Publishing Business Group Telco — Minutes

Date: 2019-03-26

See also the Agenda and the IRC Log

Attendees

Present: Wendy Reid, Ivan Herman, Tzviya Siegman, Luc Audrain, Rachel Comerford, Karen Myers, Dave Cramer, Bill Kasdorf, Jeff Jaffe, Jonathan Greenberg, Ric Wright, Julie Blair, Liisa McCloy-Kelley, Dan Sanicola, Avneesh Singh, George Kerscher, Daihei Shiohama (塩濱大平)

Regrets: Laurent Le Meur

Guests:

Chair: Luc Audrain

Scribe(s): Bill Kasdorf, Karen Myers

Content:

Luc Audrain: Any new members?

Bill Kasdorf: Luc listed six new members; any present?

Jonathan Greenberg: NYU libraries happy to join and hopes to voice the concerns of academic publishing

1. updates on events

Luc Audrain: Please send events info to the list for addition to the Events Calendar

1.1. DPUB Summit, Paris, France

Luc Audrain: https://www.edrlab.org/events/dpub-summit-2019/

Luc Audrain: DPUB Summit in Paris in June–large community from Europe and Asia
… program is in development and looking good
… looking for sponsors!
… Paris is lovely in June; book hotels soon

1.2. PBG meeting at TPAC, Fukuoka, Japan

Luc Audrain: PBG meeting at TPAC on Thurs Sept 19, in the morning
… programmed by Keio and others
… will be short; this is the only time that key people are available

Daihei Shiohama (塩濱大平): It will be a PBG members meeting, but can involve others.
… Schedule is based on availability of Prof. Jun Murai

Luc Audrain: Send ideas for subject for discussion to the list
… Good opportunity for Japanese issues to be discussed and for others to be aware of them
… The chairs will be planning a specific agenda

Jeff Jaffe: wondering about the scope of the meeting
… Will a larger role for the PBG in advocacy and enlarging the group part of the scope?

Luc Audrain: Yes, this will be a good opportunity for that high-level discussion.
… we really need to be talking about the vision for the PBG

2. EPUBCheck 4.2.0 moving ahead and is on time

Luc Audrain: Available now and tests EPUB 3.2
… We really need testing on a broad range of files.
… Kobo and others are testing; we’re looking for feedback asap.
… We hope to release the final version in mid-April.
… Please check with your vendors and partners to test EPUBCheck 4.2. We need the whole community involved to make sure it’s working well.

Bill Kasdorf: The request went out to all members of the external coordination task force
… I have heard back from Daihei
… who is doing excellent work in Japan
… and I as a member of TF
… have other organizations I reached out to
… Idealliance is going to send word out
… David Steinhard got back to me
… NISO going to put in their newsletter
… those are some communities adjacent to our core users, but people who are interested in EPUB

Luc Audrain: We are postponing the final release of EPUB 3.2 until this testing is complete
… So far we are hearing good news about the initial testing.

Karen Myers: Bill_Kasdorf: The comments above were about fundraising

Luc Audrain: Please reach out to candidates to contribute to the fundraising!

Avneesh Singh: EPUB 3.2 release will require some preparation from the PBG before the mid-April release

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: +1 to testing the release candidate

Dave Cramer: I want to stress the importance of testing the release candidate. I found EPUB 2s in our backlist with lots of problems.
… Please test your company’s files so you don’t run into problems.

Luc Audrain: We want people to move to EPUB 3 so it’s good news that the problems are mainly with EPUB 2s!
… Content in 3.2 is much better aligned with the Web in general.

Wendy Reid: https://github.com/wareid/EPUB3-tests/tree/master/EPUBCheck%20Testing%20Tools

Wendy Reid: I created a tool for EPUBCheck testing. It’s a simple script that will test a whole folder full of files. Here’s the link.
… Handy if you want to test a lot of files at one time.

Daihei Shiohama (塩濱大平): Can we share the link?

Julie Blair: +1 wendy - thank you

Wendy Reid: Sure!

3. Synchronizing communication about EPUB 3.2 and EPUBCheck 4.2.

Luc Audrain: What about testimonials?

Dave Cramer: Two parts. Testimonials are mainly a communication and marketing thing.
… My first concern is to get commitments from distributors and retailers to accept EPUB 3.2 and use EPUBCheck 4.2.
… We need to make sure we’re actually able to use these.
… That’s not the same thing as marketing language for a testimonial; it’s an actual commitment.

Ivan Herman: Agreed that this is very important. Do we have contacts with all the main distributors to get them to speak up?
… This is a much smaller number than the number of publishers.
… I don’t have the contacts but PBG members probably do.

Luc Audrain: Of course there are some retailers as members of the PBG.

Ivan Herman: Even if we can’t get a commitment, which may be hard to get, positive comments are still valuable from them.

