[DRAFT] Publishing Maintenance Working Group Charter

The mission of the Publishing Maintenance Working Group is to maintain the Recommendations developed by the Audiobooks and the EPUB Working Groups, and work on new features and ideas to incrementally improve these Recommendations, provide stable satellite specifications in the form of Working Group Notes, or provide the base for building the next major revisions of the publishing specifications.

Join the Publishing Maintenance Working Group.

This proposed charter is available on GitHub. Feel free to raise issues.

Charter Status See the group status page and detailed change history.
Start date TBD
End date TBD + 2 years
Chairs Wendy Reid, Rakuten Kobo
Shinya Takami (高見真也), Kadokawa
Team Contacts Ivan Herman (0.20 FTE)
Meeting Schedule Teleconferences: On an as-needed basis, at least every month.
Face-to-face: we will meet during the W3C's annual Technical Plenary week; additional face-to-face meetings may be scheduled by consent of the participants, usually no more than three per year.

Motivation and Background

For the past few years, the Publishing Maintenance Working Group (under its previous charter) has maintained the specifications originally published by the Audiobooks Working Group and the EPUB Working Group. During that time new features and demands were put forward by the publishing community that the Working Group was not chartered to answer.

The Publishing Maintenance Working Group also plays a role in supporting the broader publishing community in developing guidance and resources in response to changes in international accessibility legislation. This includes publishing Working Group Notes in response to legislation such as the European Accessibility Act (EAA) or the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), and to provide guidance on how EPUB relates to commonly referenced standards like WCAG.

This charter extends the previous charter by adding features to incrementally improve these Recommendations based on industry demands, provide stable satellite specifications in the form of Working Group Notes, or to provide the base for building the next major revisions of the publishing specifications.

Scope

The Working Group plans to work on new technical features for the EPUB 3.3, EPUB Reading Systems 3.3, and EPUB Accessibility 1.1 Recommendations, answering the needs of the publishing community and based on previous incubation work. These are:

Furthermore, the Working Group will also work on features which, though mostly maintenance in nature, involve adding new features to the Recommendations. These are as follows:

Finally, the Working Group will also incubate issues without necessarily aiming at the creation of final Recommendations during the lifetime of this charter. The results may be incorporated in future versions of the EPUB specifications or published as Working Group notes. These include:

As a result of this work, the Working Group will produce an updated version of EPUB 3, referred to as “EPUB 3.4” in this document. It is a primary goal of the new EPUB version to remain backward compatible with EPUB 3.3 (i.e., existing conformant EPUB 3.3 would remain conformant EPUB 3.4 documents).

Depending on community discussions and demands, this Working Group may also decide to submit the EPUB 3.4, the EPUB Reading Systems 3.4, and the EPUB Accessibility 1.x specifications to ISO/IEC JTC1 to be published as ISO/IEC standards. If the decision is to proceed with a submission, this would follow the PAS Submission process. This would obsolete the current ISO/IEC 23736-1-6:2020 standards based on EPUB 3.0.1 (originally published in 2014), as well as the separate ISO/IEC 23761:2021 EPUB Accessibility standard. The PAS submission would not affect the current distribution rights of the documents, which will remain free on www.w3.org, and it can also be expected that the documents will be available on the ISO Web site at no costs as JTC1 freely available standards. The submission would only permit minor editorial changes on the versions of the specifications submitted to ISO.

The Working Group also continues to maintain the Publication Manifest and Audiobooks Recommendations, as well as related Notes such as the Lightweight Packaging Format. For these specifications, class 4 changes are allowed.

For a complete list of documents maintained by this Working Group, see the publication list of the Group, as well as the documents published by the EPUB and Digital Publishing Working Groups.

Out of Scope

The following features are out of scope and will not be addressed by this Working Group:

  • Removal of any existing features defined by EPUB 3. Existing features will only be deprecated if they are not needed to support existing EPUB 3 content, as stated in HTML’s design principles.
  • Digital Rights Management (DRM) features for Audiobooks or EPUB Publications.
  • New document identification schemes (i.e., alternatives to DOI or ISBN).
  • New packaging and serialization formats for audiobooks or EPUB 3 files, i.e., alternatives to the Lightweight Packaging or the EPUB Open Container formats, respectively.
  • Any new metadata that can be deferred to more appropriate Working Groups or external standards organizations.
  • Any new elements, attributes, properties, or values that would create a fork from Open Web technologies (e.g., HTML, CSS or SVG).
  • Any new Package Document properties or values that influence rendering inside viewports that can be deferred to more appropriate Working Groups.
  • EPUB or Audiobooks authoring tools.

