Publishing Chairs’ Telco — Minutes

Date: 2019-12-13

Attendees

Present: Luc Audrain, Dave Cramer, George Kerscher, Wendy Reid, Tzviya Siegman, Liisa McCloy-Kelley, Ralph Swick, Ivan Herman, Avneesh Singh, Garth Conboy, Jeff Jaffe, Bill Kasdorf, Daihei Shiohama (塩濱大平)

Regrets:

Guests:

Chair: Liisa McCloy-Kelley, Luc Audrain

Scribe(s): Wendy Reid, Ivan Herman

1. Validator @ Daisy

Ralph Swick: See Luc’s agenda on validator.idpf.org

Luc Audrain: First item on the agenda is about the website
… validator.idpf.org
… we discussed it with DAISY
… this site is hosted on a DAISY server
… where it takes computer power, and it’s not reliable
… has to be restarted
… Marisa handles this regularly
… it’s quite heavily used, around 4k unique IPs per month
… 1000’s of EPUBs are checked
… even though it’s a beta, it’s used to validate right on the site
… the EPUBCheck version is not the latest version
… it was updated to 4.1.1 in January, but we are now on 4.2.2
… it is used
… it should not be hosted by DAISY in the long term, or called validator.idpf.org
… should we keep this service?
… if we don’t keep it, since there is a CLI for EPUBCheck
… we can stop it, but if we do keep it, we should improve it
… transferred to a new host
… since it’s a legacy from the IDPF we should discuss it here
… or with the PBG
… that is the situation, thoughts?

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: I have some concerns about keeping it
… potential legal liability of transferring pre-production files to a server for validation
… does that put us at legal risk
… is there something more downloadable or local?

Tzviya Siegman: I am not a lawyer so we could ask Wendy S, but there is a disclaimer checkbox on the website
… or we could add that
… when we discussed this on the EPUBCheck management call, it has 1000s of users
… we don’t have developer time to devote to that, we’d need to do more fundraising
… we would look into the legal risk

Luc Audrain: validator.idpf.org

Luc Audrain: If you go to the webpage, it says this site uses EPUBCheck… (disclaimer)
… it does mention volume should be done with the CLI
… we could add phrasing about legal issues
… we could add information about the CLI
… add the link to the contribution to the fundraising
… this site is used by people making EPUBs rarely or outside of the supply chain
… I think it is useful
… it could also be a way to push some information
… advertise that the community is alive and active
… a good way to announce to people who use it

Ralph Swick: Who would be the right people to gather for discussing the required resources?
… setting aside the legal question

Luc Audrain: Romain and Marisa from DAISY
… they’re currently maintaining the system

Tzviya Siegman: Avneesh as well

Ralph Swick: I’m willing to take an action to work with talk with Marisa and Romain to get an estimate of the developer resources required to update the system to current epubcheck levels

George Kerscher: I agree with Luc, there’s some updating to do from 4.1.1 to 4.2.2, it might also be an avenue to encourage people to move to EPUB3
… possible many using EPUB2 are using it
… I think the server, Marisa has to kick it every now and then
… it’s not the best environment either
… Avneesh is on, I know we’ve developed the Ace GUI, we’re updating that soon
… making it more accessible and robust
… I wonder if we can include EPUBCheck into that tool
… just an exploratory question
… what is pagina?

Luc Audrain: It’s very good

Avneesh Singh: Pagina I have heard good things about
… when it encounters failures it requires restarting

Luc Audrain: pagina : https://www.pagina.gmbh/produkte/epub-checker/

Avneesh Singh: there’s an impact when it goes down because it is not maintained
… there are two things we must do, we need to improve it or let it die
… improve the code and the infrastructure
… move to a microservice system for the server, uses far less CPU cycles, these are the parameters for you Ralph
… this is the minimum
… or let it go, and replace it with a GUI

Luc Audrain: I think that it’s very useful
… it’s an avenue to bring messaging to users
… technically it’s not huge, but there’s many things to consider
… for us as a community, it’s an important place to communicate to people
… that aren’t in the mainstream
… smaller suppliers or producers
… it’s an opportunity to reach these people
… it’s a global consideration
… put some warnings, but we should keep it

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: I think there’s a middle path of letting the page turn over to something else
… use it as a messaging board of sorts

Luc Audrain: I don’t know if we can decide today, but let’s explore all of the solutions
… Ralph can speak to Marisa and Romain about the technical issues and we can explore it again

George Kerscher: Is there a use case for people who have an EPUB on their phones and they use this service?
… where pagina isn’t an option

