… November in Colorado

6. ISO

Luc Audrain: we had a discussion in the ISO task force and I believe we have a consensus

Murata Makoto: publish epub 3.0.1 as a fast track international standard and also publish accessibility as a regular standard

George Kerscher: Here is the link to the conference’s speaker registration form. General links that explains the conference is on the site.

George Kerscher: http://accessinghigherground.org/speaker-submissions/

George Kerscher: Here is the link to the conference’s speaker registration form. General links that explains the conference is on the site.http://accessinghigherground.org/speaker-submissions/q+

Murata Makoto: it is better if the proposal comes from the chair of this business group

Luc Audrain: so it will come from me

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: no objections!

George Kerscher: do we need to verify with W3C management?

Bill McCoy: there have been a few alternatives considered. if the business group considers this to be the right plan then we’ll need the proposal from Makoto to validate this plan with the W3C management

Luc Audrain: We have consensus

Bill McCoy: once it’s written up I can bring it to W3C management

Murata Makoto: none of the options are closed yet, but we would like to pursue option 4

6.1 Writeup on the ISO/IEC standardization

Ivan Herman: This writeup has been sent to the BG by Makoto Murata in a separate mail after the call, it has been reproduced in the minutes for a better reference.

A task force was created to study the five options listed in the wiki page [1] “Five options for creating ISO/IEC specifications for EPUB 3.X and EPUB A11Y”. This taskforce agreed to adopt option 4, which is basically ISO/IEC standardization of EPUB 3.0.1 and EPUB Accessibility 1.0.

Note: Adopting option 4 now does not prevent us from adopting option 1, 2, or 3 in the future. In other words, we can later adopt one of these three options for standardizing EPUB 3.2.

The agreement of the task force was endorsed in the Publishing Business Group meeting on April 24. Bill McCoy will explain this decision to the W3M and try to get permission.

To adopt option 4, the PBG has to send two liaison statements. The first letter has to be sent to SC34/JWG7 before their meeting on May 16, 2018. In this letter, we will ask JWG7 not to publish 3.0.1 as Technical Specifications. The second letter has to be sent to the Korean SC34 mirror. In that letter, we will ask Korea to submit 3.0.1 as fast-tracked Draft International Standards.

Murata volunteered to write the drafts of these two liaison statements. The PBG will review the draft letters. As a co-chair of the PBG, Audrain Luc will send the reviewed letters to SC34/JWG7 and Korea.

[1] https://github.com/w3c/publ-a11y/wiki/Five-options-for-creating-ISO-IEC-specifications