Meeting minutes
zhengxu: Let's get started. First meeting of this year! First item on the agenda is Accessibility.
Task force update rounds
Accessibility
avneeshshing: Exploring harmonizing schema.org, ONIX, MARC 21
Documentation
<mateus> s/avneeshsing/avneeshsingh
Mateius: last time we discussed this, Juan said he was interested in leading this work
… that seemed promising
… we could share the historic documentation from the EPUB CG with him
… I'll follow up with him, since he's not here today
… if anyone here today would like to contribute, please volunteer
George: is this MDN?
Mateus: yes
George: it seems that will be one part of the needed documentation but there are other types that are also useful; e.g. best practices
zhengxu: Yes, first part is MDN documentation, and we can follow up regarding best practices. Reach out to Dave and other members of the WG to coordinate.
tzviya: I've been one of the people leading the MDN work. I can help with this transition. I was the liaison with the MDN team. Once we have the timeline, we need to establish a plan and talk to them about how to move forward with this.
mateus: Certainly!
zhengxu: We will reach out to Juan Corona after this meeting.
Ralph: tzviya had mentioned that MDN has changed a lot. There's a collaborative called Open Web Docs to carry forward the work from MDN. Mozilla remains involved and is part of the leadership, but this is new. I'm especially interested in the survivorship of MDN!
EPUB
zhengxu: Next is EPUB TF.... question to EPUB 3 WG members on the call, are there any items that the CG can work on?
<wendyreid> https://
wendyreid: As of now, I don't think there's anything pressing. Off the top of my head, we're doing some work on fixed layout accessibility, and one of the issues is "mixed modalities" (reflowable + fxl in one EPUB)... the Publishing BG is looking for examples that can help with this. Same question can be explored by the CG... content anyone wants to try or has tried? Please share in the BG github.
… anyone is also welcome to email me or the other chairs of the WG
<wendyreid> https://
George: regarding WG's work on EPUB 3.3, it would be great to get the CG's input on that working draft...
zhengxu: Yes, we will send a note to the CG regarding the EPUB 3.3 FPWD
… next is regarding MURATA's proposal
MURATA: The proposal is to explore vertical and horizontal writing modes and giving readers preference to switch. It was developed in IDPF but not blessed by W3C. It is a member submission but it has no official status. Its adoption is not very satisfactory... was adopted by Japanese DAISY readers, but no other members have.... we would like to publish it as a CG report and see what happens
<zhengxu> MURATA: hope can have CG report
MURATA: I added a link to another document to my GH issue... with some interesting findings that recently came up. The first example shows how this idea would apply in a short sentence. Most people require 1-3 minutes in horizontal writing... people have generally more problems with vertical writing... the same is true for non-native Japanese speakers... a mechanism to switch between horizontal and vertical writing would help them
… proposal is to create a task force within the CG
<zhengxu> +1
<Bill_Kasdorf_> +1
<avneeshsingh> +1
<wolfgang> +1
<Naomi> +1
<Garth_> +1
<liisamk> +1 to the task force
mateus: Are there members of the CG who will be contributing?
<Alex_Grover> +1 to the task force
MURATA: Yes, members of the technical DAISY community in Japan. Not yet in CG but are willing to join.
<mattNelsonWaPo> +1 to the task force
liisamk: How to handle the issue of white space between things?
MURATA: Yes, that is an issue, but the mechanism for vertical to horizontal is a different issue.
George: I am very familiar with Thorium, has a lot of features for dyslexic student... personalization, line length, line spacing, and word spacing... that's teamed up with text-to-speech and read aloud that highlights as you go along... these are parts of the reading system's features to help with reading experience...
… are we talking about a reading system feature or feature of the content?
MURATA: it is hard to make CSS stylesheets for vertical writing/horizontal writing... we don't believe this can be automated... we need to manually provide two separate sheets... this approach requires two stylesheets to make the switch, so there are content requirements and requirements on the RS to make the switch
zhengxu: it's difficult to identify exactly which layer would be involved in solving this problem, but the TF can figure out some approach for each layer
MURATA: we plan to propose a set of a11y metadata dedicated to this switching
<Ralph> [+1 to what Zheng just said; the TF conversation can look at the question of "which layer does this belong in?"]
tzviya: Not sure if this is different from what George was saying, but I am wondering if it's in our best interest to produce this as a spec for EPUB or as use cases for the CSS WG and attempt to solve as a CSS issue?