Garth Conboy: To George’s question, possibly
… depending on effort, I’m in the camp of upgrading to 4.2.2
… you simply upload your EPUB and get it checked, instead of installing an app
… having this site seems to be a feature

Tzviya Siegman: I just want to point out that pagina is excellent, if we were to use them, I think we need to ask if they’re able to handle that volume
… they do contribute to EPUBCheck

Luc Audrain: We would direct them to them

Tzviya Siegman: We can’t say they’re the solution

Luc Audrain: There’s work to improve the API for EPUBCheck
… we can use it to encourage people to move to EPUB3 or other things
… if there’s nothing else, next topic
… second topic is the survey

2. survey

Luc Audrain: Liisa or Dave?

Dave Cramer: I’ve just been trying to write questions

Luc Audrain: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ZLAIgAH7hoWo56uov3QN2-jaMY6MaWQKJrAys1GwDdY/edit#

Dave Cramer: comments and suggestions welcome
… George, you’re right there is not enough focus on HigherEd, I’d love input from other publishing verticals

Luc Audrain: There was a question from Jeff about dividing the surveys for several destinations

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: It would be harder to manage multiple surveys
… where would we start collecting names
… that has not been solved yet
… I’ll start a google sheet

Luc Audrain: There was an external task force that did collect a long list of names and organizations
… we could reuse that

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: For the purposes of starting let’s collate all of this

Bill Kasdorf: We need to pilot it on a small scale before sending it internationally
… the contacts we have are useful

Luc Audrain: We can do this in the google doc, I will find the link

George Kerscher: When you say collecting names, do you mean individuals or organizations, or both

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: Both

Tzviya Siegman: I just wanted to comment that we need to be broad with the distribution
… encourage people to pass it along
… we’re not going to get enough feedback otherwise

Bill Kasdorf: +1 to tzviya, especially about encouraging pass-along

Tzviya Siegman: let’s not get too caught up in the who
… post it on social media etc

Daihei Shiohama (塩濱大平): As far as Asia, I will send it out with Yoshii-san to organizations
… APL and other industry associations
… major publishers, Kodansha, Shueisha, etc,
… educational and graphical publishers
… large ebook stores
… TDPF will cover Taiwan as well
… that will cover most of Japan and Asia

Avneesh Singh: I understand the reason for keeping the survey together, but I wonder what the user experience would be?
… do we have a screening question in the beginning, instead of making every user answer them all

Bill Kasdorf: I was persuaded by Dave’s comment that most users are more than one role
… it’s difficult to segregate questions
… instead of presenting all the questions
… click on sections
… make it less intimidating
… I wanted to add to tzviya’s comment on passing it along
… the hardest part is getting to the right individuals
… making sure it’s shareable

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: Couple things
… Avneesh’s idea on focusing on the specific survey case is good
… how we do that we can figure out
… from Daihei on translation, tuesday’s call we discussed if we translated it
… we got offers for translation to Chinese and Japanese
… do we need to do that for other local markets
… pilot it in English while translating

George Kerscher: This looks like it is going to go out to a lot of people
… it is an excellent opportunity to promote and market EPUB3
… I’m not suggesting it become a marketing campaign
… it would be good to message EPUB3 in the best light
… the publishing standard for downloadable packaged content
… it’s not the purpose but it is the byproduct
… in terms of how we organize the survey
… having end-user type questions at first then make it more technical

Dave Cramer: I think that’s fine
… we can use navigation and table of contents
… so people can find what they want
… I don’t want to prevent people from seeing questions
… many people play many different roles
… make it easy for them to find what’s important to them

Avneesh Singh: I also have one concern, we want this survey to be neutral
… it is also a way to discover if there is something beyond EPUB3
… we might bias people just to EPUB3 if we focus on it
… if there’s something in scholarly or other verticals that lives outside of EPUB3 we should know

Luc Audrain: I understand the concern, but we could put a disclaimer in the beginning on the current situation and then ask
… what are the next steps
… there’s still some work to do on the questions
… do we have an idea of schedule
… when do we send?
… how do we organize managing the answers
… when do we consider we have enough information

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: Avneesh I think there’s a way we can do both
… EPUB3 is the current standard, but we can also use the 2020 mentality to look forward, what else needs to be done
… let’s give ourselves time over the holidays to do some back and forth on the document
… gather names and contacts
… how do we position it
… let’s regroup on the call in January
… my personal gut timeline is sending in early feb
… pilot in early-mid feb
… answers back before spring
… we need to know what to do before meetings in spring