Deliverables

The current status of publications updated/published by the Publishing Maintenance Working Group is available on the publication list of the group. (Non-updated documents remain on the publication lists of the Audiobooks and EPUB Working Groups.)

Normative Specifications

The Working Group will maintain the following W3C normative specifications:

Publication Manifest

This specification defines a general manifest format for expressing information about a digital publication. It uses schema.org metadata augmented to include various structural properties about publications, serialized in json-ld11, to enable interoperability between publishing formats while accommodating variances in the information that needs to be expressed.

Draft state: Recommendation.

Exclusion Draft: https://www.https://www.w3.org/TR/2019/CR-pub-manifest-20191205/. Exclusion period began 2019-12-05; Exclusion period ended 2020-02-03.

Exclusion Draft Charter: https://www.w3.org/2017/04/publ-wg-charter/.

Audiobooks

This specification describes the requirements for the creation of audiobooks, using a profile of the Publication Manifest specification.

Draft state: Recommendation.

Exclusion Draft: https://www.w3.org/TR/2019/CR-audiobooks-20191205/. Exclusion period began 2019-12-05; Exclusion period ended 2020-02-03.

Exclusion Draft Charter: https://www.w3.org/2017/04/publ-wg-charter/.

EPUB 3.4

This specification defines the authoring requirements for EPUB publications and represents the third major revision of the standard.

Draft state: Recommendation.

Exclusion Draft: https://www.w3.org/TR/2023/CR-epub-33-20230221/. Exclusion period began 2023-02-21; Exclusion period ended 2023-04-22.

Exclusion Draft Charter: https://www.w3.org/2020/12/epub3-wg-charter.html.

EPUB Reading Systems 3.4

This specification defines the conformance requirements for EPUB® 3 reading systems — the user agents that render EPUB publications.

Draft state: Recommendation.

Exclusion Draft: https://www.w3.org/TR/2023/CR-epub-rs-33-20230221/. Exclusion period began 2023-02-21; Exclusion period ended 2023-04-22.

Exclusion Draft Charter: https://www.w3.org/2020/12/epub3-wg-charter.html.

EPUB Accessibility 1.1

This specification specifies content conformance requirements for verifying the accessibility of EPUB® Publications. It also specifies accessibility metadata requirements for the discoverability of EPUB publications.

Draft state: Recommendation.

Exclusion Draft: ttps://www.w3.org/TR/2023/CR-epub-a11y-11-20230221/. Exclusion period began 2023-02-21; Exclusion period ended 2023-04-22.

Exclusion Draft Charter: https://www.w3.org/2020/12/epub3-wg-charter.html.

New Deliverables

EPUB 3.4 Annotations (title not final)

This specification defines an interoperable annotation standard for EPUB, based on the W3C Web Annotation Data Model and Vocabulary, aiming at standard, interchangeable annotations.

Draft state: external document

Expected completion: [TBD+2 years]

Adopted Draft: Readium Annotations.

Exclusion Draft: n/a

Exclusion Draft Charter: n/a

Note: it is undecided whether this specification will be published as a separate Recommendation, or whether its content will be folded into EPUB 3.4.

Other Deliverables

The Working Group will maintain the non-normative documents originally published by the EPUB and Publishing Working Groups, as well as the notes published recently by the Publishing Maintenance Working Group, namely:

The Working Group may also publish new non-normative documents.

Timeline

  • TBD + 1 week: First teleconference
  • TBD + 2 months: First F2F meeting
  • TBD + 6 months: FPWD for in-scope changes
  • TBD + 12 months: First CR snapshot for a new version
  • TBD + 24: EPUB 3.4 final version

Success Criteria

In order to advance beyond Candidate Recommendation, each normative specification is expected to have at least two independent interoperable implementations of every feature defined in the specification, where interoperability can be verified by passing open test suites.

There should be testing plans for each specification, starting from the earliest drafts.

