Changes to the Publication Schedule for the Publishing Working Group

The Publishing Working Group has made changes to its deliverables schedule and content in recent weeks and would like to provide an update on the changes we have decided to make, and why. A few weeks ago the group resolved to suspend work for now on the Web Publications specification due to a lack of implementer and industry resource availability to complete the work in the chartered timeframe. There was not a clear and immediate business case for the specification. After meetings with the Steering Committee, we have decided to proceed with specifications that have a clear and immediate business need and/or will facilitate future work.

In the coming weeks the PWG will publish a series of notes based on the work we have done so far. The first of these will be our Use Cases and Requirements document, followed by the note version of the Web Publications document, and then later this month the first draft for our Lightweight Packaging Format. An update to the working draft of the Audiobooks Specification that reflects the changes to the structure of our projects is also expected later this month. This update will include some changes in response to feedback we have received.

The final document we intend to publish is a specification for a Publication Manifest. This specification allows us to take the best of the work we have completed thus far and open it up to the digital publishing and web communities. One of the reasons we are bringing this part of the document to the rec track is to facilitate future profiles. Audiobooks will be the first specification to reference the structure of the Publication Manifest, but we expect future profiles to use it as well, like the work of the BDCoMA Community Group and Publishing Community Group. We look forward to seeing future ideas using this specification, and encourage anyone interested to join us or provide feedback via our GitHub repository.