Publishing Business Group Telco — Minutes

Date: 2019-07-02

Attendees

Present: Luc Audrain, Jonathan Greenberg, Karen Myers, Liisa McCloy-Kelley, George Kerscher, Wolfgang Schindler, Tzviya Siegman, Bill Kasdorf, Avneesh Singh, Ric Wright, Ivan Herman, Jeff Jaffe, Daihei Shiohama (塩濱大平), Wendy Reid, Garth Conboy, Rachel Comerford, Laurent Le Meur, Cristina Mussinelli

Regrets: Dave Cramer

Guests:

Chair: Liisa McCloy-Kelley

Scribe(s): George Kerscher, Wolfgang Schindler

1. Report for PBG F2F in Japan

Daihei Shiohama (塩濱大平): Why not have the Japanese publishers present at the meeting.
… looking at 5 to 6 items for the agenda. We will get these out and ask to polish.

Daihei Shiohama (塩濱大平): We plan to have both English to Japanese and Japanese to English.
… We are also working on the AV requirements.
… The next thing is who will participate in the discussion between W3C members and the publishing community.
… We can share the interest in publishing at the W3C with others.
… Invited guests will be present.
… Next week we will have more details that I will be able to share.
… We have a question about people who are not W3C members.
… Who would we like to have as guests?
… Do we have some Japanese publishers as guests.

2. from PWG on the future discussions.

Tzviya Siegman: https://www.w3.org/publishing/groups/publ-wg/Meetings/Minutes/2019/2019-07-01-pwg.html

Tzviya Siegman: Over the last weeks chairs have raised concerns with Jeff, Ralph, and Dave.
… but there was lack luster participation. Our biggest concern is that we agreed to move forward with PWG
… We submitted a proposal to suspend work right now and publish it as a WG Note - This would leave the door open for future profiles such as manga, etc.
… We just published EPUB 3.2 in the CG and we need to figure out what happens next.
… We decided to move forward with the audio book specification.
… There is a lot of discussion that needs to take place to make decisions on what to do.

Luc Audrain: I understand that in the proposal that web publications would be a note.
… The audio book specification would be a rec in itself.
… The other profiles for manga, comics, text.
… We originally thought that EPUB 4 would be a packaged version of a web publication.
… What is the plan for packaging in the future
… Ivan spoke about timing being a problem.
… Is it possible to have several specifications starting with the audio book spec.
… We see the proposal to suspend the work, but there is other approaches.

Garth Conboy: We will publish it as a note and this allows us to return to it later.
… We will take the portions of the specification and apply this to audio book specification. We take the core of web publications and combining it with what we need for audio books.
… This approach addresses current business needs.
… We can take this approach and apply it to other types of content.

Bill Kasdorf: the Mellon foundation has funded several projects that in effect are working on publications that includes web technologies and in effect are creating complex publications on the web.
… It is important that we do not communicate that we are giving up on web publications.
… those projects include ones at Stanford, Univ. of California, Minnesota, Michigan, NYU and others.

Rachel Comerford: Ivan clarify the difference between a recommendation and a note?

Ivan Herman: The note does not represent consensus and it has not gone through the rigorous testing and implementation.
… At a later date time, a note can be taken up and moved forward.
… Looking at what Garth said, we have to understand in tech terms what we propose and what we do not propose.
… Audio books are not intended to be created on the web.
… Audio books are intended to be packaged and delivered.
… Web publications on the web on the other hand have many requirements, including security, and index file, and eventually a web browser should understand.
… There is a large part of the document (note) that has terms, rules, and is a separate part of the document.
… Another portion of the document deals with security, the origin and a special implementation on the web.
… The manifest and the processing on the web. The web part is the one we do not have consensus on. The manifest part is the part we can reuse and
… The manifest part and the audio book specific items is what we can promote.
… We may be able to use the manifest with other content.
… Our thought is at the moment, this is all that the community wants.
… The manifest part is good and can be used.
… The core web part is what we will postpone until there is a time when there is more interest.
… The WG must discuss if the manifest can be reused and not integrated in to the audio books spec.