To promote interoperability, all changes made to specifications should have tests.

Each specification should contain separate sections detailing all known security and privacy implications for implementers, Web authors, and end users.

Each specification should contain a section on accessibility that describes the benefits and impacts, including ways specification features can be used to address them, and recommendations for maximising accessibility in implementations.

To ensure the real-world usability of EPUB 3.4 in the publishing ecosystem, EPUBCheck must fully support the specification at the time of its release. To facilitate this, all changes that add, remove, or clarify publication conformance requirements must be logged.

This Working Group expects to follow the TAG Web Platform Design Principles.

Coordination

For all specifications, this Working Group will seek horizontal review for accessibility, internationalization, privacy, and security with the relevant Working and Interest Groups, and with the TAG. Invitation for review must be issued during each major standards-track document transition, including FPWD. The Working Group is encouraged to engage collaboratively with the horizontal review groups throughout development of each specification. The Working Group is advised to seek a review at least 3 months before first entering CR and is encouraged to proactively notify the horizontal review groups when major changes occur in a specification following a review.

This group is expected to coordinate with the Publishing Community Group on consensus-based proposals related to content changes for the Publishing Maintenance Working Group Deliverables. The Chairs of this group should reject proposals that are incompatible with this Charter.

Additional technical coordination with the following Groups will be made, per the W3C Process Document:

W3C Groups

Accessibility Discoverability Vocabulary for Schema.org Community Group

The primary objective of this Community Group is to maintain and develop the vocabularies for the accessibility discoverability properties in schema.org, that enable discovery of accessible content. The schema.org vocabulary is essential for publishing and used, for example, by the Publication Manifest.

Accessibility Guidelines Working Group

The Accessibility Guidelines Working Group develops guidelines to make Web content accessible for people with disabilities and is responsible for the development and maintenance of the WCAG series of Recommendations. The EPUB Accessibility specification is already based on WCAG, and a liaison will be set up to ensure that any new features in EPUB 3.4, in particular EPUB Accessibility 1.1, would continue to refer to WCAG 2.X, when applicable.

Accessible Platform Architectures Working Group

The APA WG provides horizontal review of potential accessibility issues in the architecture, including knowledge domains for STEM accessibility; as well as accessibility impact of a specification. That Working Group may also develop new technologies that may impact future versions of Digital Publishing standards, such as the specification for Spoken Presentation in HTML.

ARIA Working Group

The ARIA Working Group is responsible for the development of ARIA and the development of DPUB-ARIA Module 1.1. The Publishing Maintenance Working Group will support the ARIA Working Group’s work to maintain this specification.

Publishing Business Group

The Publishing Business Group will provide business cases and guidance to the working group as needed. The PBG will also provide support for industry outreach.

Publishing Community Group

The Publishing Community Group functions as an incubator group to explore, test, and possibly specify new ideas that may be included, eventually, into updated versions of EPUB 3.4 Recommendations or Working Group Notes.

Schema.org Community Group

Synchronization on the schema.org terms used in the Publication Manifest and in EPUB 3 (e.g., for accessibility).

Text and Data Mining Reservation Protocol Community Group

The goal of this Group is to facilitate Text and Data Mining (TDM) Reservation Protocol, by specifying a simple and practical machine-readable solution, capable of expressing the reservation of TDM rights. Expressing these rights for an EPUB publication is an important part of the Reservation Protocol.

Timed Text Working Group

The Timed Text Working Group maintains the WebVTT specification, which may be reused by EPUB 3.4 as part of the incubation on synchronized media.

External Organizations

DAISY Consortium

The DAISY consortium currently manages epubtest.org, the support grid for EPUB. They also provide support on specification writing, accessibility, and feedback on EPUB implementation. Their feedback on the further development of EPUB in general, and EPUB Accessibility in particular, will be essential.

EDRLab

EDRLab is actively working on the different Readium projects and develops an open-source and highly accessible desktop reading application (called Thorium) for EPUB 3 and Audiobooks.

The EPUBCheck Community

EPUBCheck, the EPUB validation tool, is an open source software, currently maintained by the DAISY Consortium on behalf of the W3C, and widely used by virtually all major publishers around the World. The EPUB 3 Working Group worked closely with the developers of EPUBCheck, and this cooperation should continue with the Publishing Maintenance Working Group.