Tzviya Siegman: Yes the AC meeting is in early May
… AB is in Feb

Jeff Jaffe: Mostly to agree on what Liisa said
… if we have a F2F in late feb it would be good to see some feedback
… there’s an AC meeting in May
… what about the charter of the PWG
… it expires on July 1
… we need to start before then

Tzviya Siegman: +1 to jeff

Jeff Jaffe: it would be good to have the responses by the end of March to give us 3 months to figure out our strategy
… it’s not required but incredibly helpful

Luc Audrain: I don’t think 2 months is enough
… a worldwide survey needs time
… 6 months

Jeff Jaffe: q= to comment on 6 months

Luc Audrain: to communicate and raise new momentum
… there’s potential for new SDKs and things
… we would have he bulk of answers in the first month
… we can discuss at TPAC

Jeff Jaffe: The question I have is
… what do we think is the average time to respond
… we live in an over-surveyed world
… most people will either do it or ignore it
… if they do it it will be right away
… the remainder won’t

Ivan Herman: +1 jeff

Jeff Jaffe: or will do it later

Wendy Reid: +1

Jeff Jaffe: I don’t think we’ll get much after a month

Tzviya Siegman: I agree
… 6 months will change a lot
… I might have different answers
… we need to have a long-term view of what we hope to accomplish
… maybe interviews with stakeholders
… leaving the survey open for 2-3 weeks

Wendy Reid: I also agree that 6 months is too long

Bill Kasdorf: +1 to interviews, and the initial survey results will be informative in doing the interviews

Wendy Reid: . luc brought up TPAC
… but if there is no WG, nobody will go to TPAC
… we cannot ask cg members to travel to Vancouver
… if we do not make a decision soon we will not have a wg
… after 1-2 months we can look at the results, we will get 90% of the results in the first couple of weeks
… interviews might be a good idea once we have the survey results
… we cannot make 6 months, it won’t work

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: We need to try to get as much as we can after initial distribution
… we’ll need translations and that will take time
… we won’t just use this for data but also new connections
… interviews after we digest the data
… I think we could have a meeting a TPAC

Garth Conboy: I agree with a shorter time frame
… I don’t think we should go into this that the survey with a WG coming out of it
… I guess my caution is not to create this survey with a WG in mind from the results

Daihei Shiohama (塩濱大平): I am not clear why the 6 months is the problem

Bill Kasdorf: can the WG go on indefinite hiatus without rechartering and then crank up again if and when appropriate?

Daihei Shiohama (塩濱大平): as long as we have the survey out, we can review the feedback as it comes in
… we would have some directional thinking on this
… we can do interviews with influential people
… we tech companies, with distributors and other booksellers
… organized to have productive results
… it will take 5-6 months
… we can have more detailed meetings to have a discussion at TPAC
… the POV of business needs of ebooks
… in the meantime, 6 months or up to TPAC, we can have a direction
… we can have more intense discussion

George Kerscher: I hear what Avneesh said about, we’re not just about EPUB
… the survey should talk about publishing in its broadest form
… EPUB3 is the most widely used standard
… it’s going to be a big part
… regarding TPAC
… I look at Publishing@W3C as a domain
… it’s a major division
… TPAC meetings in that domain seem reasonable

Wendy Reid: i have mentioned that before
… we had a bg meeting at tpac
… the reason we had that (1) we had a local industry and (2) we had a wg meeting
… unless we are a meeting for 2 days
… people will not come over, it is far and expensive for europe
… is we talk about survey and planning, it is not worth having a meeting at tpac
… I know this survey would lead to a WG
… we have ideas about WG style work
… the survey will give us ideas eg on the epub /WG work
… maybe new ideas will come up

Dave Cramer: +1 to wendyreid

Wendy Reid: I am ok not spinning a WG, I am not ok having a meeting at TPAC because we need 4 hours for a chat on survey results
… we are not eh only parts of w3c

Tzviya Siegman: I agree with Wendy, this survey has morphed
… from how we should improve EPUB to directing the publishing activity
… if we focus just on EPUB
… we can use it to focus the activity

Luc Audrain: We are coming to the end of the hour

3. f2f meeting in february

Luc Audrain: there’s a proposal to have a F2F in February
… the next SC call is on the 27th of December, should we do it or cancel

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: +1 to cancel

Luc Audrain: we will cancel it
… the next call will be Jan 10
… until then, happy christmas, and next PBG call is Dec 17
… have a good day!