Publishing BG EPUB-Rec task force telco — Minutes
Date: 2018-11-26
See also the Agenda and the IRC Log
Attendees
Present: Dave Cramer, Ivan Herman, Luc Audrain, Wendy Reid, Liisa McCloy-Kelley, Tzviya Siegman
Regrets:
Guests:
Chair:
Scribe(s): Liisa McCloy-Kelley
Content:
Tzviya Siegman: shared document: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/17CyIqihtjjzT7Abbcq9sSqLNqLGKs2cuXdg4DcFulGY/edit?usp=sharing
1. Influence of non-WG members on WG work
Ivan Herman: situation is not specific to this wg, decision power for features is by the members of the wg
… there is a practice of people from outside wg giving opinions through mailist or github
… if you go to the director for approval and there are open technical issues, there is a problem regardless of who opened that issue
… if there are people outside the wg who have strong opinions that they raise, this is taken into account
… wg makes decisions, but expect that chairs are careful to take into account any opinions raised
… same for test suite items and epub tests, grateful for tests from outside
… non-w3c members can raise issues and it must be taken into account
Dave Cramer: the same is true for the CSS WG
… there are people who are heard and opinions valued from people who know what they are talking about
Luc Audrain: agree with ivan and dave that issues are taken seriously
… point that publishers will not be inside the voting process
… want the publishers and the bg and cg to be aware of this
… possible to make objections and issues, but this requires that they have people skilled enough and aware enough to make an objection
… makes the epub3 REC goes away from the publishing industry
… idpf was a publishing industry community and the membership was affordable, which is not the case with w3c
… epub3 standard will be taken away, not far away, but away
Tzviya Siegman: recognize the concern, but can look at it as an issue for how we explain membership
… the membership costs are high, but we have effectively the same group of people who are involved now
… in principle it seems a problem, in practice maybe not an issue
… it may be the way we explain it and we can help people and where they can be involved
Liisa McCloy-Kelley: hear all of you, but think we need a little faith and it is a matter of communication
Dave Cramer: tracked names and people who commented (like 60%) are people who are members
… the majority of people would not be locked out by this
Luc Audrain: asks if this would change after the TPI
Dave Cramer:: not sure how much that would change
Wendy Reid: sounds more like a communication than participation issue
… if what we need to do is maintain incredibly clear lines of communication, we can do things about that
… this shouldn’t be a huge hurdle
Ivan Herman: probably possible to add explicitly to the charter that we are mindful to the public and put in some language that makes it easier
Luc Audrain: this brings new load on the rechartering
… it brings issues about communications between the groups
… agree we can improve communication to address the concern
… bg should have more focused calls and people understand what is at stake and give opinion
… not optimistic that all the experts we need will be there after the TPI, germany and norway are not here
… we should clarify with w3cm what will be the future after end of january
Tzviya Siegman: don’t think we have all the experts we need
… this has always been a problem, there is always a small group of contributors
… more participation would be wonderful
Luc Audrain: puts more responsibility on members like Hachette and others
… associations in close contact with publishers in other areas may help with communications
… have people in the wg and the bg and associations involved also
2. what we think are the benefit of rec track?
Liisa McCloy-Kelley: makes the spec/ISO work easier
Wendy Reid: +1
Tzviya Siegman: best benefit is to go through the testing process and that will help us find bugs that we’ve never found
… epubtest.org and efforts have been helpful and this will be better and will get a lot of eyes on the spec
… that will help with interest from the web community
Luc Audrain: not so optimistic, the tests in the CG will be good and bugs good
… that testing is good decision toward rec track, would be useful even if no rec
… web community to have a look, not sure that is interesting to them web community because of non-w3c standards
… we have concerns it would be modified with rec track
… should not impact our industry because we are using it today
… anxious for something happening to the spec
… not sure that ISO and Japanese community need this
Dave Cramer: there is a fundamental question of do we think epub is good enough or not
… struggled for a long time, foundational difficulties with interoperability
… used this approach for a long time now and not making progress with problems with the epub ecosystem
… don’t think there is a fundamental issue for rec, but the process will help us make it more robust
… don’t see other choices that will get us where we need to be
… this is one of the few tools we have available
Tzviya Siegman: +1 dauwhe
Liisa McCloy-Kelley: need to think about japanese govt needs and publisher needs separately
Dave Cramer: think we need to think about what does the publishing world need
Tzviya Siegman: think we should go rec track and not get too tied up in ISO
Liisa McCloy-Kelley: ivan- please clarify if ISO requires rewriting or is basically a rubber stamp if we are rec track
Ivan Herman: yes, it is a rubber stamp
Luc Audrain: asks tzviya about commitment to this community
Tzviya Siegman: at TPAC the wg was more focused on epub than wp
… the wp may suite for audiobooks, but we need to think about what does the publishing world need
… what do we need to focus on that the publishing community will adopt
… what will make epub 3.2 be something adopted?
… rec track will make it happen more easily
Ivan Herman: it is true for the time being that epub 3.2 staying in the cg will not really have attention from the w3c as is true of hundreds of cgs
… wg is finding it’s role and don’t really understand what to do and where we want to go
… if 3.2 comes into w3c with all the problems it becomes more the rest of the business community will use it and not forget
… makes more tangible that there is a community that uses w3c technologies and their feedback needs to be taken more seriously
… if there a whole community that is part of the w3c the many things that are limited they will more likely be addressed
… it makes publishing part of the core work, and it is a bit of psychology
Dave Cramer: we need help from the larger web community to bring publishing closer to the web
… epub has a complicated relationship with the web
… don’t think we have shown we can play well with the web
… need to be mindful of relationships
Luc Audrain: have urgent need for audiobook
… never identified epub 3.2 as a rec for an urgent need
… show epub 3.2 that we are involved, but we know it is not pure web
… epub 3.2 is epub 3.0.1
… psychology interest is to have stable environment
… can produce epub and have epubcheck
Liisa McCloy-Kelley: agree with ivan and tzviya on psychology and with luc on priorities with audiopub
… can do both at once
Ivan Herman: psychology with web community
… epub now has a peculiar position that it is the largest implementation of css and svg and core tech outside of browsers
… no other deployments are as wide with cars and payments and others
… the community helps clarify that web tech is not just for web browsers
… have major usage outside the web browser world
… if we are in w3c and we do the work, it will be an aha feeling
… w3c is part of deployment, that counts
Tzviya Siegman: we’re not getting far writing the doc
… ab meeting at the end of Jan. and wants the pub community to meet
Tzviya Siegman: https://github.com/w3ctag/w3ctag.github.io/blob/master/explainers.md