International Standards Organization (ISO)

The ISO/IEC JTC1 committee has published, and maintains, some EPUB based ISO standards. A liaison will monitor and provide input regarding any EPUB-related documents developed by ISO, such as the forthcoming EPUB/A technical standard. This liaison will become especially important in the case this Working Group decides to submit the EPUB 3.4 Recommendations to be published as ISO/IEC standard via the PAS process. See also the Scope section for further details.

Readium Foundation

The Readium projects are at the core of a number of EPUB 3 reading systems around the world, and they also implement the Audiobook specification. As such, the feedback of that development will be essential to the maintenance work of these specifications.

Participation

To be successful, this Working Group is expected to have six or more active participants for its duration, including representatives from the key implementors of this specification, and active Editors and Test Leads for each specification. The Chairs, specification Editors, and Test Leads are expected to contribute half of a working day per week towards the Working Group. There is no minimum requirement for other Participants.

The group encourages questions, comments and issues on its public mailing lists and document repositories, as described in Communication.

The group also welcomes non-Members to contribute technical submissions for consideration upon their agreement to the terms of the W3C Patent Policy.

Participants in the group are required (by the W3C Process) to follow the W3C Code of Conduct.

Communication

Technical discussions for this Working Group are conducted in public: the meeting minutes from teleconference and face-to-face meetings will be archived for public review, and technical discussions and issue tracking will be conducted in a manner that can be both read and written to by the general public. Working Drafts and Editor's Drafts of specifications will be developed in public repositories and may permit direct public contribution requests. The meetings themselves are not open to public participation, however.

Information about the group (including details about deliverables, issues, actions, status, participants, and meetings) will be available from the Working Group home page.

Most Publishing Maintenance Working Group teleconferences will focus on discussion of particular specifications and will be conducted on an as-needed basis.

This group primarily conducts its technical work on GitHub issues. The public is invited to review, discuss and contribute to this work.

The group may use a Member-confidential mailing list for administrative purposes and, at the discretion of the Chairs and members of the group, for member-only discussions in special cases when a participant requests such a discussion.

Decision Policy

This group will seek to make decisions through consensus and due process, per the W3C Process Document (section 5.2.1, Consensus). Typically, an editor or other participant makes an initial proposal, which is then refined in discussion with members of the group and other reviewers, and consensus emerges with little formal voting being required.

However, if a decision is necessary for timely progress and consensus is not achieved after careful consideration of the range of views presented, the Chairs may call for a group vote and record a decision along with any objections.

To afford asynchronous decisions and organizational deliberation, any resolution (including publication decisions) taken in a face-to-face meeting or teleconference will be considered provisional. A call for consensus (CfC) will be issued for all resolutions (for example, via email, GitHub issue or web-based survey), with a response period from 5 to 10 working days, depending on the chair's evaluation of the group consensus on the issue. If no objections are raised by the end of the response period, the resolution will be considered to have consensus as a resolution of the Working Group.

All decisions made by the group should be considered resolved unless and until new information becomes available or unless reopened at the discretion of the Chairs.

This charter is written in accordance with the W3C Process Document (Section 5.2.3, Deciding by Vote) and includes no voting procedures beyond what the Process Document requires.

Patent Policy

This Working Group operates under the W3C Patent Policy (Version of 15 September 2020). To promote the widest adoption of Web standards, W3C seeks to issue Web specifications that can be implemented, according to this policy, on a Royalty-Free basis. For more information about disclosure obligations for this group, please see the licensing information.

Licensing

This Working Group will use the W3C Software and Document license for all its deliverables.

About this Charter

This charter has been created according to section 3.4 of the Process Document. In the event of a conflict between this document or the provisions of any charter and the W3C Process, the W3C Process shall take precedence.

Charter History

The following table lists details of all changes from the initial charter, per the W3C Process Document (section 4.3, Advisory Committee Review of a Charter):

Charter Period Start Date End Date Changes
Initial Charter 2023-06-20 2023-06-30
Dave Cramer stepping down as co-chair 2023-10-05
Tzviya Siegman stepping down as co-chair 2024-09-05
Development of a new charter 2024-10-03 2025-??-??

Change log

Changes to this charter are documented in this section.