Publishing in Style with XML

Liam Quin, <liam@w3.org>

The Open Web Platform

www.w3.org/2014/Talks/0401-jatscon-quin/
This talk is about the Open Web Platform, http://webplatform.org/ …
… about how awful the Web is for publishing …
… what we’re doing to improve it …
… and how you get involved.

Open Web Platform and Publishing

Web sites use (X)HTML and CSS …
An ebook is a Web site on a stick. …
EPUB for ebooks/ejournals uses (X)HTML and CSS …
Sharing CSS stylesheets for Web, e-book and print reduces costs, cuts development time, and reduces the required skill set for developers …
The Open Web Environment is becoming the primary application operating environment.

Open Web Platform and Publishing

People read books and journals on tablets, laptops, ’fridges, the Web is everywhere. …
The Web has not been a good platform for sophisticated formatting and typography …
But the Web is becoming what everyone uses …
So we need to fix it.

W3C and Publishing

Series of Workshops…
Digital Publishing Activity…
Digital Publishing Interest Group…
Encouraging publishers and tool vendors to get involved.

W3C and Publishing/Workshops

Workshops on the Open Web Platform and …

ebooks (New york, February 2013) …
Internationalization in digital publishing (Tokyo, June 2013)…
Print publishing and the OWP (Paris, September 2013)…
Annotations and the OWP (San Francisco, April 2014)…

W3C and Publishing/Activity

Digital Publishing Activity created to help W3C staff and Members to focus on the needs of publishers;

Includes both ebooks and print;
Contains an active group (formally what W3C calls an Interest Group) because it does not produce technical specifications;
An Annotations Working Group might come out of the Workshop this month. …
See http://www.w3.org/dpub/

W3C and Publishing/IG

The Digital Publishing Interest Group has published a first draft of Requirements for Latin Text Layout and Pagination; …
Please send feedback on this early draft! …
http://www.w3.org/TR/dpub-latinreq/ …
The group has also published an Annotation use cases document …
http://www.w3.org/TR/dpub-annotation-uc/

W3C and Publishing - involvement

We have increasing involvement from publishers (including Bloomberg, Pearson, Hachette, with others in the process of joining) …
The Digital Publishing Activity goal is for people working on Web standards to be able to listen to publishers and people making tools for publishers: …
It’s for Publishers to have a venue to talk to us.

W3C and Publishing/liaisons

Working with other standards groups …
Includes IDPF, BISG (Book Industry Study Group), as well as ISO, IETF, AIGA, BSI, DAISY, ICC and many more …
List at www.w3.org/2001/11/StdLiaison …
Roles continue to change and grow.

Changes in Workflow

New models of working

XSL-FO Workflow

A “traditional” way from XML to print:

[XML via XSLT to XSL-FO and thence via an FO renderer to Beautiful PDF]

XHTML CSS Workflow

Transform to XHTML and then apply CSS:

[format XML to XHTML with XSLT and thence with CSS to PDF]

Formatting Books

Some Formatting Example Aspects

Formatting a book or journal with CSS…
Pages …
Hyphenation, text, fonts…
Graphcs and tables that float to the top of a column …
Crop, Bleed, Spreads, Binding & Finishing…
Distribution, and Metadata

ToC Markup and Style

div.contents ol li a:after {
  content: " " leader(dotted) " " target-counter(attr(href, url), page);
}

<div class="contents">
  <h1>Table of Contents</h1>
  <ol><li><a href="#preface">Preface</a></li>
      <li><a href="#c1">Chapter One</a></li>
  </ol></div>

Table of Contents

Preface . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Chapter One  . . . . . . . . 11

OpenType Support

The XSL-FO 2 draft has support for enabling/disabling/changing OpenType features such as ligatures, ranging figures, style sets, historical ligatures and more. …
Roughly equivalent support is now in CSS. …
Web browsers and CSS-based print engines now support custom fonts …
More work is needed for mathematics.

So why get involved?

Help us make the Web not suck. …
Helps us make the Web meet your needs. …
Build up in-house expertise and visibility …
Our collective idea of what constitutes a document is changing; knowledge and understanding lead to innovation and success.

Ever Vigilant

Join the Member-only Interest Group…
Comment on the specifications…
Watch for Workshop announcements…
Make sure you have in-house technical knowledge …
Consider participating in CSS, Annotations, other standards work.

Publishing, W3C and the Open Web Platform

Publishing, W3C & the OWP

Open Platform for Eveyone…
Community - Your comments matter…
Consensus - You have a voice…
Process - ensuring we have consensus…
So come and be heard.

Questions, Discussion, Comments

Questions?
Comments?
Discussion?
liam@w3.org
http://www.w3.org/2014/Talks/0401-jatscon-quin/

Photo Credits

All images are from fromoldbooks.org (an image site maintained by the author of this presentation) or by Liam Quin, except the viewport illustration from XSL-FO and the Open Web Platform logo from openwebplatform.org.