Jeff Jaffe: Rachel asked about the difference, but the W3C recommendation is a “Standard” and a note is not.
… Secondly, I am not sure that we should look at a spec made to work on the web and repurpose it for off line use.
… delivering an audio book speciation. Third, I see little support for the chartered activity

Avneesh Singh: We must be careful that we do not mismatch what we have in the charter with what we are delivering in audio books.
… We must manage communication about the work we are doing. We need to carefully manage external communication.
… Why not extend the charter and do more things.

Wendy Reid: +1

Wolfgang Schindler: +1

Avneesh Singh: Whatever we do in the working group, which is for members, must deliver the business needs. The spec we write must be useful to their business needs.

Laurent Le Meur: I think we need to know about processing requirements for the web.
… We are missing a clear list of what is missing in the “core” WP work, that is not required for the audiobooks reco based on WP, either packaged or exposed on the Web. The WG should detail this before we move on.
… As Ivan said, most issues are linked to the native generation of a publication in a distributed Web environment, vs the exposure on the Web of a publication born on a desktop.
… The audiobook spec should be modular, with one module being the Manifest spec + processing on the Web.
… Also ebooks (text oriented ebooks, EPUB-like, with proper metadata) did not gather sufficient attention; even if we have business clues that samples are needed on the Web. I still think that a mapping from EPUB to an ebook WP profile is useful

Tzviya Siegman: a lot of people talking about potential uses of WPs
… a publication that opens on the web
… I agree that we need to make it clear that we are not ending our efforts - WP is not suitable for scholarly publications
… use cases mentioned are wonderful, but we need a spec that is more robust - we need better communication what we intend to do - I’m afraid this is not viable now

Wendy Reid: I speak for myself - everything I heard yesterday and today is very frustrating - Audiobook gets more positive feedback, we should follow on
… we believe in WP, but some people are now telling that want WP - we need book previews on the web - but people are not here, that tell us about their need for WP - trade publishing industry not ready for WP
… let’s focus on EPUB, but WP is not yet ready!

Garth Conboy: Audiobooks will be natively on the Web - I hesitate to support any sugar-coding - no browser interest in WP - we suspend work on WP and publish it on a note
… manifest in JSON, etc. may be used in Audiobooks - may apply knowledge gained to other profiles in the future
… I’m not sure there’s an industry need for WP instead of EPUB

Luc Audrain: I want to acknowledge the work in the WG for WP - we do hope that Audiobook spec will be adopted - will bring confidence for W3C avtivity - should communicate carefully to enhance the work on WP that has been done

Daihei Shiohama (塩濱大平): +1 to Luc

Luc Audrain: future of EPUB is an ebook profile based on WP for publishing on the Web
… EPUB is working well for the publishing industry today

Bill Kasdorf: +1 to Tzviya

Tzviya Siegman: EPUB was wonderful for part of the publishing industry, not for the whole - scholarly needs sth completely different - maybe we should try to fill such gaps

Luc Audrain: I completely agree with you, Tzviya. Why not having a WP profile for scholarly - future of EPUB is WP as WP for text - today we are having a rec for packaging

Daihei Shiohama (塩濱大平): +1 to Luc

Garth Conboy: respectfully disagree - the future of EPUB is WP is for me a very far future - don’t see a business case for that in the short term, only in the long-term perspective

Ivan Herman: we don’t have the same idea what a WP is - the packaging concept is not a packaging on the Web - we are talking about a packaged publication which relies on Web technologies much like EPUB
… not part of the Web for a browser like an HTML page - Audiobook or WP is not the same as a publication on the Web - browser vendors are not interested
… the package containing web technology is web manifest plus content but not a web publication

Bill Kasdorf: we biggest impediment to a web-native EPUB for trade books is that there are millions of EPUBs already extant

Luc Audrain: not so fundamental disagreement with Garth

Jeff Jaffe: we need a common view - Luke and Garth have different conceptions

Avneesh Singh: marketing perspective - market research needed before the development of a new product - we should ask publishers in EPUB CG and ask whether we need 2 different versions

Daihei Shiohama (塩濱大平): EPUB is good enough for existing publishing - should be maintained - future uses may be different contexts than publishing