DPUB IG Telco, 2015-03-09: Some Task Force Updates, discussion on Web Packaging

See the minutes online for a more detailed record of the discussions.

Task Force Updates

STEM Task force

The Questionnaire has been sent out to a number of people in several. With the last round (last week) the number of people who have been contacted is around 90, with a deadline for responses set at the end of the month. At the moment, there are 15 respondents plus some others who, though not replying themselves, have forwarded the questionnaire to colleagues.

Accessibility Task Force

The task force has surveyed the W3C Accessibility Guidelines to see which techniques are relevant for Digital Publishing. Most of them (a dozen or so) are not really required, and some others are not clear (e.g., PDF related techniques). However, most of what is in the current guidelines are very much relevant for the Digital Publishing Industry.

The more complicated question, which has not been addressed yet, is whether there are issues in Digital Publishing that are not addressed by the guidelines. Such issues may be related to page numbers, drop caps, etc., although some of these things could be addressed via other specs (like CSS).

The issue is that the task force is a little bit low on resources at the moment…

Content & Markup Task Force (Update to the role module)

The Task Force has been working with the W3C PF Group on a draft for a role module. This is now an early editors‘ draft; some terms have been cut out that could be addressed elsewhere. There is a need to also remove some ambiguity from the terms definitions and make sure things have context outside of Digital Publishing as well.

The challenge is to determine the scope of publishing and the definition of the terms. There are a large number of potential terms (almost a thousand) and a good balance must be found for a module that is neither too large nor too little.

Discussion on Web Packaging

The discussion included Yves Lafon, the W3C staff contact in the Web Application Working Group. Yves gave an update:

The Web packaging format started as a way of identifying—with the URL—a way to identify packaging. It then derailed to some use-case as to why there was a need for a package format or document. One of the main drivers was the need for Javascript libraries. There is also a strong relationship to using service workers; it is kind of a portable cache format. Without the need of a configuration. We wanted to actually know if the work we've done will be actually useful to our people. We started to gather input from other people, and we got some security input, signatures—part of the document from inside the package—and of course it would be good for us as we know this IG would be interested in this type of packaging, if our approach was good for you, what would we need to make better. The current point is trying to figure out who would be the perfect customer of the specification.

Subsequent discussions concentrated on technical as well as organizational issues. In general, it was agreed that better Digital Publishing use cases, and resulting requirements, should be collected and forwarded to the Web Application Working Group to represent Digital Publishing, and what is required from a packaging format. Eg, publishers are looking at ZIP alternatives to work well on mobile, that could also efficiently include large data sets, etc.

One of the main technical issues for the Digital Publishing community is the pros and cons of abandoning ZIP in favor of a new packaging format. One of the arguments against ZIP is that it is not properly streamable. However, it may be possible to add some restrictions to ZIP so that the result is actually streamable. If so, there is a legitimate issue whether abandoning ZIP, which is largely deployed through EPUB3 publications, is a acceptable alternative. On the other hand, it is in the interest of the Publishing Community to use a packaging format that can and is natively implemented by browsers.

It was noted that IETF also plans to look at packaging issues (see the IETF WG charter) and is currently considering the W3C Web Packaging Work, too.

The plans for this Interest Group is to (1) find a definite answer on whether ZIP files can be made streamable and (2) collect use cases to be submitted to the Web Packaging work.