Luc Audrain: Remember 3.0.1 is still relevant.

George Kerscher: What would we ideally want a distributor to do? Incorporate the checker into their ingestion and send back nonconforming titles?
… What level of warning would be appropriate?

Dave Cramer: We’re not really asking them to change anything other than employing EPUBCheck 4.2.
… Most publishers will reject EPUBs that throw errors. Some are more tolerant than others.
… We’re not asking them to change their policies, just to be up to date.
… One of the motivations with 3.2 was the problems around deprecations

Luc Audrain: The fact that 4.2 is stable, doesn’t crash, doesn’t report problematic results, is important. We need to be sure it works well!
… We had real professionals doing the development; but it’s a big complex piece of software, so it has to be tested.
… That’s why it has to be tested against a large number of files. We need to smoke out problems that only occur on some files.

George Kerscher: It should be run everywhere there’s a handoff in the supply chain

Luc Audrain: It’s not production software.

Ric Wright: I understand that Apple is using a very old version. Is there any initiative to approach them specifically to update?

Luc Audrain: I recall this being discussed in the recent Steering Committee meeting

Luc Audrain: Tzviya, we don’t hear you, please put comments in the IRC

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: It was me; it was anecdotal; I have no real information;

Luc Audrain: Tzviya points out that a11y metadata is not being rejected by Apple

Karen Myers: https://www.w3.org/Consortium/Member/Testimonial/

Karen Myers: Back to testimonials. We’re suggesting that we create a page similar to the one I just put in a link for.
… Then create a way to rotate the testimonials on the publishing landing page.

Karen Myers: https://www.w3.org/publishing/

Karen Myers: Right now there are old testimonials there.
… I will check with Coralie to set up an easy workflow. Who in the PBG?

Luc Audrain: Let’s discuss offline

Ivan Herman: The testimonial opportunity is open to all W3C members, not just PBG members

4. Pop-Ups

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: I haven’t had a chance to make much progress. Will do for next call.

5. Future discussion topics

Luc Audrain: We have started a spreadsheet to collect topic suggestions
… This is high level, business oriented, not technical.

Tzviya Siegman: link to the spreadsheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1kq5zOMzOxvHkM8yAgoqao0M0-z5FBzqtWWoO9qLS8PM/edit#gid=0

Luc Audrain: Please go to the spreadsheet and let us know if these are of interest, and any other ideas you’d like to add.
… One example from the sheet: Getting from EPUB 2 to EPUB 3 is still a huge challenge.
… How would a reader be aware of the existence of an updated file? This is another big issue.
… We hope backlist will be upgraded, not just frontlist going to 3.2.
… No need for new ISBN, it’s not a new edition, it’s just a technical update of the product.
… How do we let readers know that a new version is available?

Jeff Jaffe: What’s the process for adding to the spreadsheet? Can anybody edit it or do suggestions have to be vetted?

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: More is better. Everybody should put ideas there. Then we’ll sort out priorities.
… Also put your name and +1 on existing suggestions you agree with.

Dave Cramer: Or -1

Luc Audrain: Some of these may be relevant for the PBG meeting at TPAC.

Daihei Shiohama (塩濱大平): Comment on Asian call about epubtype from Makoto. He intended to join this call to discuss it.
… Any comments on this, please let us know.

Luc Audrain: We should encourage Makoto to add that to the spreadsheet.
… We can discuss that on the next call.

Daihei Shiohama (塩濱大平): I will coordinate with Makoto.

Luc Audrain: Do we need to do a survey?

Dave Cramer: There is an open issue on epub:type in the CG repo. We are adding explanatory language to the spec: what it’s for and what it’s not for.

Dave Cramer: https://github.com/w3c/publ-epub-revision/issues/1241

Luc Audrain: It’s not just a technical issue.
… Thanks for the link to that issue.

Tzviya Siegman: also another epubcheck issue: https://github.com/w3c/epubcheck/issues/1022

Tzviya Siegman: and https://github.com/w3c/epubcheck/issues/986

Daihei Shiohama (塩濱大平): I will encourage Makoto to put his comments in the issue–everybody should do that

Luc Audrain: AOB?

Daihei Shiohama (塩濱大平): Last Asian meeting was a good discussion. But the only US participant was Karen. We would really appreciate more US people to join in the next PBG call.

Jeff Jaffe: I’m at IETF this week, there will be a packaging proposal discussion.
… Feedback welcome. The meeting is 3:00 CET / 10:00 am EDT.

George Kerscher: We’ve started an EPUB in Higher Ed WG in the disability space in the US–35 people participating. Webinar series starting up with 11 webinars about EPUB, readers, ACE, reading systems, etc. focusing on AT. Starting April 16, targeting DSO offices (3,000+).

Luc Audrain: EU copyright issues are a big deal, happening now. Also accessibility issues.
… ISO work in a11y happening in Milan.