MURATA: very good question... fantasai is the author of the original CSS spec... since this is a mechanism for invoking CSS sheets, it's technically outside the scope of CSS... maybe this would instead be in HTML in WHATWG... this is a long term goal
zhengxu: if we switch from vertical to horizontal mode, there are issues with forms, some unicode differences too for the character orientations
MURATA: in some cases, automatic conversions are nearly unreadable... and in such cases the reader can switch back to the mode they can read
<Ralph> ['Alternate Style Tags" was an IDPF document and is part of the Member Submission from IDPF to W3C ]
avneeshsingh: the issue is with delay and implementation, whether it goes to CSS or EPUB WGs... but that's a long-term thing... in the short term, it's good to start this in the CG and come up with use cases... and MURATA's timeline includes these different pieces
<Ralph> "This module defines a pattern for tagging alternate style sheets using a microformat. It can be used to define standardized classes that can be hooked into the browser UI. Sample use cases include horizontal-vertical layout switches in Japanese ebook readers; automatically selecting high-contrast styles; and other accessibility concerns."
avneeshsingh: right now this is a Japanese requirement... and if we need anything to go in the WG, we need more traction... getting this started int he CG will help provide traction
<George> +1 to create task force
<Ralph> ^^ from the Introduction to the Alternate Style Tags document
zhengxu: Ok, a new TF is born!
+1 to horizontal/vertical TF
<Bill_Kasdorf_> +1
GH issues
zhengxu: let's dig into the GH issues... i'll share my screen... how should we address some of the technical issues raised?
<Ralph> Phonetic Markup Proposal #5
<tzviya> +1 to mateus
<wendyreid> +1
mateus: my 2.5 cents is anyone proposing TFs on GH should be encouraged to join the call and make a case for their proposals... then we can discuss the requirements like a lead, participants, use cases, etc.
<Ralph> +1 to expecting proposers to attend a meeting to explain their proposal and attempt to garner interest in participating
zhengxu: Yes, like MURATA-san did with his proposal, that is a good model going forward
George: looking through the various issues, the one talking about EPUB for Education and that whole idea of should there be features for textbooks... that's a whole ton of work, and if we want to promote that, we might want to create a thread on the discussion list and see how much interest there is...
… in other words, try to develop support for it so that people would be willing to invest time, because that would be a ton of work
<Ralph> EPUB for Education and Digital Textbooks #3
Action: Ralph get the CG mailing lists merged
zhengxu: there's another item I wanted to bring up, which is the participation of Asian and Pacific community. This timezone is difficult for Japan, Australia, and others...
… any ideas for handling this?
wolfgang: one idea is to model the BG's split calls, two meetings per month, one for Americas/EU and one for Americas/Asia... otherwise we won't find a time of the day that works for everyone
zhengxu: how do you communicate between meetings?
wolfgang: mainly the chairs coordinate, at least some members can overlap on both calls... like Pacific/East coast participants in North America
liisamk: we handle two meetings a month, one mid-day and one evening Eastern time... so we can approximate EU/Asia... we do have repeated agenda and some region-specific items... there is a lot of offline coordination to ensure translations, follow-up documents, knowledge sync, etc.... the BG is unique because a lot of people with business interests are cautious about talking in a wide group...
… so part of it is guiding the group along to where they want to go... hoping to do a little more asynchronous work with GH, but we've also heard from some folks in the group that people are not entirely comfortable with that style of writing... but the CG has more expertise that could use async work to bridge communities
mateus: maybe we send out an email to the CG lists to see what the community would prefer
zhengxu: Yes, we can send out an email to see who would participate... it would be good to get more attendance from people who haven't been able to contribute... i will send out an email, including PBG... and MURATA can also help spread the word
MURATA: will do!