Publishing Business Group Telco — Minutes

Date: 2019-04-09

See also the Agenda and the IRC Log

Attendees

Present: Luc Audrain, Dave Cramer, Ivan Herman, Wendy Reid, Wolfgang Schindler, Liisa McCloy-Kelley, Dan Sanicola, George Kerscher, Avneesh Singh, Bill Kasdorf

Regrets: Tzviya Siegman, Rachel Comerford, Karen Myers, Jeff Jaffe, Mateus Teixeira, Daihei Shiohama (塩濱大平), Garth Conboy

Guests:

Chair: Luc Audrain

Scribe(s): Wendy Reid

Content:

Luc Audrain: Any new members?

1. Event Calendar

Luc Audrain: We are still updating the event calendar
… If you have any information about events please send them to us
… the big upcoming event is the Digital Publishing Summit in Paris in June
… special discount for W3C members

2. EPUBCheck 4.2 Release Candidate

Luc Audrain: No major issues have been reported, we still encourage testing and feedback
… I havee contacted Apple, and they are considering, they are wondering how many EPUB 3.2 files they have
… I hope they are testing
… Kobo has been doing some testing

Wendy Reid: tests have gone very well, except 1 issue we raised - haven’t seen any other issues

Dave Cramer: What was the issue? The mimetype issue

Wendy Reid: Yes

Luc Audrain: The previous version did not check the same way

Dave Cramer: We did not look for trailing spaces
… an issue has come up about how EPUBCheck checks the spine and nav order
… it is affecting books in Japan, and likely some here

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: Probably some of ours

Dave Cramer: We will discuss this in the community group
… it’s important to test our own files against the RC

Luc Audrain: Nothing is blocking so far
… we have a plan we will discuss about release and adoption

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: We’ve tested about 18k internally, and found a number of issues, mainly for us to fix, the team has some bugs to file and will do so

Luc Audrain: We did the same at Hachette, a lot of EPUBs we have for UAT for EPUBCheck and checked
… no remarkable issues
… we have issues with the fact that EPUBCheck 4.2 is better at checking for ARIA roles
… our born accessible EPUBs are affected, our mappings are out of place with EPUBCheck
… there is also an issue in ACE
… we know that there will be some adjustments in production workflows to create better EPUBs and this is good news
… also much more severe on EPUB2, it will help people move to EPUB3

3. EPUBCheck Fundraising

Luc Audrain: Fundraising is stable, but no new donations
… we have enough capital to finance the release, we have time to fund-raise before the next milestone at the end of the year
… the next step is to clean up the documentation, and some refactoring
… any questions?

4. Avneesh is running for the AB

Luc Audrain: Avneesh is running for the AB
… it is important to support him
… tell your AC reps
… he has been making great efforts in W3C for years, and we need to support him

Avneesh Singh: I think I should put forward my points
… all of you know me
… Accessibility is a major priority, and Tzviya convinced me to run
… the DAISY board has encouraged me to promote a11y in publishing
… I am not vocal, I am a silent strategist, but I worry that the W3C doesn’t know me well
… we need some ambassadors within the W3C to help with advocacy
… spread the word, and emphasize me as priority 1

Luc Audrain: When you say something, it’s important and to the point

Luc Audrain: +1 to Avneesh

Ivan Herman: +1 too:-)

Wendy Reid: +10000 to Avneesh :)

Wolfgang Schindler: +1 to Avneesh :)

5. ISO/A11y work

Luc Audrain: EPUB Accessibility 1.0 work prior to the merger
… published in Jan 2017
… and it is the base of an ISO standard that was voted to be worked on last year
… work will go on for 3 years
… the procedure has been fast-tracked and revised by the experts
… meeting in Milan 2 weeks ago to discuss
… simple rewording and clarification
… there is an issue about accessibility metadata
… as outlined in Makoto’s report, Italian publishers are questioning the internal metadata
… but in the industry we distribute ONIX metadata, metadata external to the file
… ONIX has a different expression of accessibility metadata
… calls will begin tomorrow, for us to try to harmonize
… we are not planning to change the original document, but accessibility metadata should be included within the EPUB and external via accepted formats (ONIX, MARCk??)
… we hope to have a better harmonization between metadata formats

George Kerscher: Great explanation, the working group will try to harmonize the formats, 1:1 mapping

Dave Cramer: Could someone clarify the relationship of this work to Graham Bell’s work on Schema.org work on ONIX?

Luc Audrain: Graham is in the loop and aware of the issues, and will contribute to the work
… it’s completely related to what he did
… it’s important for the industry to have the harmonization
… we often send metadata before the EPUB
… we think the metadata should be complete even if the file is not

Avneesh Singh: There’s some missing pieces in ONIX from EPUB that we want to make sure are complete
… the other thing is the fast track, we want to do this without a major disturbance, we would put any changes into a EPUB Accessibility 1.1 instead of stopping the standardization of 1.0
… we want to get to the end goal as soon as possible

Luc Audrain: I agree; we have the possibility to have the ISO standard very soon, and it’s important for the European accessibility act

Ivan Herman: Would this also change the terms in Schema.org or are they fixed?

