Digital Publishing Interest Group Teleconference

Garth: "Any objections to approving minutes?"
...: "minutes approved"

Locator section review in PWP doc.

Garth: "Depending on DPUB-PWP document, that will inform our agenda items for next week, which will determine if we want to have a meeting. There is MLK day in the US which is observed. Leonard or Nick - is there a link to paste into the IRC to take us through the work on the rewrite?"

<ivan> for info, the current locator text is at: http://w3c.github.io/dpub-pwp/#locator-pwp-func

Leonard: "I wish I could say those things are the case. I was looking at it yesterday, and again this morning. To me, the parts that I think are the most... I just am not sure exactly what to do. The whole area of locators, the idea of canonical, how it relates to the manifest. I think it's important, not sure if we're able to take it any further. I feel that it's in a half state, as it goes into a fairly technical solution, and how the manifest relates to the locators... The biggest part is that it's putting new requirements to the user agents, which is something we've shied away from. We aren't sure what our manifest looks like. To be honest, I wanted to put that in front of everyone. We shouldn't throw it out. We need to raise the topic to the community at large..."

...: "But we don't really have a good solution, and it sits between sections. There is a paragraph about security - we know we'll need a model, but we don't know what it will look like. In much the same way, I want to do something with locators, I don't want to shrink it down into 'nothing'"

Nick: "I think we can simplify things. I'll volunteer to rewrite the section very succinctly"

Garth: "It serves us well not to be terribly detailed for now. I would much appreciate a simplification draft. Then maybe you two can take a homework assignment."

Ivan: "The way I look at this document is that it is one of the main input document into the final working group charter. If we look at it from that point of view, i can agree with what nick said. The main sections need to summarize the technical issues that we need to solve. That can be relatively short but having them written down is important. That said, there are some technical notes there that would be a pity to lose or throw away. What happeend already with manifest retrieval, is to put them in the annotations - these are brain dumps, and a working-group would take a more systematic way to address. Is that workable?

<leonardr> +1 to moving to appendix

Garth: "Yes, noting it's a thought experiment isn't a bad idea,"

Dave: "I want to make sure we have the pertinent issues written down in the issues. I don't want to go too far into simplifying and dismissing this stuff. This document is also our elivator pitch to the world in some sense. We need to be very clear about what we need and are aiming to do."

Garth: "Yes, the elevator pitch idea is a good idea."

Dave: "I did some writing before christmas, and I hope to continue."

Leonard: "Nothing from me, if we follow the suggestion of moving the guts into an appendix, then i think we're getting there."

Nick: "Didn't want to boil too much."

Leonard: "Manifest with respect to locators - so far, every thing that we've gone through in the handling of locators has required the use of a generic manifest. But no body has proposed a mechanism that didn't require a manifest."

<leonardr> @nick - will do!

Hadrien: "We're also having this discussion at Readium. And we have found that you can do locators without manifests work well."

Garth: "Yes, we want to avoid pushing technical solutions until we are a working group. Appreciate the comments."

<dauwhe> https://github.com/readium/readium-2

(Link to Readium REPO with notes about locators)

Garth: "Updates to the draft document should happen this week between Leonard and Nick about Locators. Any additional comments?"

Ivan: "Other things in the document, or just locators?"
... "It would be useful if we could make links between this document and existing use cases. The various technical use-cases, we should point to the other documents. That is something that should happen to make the document more complete. I haven't tried to do it as we should wait until we're more happy with the document, but worth noting."
...: "More administrative, if we start the whole working group charter, which depends on the merger of the two organizations, it would be good if the two documents are publishes officially either as a note (which we could make a 2nd version of) and a proper draft, which will give more weight as the chartering comes. A charter makes a very strong reference to these two documents."

Garth: "Thank you Ivan. Anyone else?

Dave: "I don't think we're close to publishing them as notes. As drafts - great, but it just doesn't feel like it's ready as a note. Especially since we're wrestling with fundamental issues."

<ivan> I am fine with a draft, but that should happen

WG and other charters

<ivan> draft draft WG charter: https://w3c.github.io/dpubwg-charter/

Garth: "Going back to the agenda, it sounds like next week we might have updates on the locators front, could be additional discussion. Let me take a moment to talk about where we are from a merger perspective. It looks like the merger of the IDPF and W3C is moving forward. Could be as early as this month. We have three charters that are under development. The one that is most relevant to this group is the DPUB working group charter, but will eventually be driven by the digital publishing business group. There will still be a group in charge of the epub standards. I would encourage this group to contribute to all three groups."

...: "If there are comments on the charter, any issues in github would be appreciated. We could do that now."

Leonard: "Quick question - what track is currently planned for - assuming the transition of the epub specification is approved for transition to the W3C, as part of combining, what track would it go under?"

Garth: "It would not be on a formal standards track. It's what the IDPF would call an 'informational document' so any new version of the document would be done by W3C"

Ivan: "The current plan is that epub 3.1 will be submitted as a member submission. The main reason to do that is separate the difference of IDFP and W3C. From then on, the 3.1 documents will be handled by the community group. New releases might be issued, errata, etc. Epub 3.1 is not planned to be part of the epub 3.1 recommendations. The charter itself, includes an entry - which is epub 4 - which should be a version that is as close to epub 3 as possible (although not necessarily 100% compatible) which would be a packaged version of web publication, so very close to epub3. That would be under recommendation track."

Garth: "Epub 4 would be out of the working group, not the community group."

Leonard: "How does the document, which isn't bound by W3C, how does it work when it comes in?"
... "What I don't understand is how do we take that new document and use it in a working group."

