Cover page images (keys)

The Future of Publishing

Liam Quin, <liam@w3.org>

Publishing

Publishing

“The printed word is not dead;

It only looks that way because it doesn’t move.”

(Frank Romano, at Seybold, c. 2001).

What he's going to say

Introducing some key concepts for the two days;
The Open Web Platform
Workflow
About the World Wide Web Consortium;
The problem before us.

Open Web Platform

Open Web Platform

http://www.webplatform.org/
The Open Web Platform is the collection of technologies and standards from W3C, IETF, ECMA, Unicode and others...
The name is attributed to Jeff Jaffe, CEO of W3C
Includes HTML, CSS, SVG, MathML, JavaScript, and much much more.

OWP and The Mainstream

Computer software is moving to the Web;
Generic desktop computers are losing ground;
The OWP can do graphics and type these days;
Wordpress is the new Pagemaker.
How do I print an ebook?
Can we agree, same html/xhtml/epub for both ebook and print?

What is Publishing?

What is Publishing?

By publishing I mean primarily commercial and academic publishing: mediated publishing, the process of producing books, magazines, newspapers, journals, both items that traditionally have been printed and works that have always been digital...
This excludes informal unmediated acts such as tweeting, twerping, blogging, facebooking, self publishing.

OWP and Gaps

Web-based (in-browser) editing and trust…
Incompatible reader devices;…
Use of draft or unstable features…
Formatting limitations…
Metdata fragmentation…
Prepress and finishing not yet handled

A Bigger Problem

The Web was not made for professional publishing.

Formatting Example

Formatting Example

Multiple streams of footnotes…
Footnotes at all…
Hyphenation…
Crop, Bleed, Spreads, Binding & Finishing…
Distribution, and . . .

Terms

XML First: author-provided or pre-revision;
XML Early: XML after revisions, before pagination;
XML Late: generated from paginated pages (proofs or final);
XML Never: Maybe PDF or maybe letterpress!

Metadata

Metadata

Which books do I have?…
Who is reading my book? Which pages? What are they thinking?…
Who wrote this Web page?…
How do I link to another ebook?…
Whose Metadata standards do we use?…
All topics for future work.

Panik

panik

Who is W3C?

Who is W3C?

W3C is the technical standards organization responsible for the World Wide Web…
http://www.w3.org/ …
Member-funded consortium, specs are free…
Work takes place in Activities.

What is a W3C Activity?

What is a W3C Activity?

A group of related technical work, often with interconnected Working Groups...
Examples: XML, Web Services, URIs, TV on the Web, Publishing...
Has a single person for coordination, the Activity Lead…
Can also be Consortium-wide, e.g. Internationalization, Accessibility…
May also co-ordinate with outreach and training.

The Digital Publishing Activity

Activity lead: Ivan Herman…
Groups: Digital Publishing Interest Group
http://www.w3.org/dpub/
Liaisons: IDPF, more coming…
Membership includes publishers, tool vendors, more.

Starting to fix it

W3C and Publishing

Series of Workshops
Digital Publishing Activity
Digital Publishing Interest Group
Encouraging publishers to get involved

The Way Forward

The Way Forward (these two days)

Workflow is the entire process from start to end, and how it is managed…
Identify the needs…
Identify the barriers…
Discuss how to remove the barriers and address the needs.

Publishing, W3C and the Open Web Platform

Publishing, W3C and the Open Web Platform

Community - Your comments matter…
Consensus - You have a voice…
Process - ensuring we have consensus…
Open Platform for Everyone…
Outreach to specific communities

Ever Vigilant

Ever Vigilant

Interact!
Introduce Yourself!
Interrupt!

Questions, Discussion, Comments

Questions, Discussion, Comments

Questions?
Comments?
Discussion?
liam@w3.org

Photo Credits

All images are from fromoldbooks.org (an image site maintained by the author of this presentation) except as noted:

1957 Zündapp Janus car, photo Georg Schwalbach (GS1311) / flickr

White bookshelves of Stuttgart Library, Elmastudio on flickr.

The eyes are from a portrait of Henry VIII on fromoldbooks.org.