Luc Audrain: From my perspective, we will do all we can to preserve the accessibility metadata in Schema
… this is not the place to change it
… it’s easier to change the codes in ONIX
… my hope is that we won’t have to work on 1.1, but it will help prevent delays if needed

Avneesh Singh: AccessModeSufficient is main piece missing in ONIX

Avneesh Singh: Changes are expected more on ONIX side

Ivan Herman: The reason I am asking, if there are changes to schema, it affects Web Publications as well

Luc Audrain: And the web!
… today in ONIX it’s just code list 196, it is updated every 3 months, so it should be clear and quick

6. EPUB 3.2 and EPUBCheck 4.2 announcement

Ivan Herman: Communication plan -> https://tinyurl.com/yxlxrkzr

Luc Audrain: The PBG and Steering Committee have looked at a google doc with steps for a communication schedule
… we announced this at the Asia call, and it was discussed at the CG call on Thursday
… there have been some small changes in the expression of the spec due to the testing in EPUBCheck
… the plan is that the CG will vote to adopt the final report ASAP, no date exactly, but the hope is that this will be done before the 23rd of April
… at the 23rd of April BG call, we will have a vote with the members to approve EPUB 3.2 and a week-long consensus vote
… at the same call we will announced the final release of EPUBCheck 4.2
… as long as there are no issues
… then we will have a worldwide release of the news
… next week’s Asia call will be cancelled
… the final part is paying DAISY for the milestone, which will be the end of April
… two calls will be cancelled, next Asia call cancelled for Golden Week
… May 7 is the PWG F2F in Boston, no call that day either

Luc Audrain: We didn’t want to decide anything in the CG without you

Dave Cramer: It will be on the agenda for this week

Luc Audrain: We had the management call with DAISY last week, April 1, we spoke of the plan, and we’ll have another F2F in Boston to see if there are issues

Ivan Herman: One more thing, we are prepared to accept testimonials on EPUB 3.2 or EPUBCheck, send them to me or Karen
… I have to change the system to accept the testimonials for 3.2
… the old testimonials from the merger will be replaced

Luc Audrain: Thanks Ivan, this has been mentioned, and I’ll add it in the spreadsheet

Luc Audrain: We’ll need to discuss this on the 23rd as well

7. Future BG topics

Ivan Herman: Future discussions topics -> https://tinyurl.com/y3o672qd

Luc Audrain: looking at the future topics for the BG spreadsheet

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: I am looking at the spreadsheet, I see the topic on bringing more of publishing to the web
… things like pagination, font sizes, backgrounds, collections, control of collections
… separate people’s expectations of publications on the web, how can we start that conversation on the group
… I have a pagination question, if we have a moment

Ivan Herman: There is a last entry, I had a discussion with Richard Ishida; this work was a leftover from the DPIG on internationalization and typesetting
… there’s a request to look at these issues and look at the feedback from the interest group
… the natural home is in the business group

Wendy Reid: some of these topics are good topics for CG

Ivan Herman: This is more a heads up, Kaern and I had a discussion last week with a person of the University of Michigan, looking at archiving of EPUBs, noted some problems on some data required for both EPUB and WPUB, they are thinking about getting together
… maybe even to show up at the F2F, some of these issues should show up with the BG

Luc Audrain: The question of triage is necessary here, then we can push things to the PCG, etc.
… I don’t know when we will do this triage but the next step is to work on this spreadsheet and work on some items
… we should also look at priorities
… also I should mention here about internationalization
… I did reach out to Richard about issues with unicode phonetics
… I received no answer, if you talk to him, please remind him

Ivan Herman: I will ask

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: Thanks for the heads up Ivan, some of the things UofM library mention is interesting
… they’re looking at a much longer time frame
… we are concerned about longevity, updating, etc

8. Misc

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vz2oAGAnTI8Qnyb1kV3oPu19utfzRtKMAlUcki1_1XM/edit

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: this is the pagination issue I want to talk about

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: the pagination issue I have is mostly specific and about accessibility
… I need advice
… what is the expectation here?

Dave Cramer: My naive response is that the pagelist is just a link to some particular part of the document
… we put empty <span>-s because we’re anchoring to the middle of the paragraph

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: But the image in the middle of page 14

Dave Cramer: We are creating signposts, “here is page 14” “here is page 15”, a page doesn’t necessarily include all of the document objects

Luc Audrain: We’d place the markers in their page positions

Luc Audrain: ok Wendy

Luc Audrain: We are almost at the hour
… we have some work to do on the spreadsheets
… new items to discuss
… first work would be categorize and prioritize
… we should work on that soon, but we do have other things to do
… AOB?
… have a great day everyone!