<leonardr> https://www.w3.org/2015/Process-20150901/#Submission

Ivan: "I don't fully know the legal issues, but when you submit a member submission, then that means you release a certain level of IPR. I don't know the exact legal terms. But, whomever cosigns the member submission notes that it can be used in a group. So it wouldn't be submitted as the IDPF, but Bill would be reaching out to the contributors, so that the member submission will be free of IPR issues if it is reused. That is why we're going through all the submission info."

Garth: "One of the merge issues is resolving all the IP issues around epub 3.1. That process is being managed by the IDPF. There's a process."

Garth: "As I mentioned, the various charters are in process. The business group won't get put together until the business group is complete. We could make a decision, given next week, that we want to skip next week. Or, we could go ahead and discuss more."

-1 (i will not be here)

<clapierre> -1

<astearns> -1

Garth: "Ok, so we'll skip next week. That will give Leonard and Nick time, and the merger will have time to move as well."
... "Homework: please get comments on all the 3 charters. "

ivan: "I tried to be more specific on the Working Group Charter comments. It is the most complex document. What we have now in the charter is coming out of discussion that Tzviya, Garth and I had, so I would really think from a technical point of view, if you could give us comments, that would be very good."

<Garth_> Garth will post links to the three charters to the mailing list

Ivan: "There are questions about what recommendation track we want to use, etc. I have listed the two questionable things - the API documents, I am not 100% sure that should be there or not. I would certainly want discussion/comments. There are technical items. At some point in time, what is labeled as the scope section, that has to be written properly. I would probably review some of the text that dave put into the PWP document, which is excellent, but any help on this would be appreciated."

...: "We should try to make remotely realistic statements as to how long things will take. We have to have some agreement on this. I am not expecting answers today, but for the discussion we can have on the mailing list."

Leonard: "Did you say what the timeframe for finishing these documents?"

Ivan: "The business group and the CG charters should be finalized within a few weeks. As soon as the merger happens, these two groups should start. But I think that is relatively simple. I'm usually pessimistic, so several months. It might be 2 weeks. We'll see. The final agreement is that we should have a charter ready to send early April."

Leonard: "Early april means we'll have  tzviya back..."

Ivan: "It would be a welcome gift for her."

Leonard: "Do we have any plan or process for resolution of non-consensus on development of the charter?"
... "There are things in the charter that are not necessarily consistent with the documents we've produced. Because the charter is focused on the merger, whereas our documents are more general purpose and flexible. I'm concerned as to how we resolve the collisions."

Garth: "What describes the merger between the IDFP and the W3C, which is driven by the business group - and the management coming into the W3C. As agreed, there is a fairly close linkage, but I'm hoping we don't all agree to fight, and that we can work through the issues, and I look at the charter as a high-level document. So really the question of how 'epuby' the document gets is part of things."

Ivan: "W3C is a consensus based organization. In this case, it is important to realize that at the end of the process, this goes to a member vote. If you see that the members have a strong objection to a charter, we'll know. My goal is to find a consensus and not get to a 'lets agree to disagree point' Whether we can get to there or not, I'm not sure, but I want to find a consensus that makes everybody happy. I am a technical person, and don't claim to have a feeling for the business side, which is why the business group is involved."

...: "My goal is to get to a consensus, which might mean we go a little bit later."

Hadrien: "Which input documents can be referenced in the charter? At an EPUB level and Readium we've had lots of discussions and documents that would be relevant."

Garth: "Do you have an example?"

Hadrien: "There are a number of docs and prototypes written by dave and myself that are very close to what we're discussing here. Even though they are not W3C documents."

Garth: "I would need to do research. Ivan?"

Ivan: "if a document is reflecting a community or consensus then yes it can be added. The reason I haven't put in so far any document from BFF is that there have been several repos and work. It would be good if there was a summary document than referring to 5 or 6 different things."

Hadrien: " For readium 2, that's easier, we have one repo. "

Garth: "I think it would be great to have some of the Readium work."

Dave: "I want to encourage anyone interested in these sort of questions, look at the publishing group draft. It's one of the great unknowns. The W3C process, due to author... The publishing group steering committee will act like the board. So go ask questions. "

Leonard: "I take exception to what was discussed. It would be important for that work to show up in the charter."
... "The charter should be as general as possible, it doesn't list specific technologies. We have a goal, and we have to figure out what the technical solution is to the group."

Ivan: "It depends on whom you ask - these can be AC reps, members, ..."

Ivan: "It's not crystal clear what you say. This charter will be questioned by people who want to have a 'working solution' before going to a chartering group. Saying 'this is what we want to do , but we're not sure how' there will be strong pushback"

Ivan: "An input document doesn't mean 'this is what we have to do' but it means we need to look at it."

leonard: "Documents listed in the charter, are not required by the charter?"

Ivan: "When we say 'these are the technologies that we want to standardize' these are the concrete in the charter. When we develop technical work for web-publication, we will take into account what happens in readium, but that doesn't mean we must use whatever is done in readium, but we might be inspired by that."

Leonard: "So i want to not list or include documents we might want to remove later on."
...: "Given that we as a community have not make technical decisions, we shouldn't link documents that have technical solutions."

Garth: "I'm looking at the input document of the drafty charter. The heading is: "These documents MAY be considered as direct input to this document." I don't view it as a commitment, it's a big 'may' i don't see we need to discuss this."

Leonard: "Nothing, Once you pointed out it was a may, it's less of an issue."

Garth: "Since we have 5 minutes left, lets remind everyone - we want more input."

Garth: "I made a commitment to re-send out to the WG mailing list, the links to the charters. We will skip next monday and meet the monday following. Hopefully in the interim, Nick and Leonard can do some pitching and appendixing. Are there other things that we need to discuss in 3 minutes?
... "Adjourned"