Meeting minutes
Summary of joint meeting with the Interactive Media CG
Wendy: we met with this
newly-formed CG, the Publishing CG, and some of the Synchronized Media
CG
… Adam is leading the charge in the IM CG
… they're starting with use cases
… the core idea is a markup language to link together
media files to stream sequentially or jointly
… there's interest in interactive videos; e.g. choose
your adventure, educational scenarios
… it's meant for media in general; EPUB, SMIL, ... are
part of this ecosystem
… it's still up in the air as to what they're aiming
at
… it's an interesting idea
… TBD how much we might get involved
Tzviya: sounds like there's
a lot of existing technology
… I hope they're considering what exists already
Wendy: yes; there is
awareness of TTML, SMIL, etc.
… once they have more use cases it should be clear
what is happening
<wendyreid> Minutes from the
meeting: https://
Ralph: is there a Publishing issue that this group might be enticed to consider?
Wendy: there's some talk
about interactive fiction, which could be cool for future iterations
… but it's too early to know what they might want to
achieve
Ralph: maybe we have a use case that we would want to toss on their pile and see how much interest generates
Wendy: we don't yet have a technical problem that we can see them addressing
Liisa: back in 2012 there
was conversation about building something in EPUB with some JS and FXL
that had interactivity
… PRH did some children's books with animation
… we built out some of this in EPUB, only one reader
could deal with it
… 10 years later no one has implemented it due to
concerns over JS
… and the limited local storage in reading systems for
being able to keep things like responses to quizzes
… people are reluctant to go back to that until there
is more interest in the market
… publishers would like to see something come from the
other direction and solve technical challenges
Tzviya: the concept of
enhanced ebooks is separate
… I'm trying to understand what this CG is actually
after?
<Zakim> tzviya, you wanted to ask if this id RPG
Tzviya: what are the high demands from the marketplace?
Mateus: my publishing
background has a lot of connections with education technology
… there are many serious hardware constraints,
boundaries around scripting, what compromised we're able to make on
privacy and security
… for publishers that control their own browser-based
platform, we've been able so far to achieve what we want
… we can use EPUB as a shelf for our textbooks;
browsers do what we want
… what we're missing is not the publishing spec but a
standard for the interactive content
… not how it gets integrated into the EPUB; we have
technologies for that
… but how do we build all our interactive widgets in a
standardized way
… analytics, ...
… we use Pub Manifest to establish an internal
structure
Mateus: maybe we can see what happens at this fringe and document how to do it
<wendyreid> +1
<tzviya> +1
Mateus: Norton is deep into this world and are working on providing more interactivity to students in a low-stake way
Tzviya: using something like
the Manifest to make it possible to do "web publications"; making
complex content available to users in a browser interface
… this is both necessary for education and not yet
standardized
… we can think about this as a possible future
direction
<Ralph> +1
Wendy: there's definitely
some energy in a number of places on building out data structures for
content creators and user agents
… linear content, multiple pathways, layered video
(fg/bg)
… this is an area we might want to lean on a bit more
… digital publications are probably heading there;
looking more at bringing multiple media together on their particular
technology stack
Takeaways from Conference day
Liisa: scheduling conference
days is always a challenge
… it took a long time firming up presenters, making
sure we have enough content
… the agenda came out late but we ended up with more
content than we could handle
… it was well-received
… the comics and manga in Europe presentation was
appreciated
… Daihei and Beth's presentation comparing Europe,
Japan, and the US was great
… Daihei's team did an amazing job of taking the
content from the first session and the previously-submitted content
and translating it to Japanese
… we were able to use the video of Luc's presentation
… Daihei's team transcribed the whole video
… I was able to present Japanese slides!
… it worked out well, though a little crowded for time
… there were a lot of questions from the Japanese
participants on how some of the manga content with violence and sex
was handled in other parts of the world
… I was exhausted by the end of the day
… the plan was to do this in April with a focus on
education
… it would be good if we can get things out earlier
Daihei: there were 17
attendees for the North American session
… many people were praising the information
… a couple of key takeaways:
… it is getting to be two major issues that we need to
tackle:
… piracy, especially in Japan, is getting overwhelming
… @@ is consuming 30% of the digital publishing market
in Japan
… $4.1B in 2021, likely $5B in 2022
… 80% is digital manga
… 12% from literary / non-fiction
… the report I got from the industry organizations is
estimating almost $4.1B in piracy
… so the piracy figure, which is just manga, shows
there is lots of room for growth
… digital publishing based on EPUB is a profitable
business and gaining audience
… piracy is also a business
… the issue is how to deal with piracy
… another issue is, outside EPUB there are other
formats: a major one is WebTunes
… vertical scrolling comics is huge
… coming from Korea but expanding world-wide
… we may need to look into vertical scrolling, not
only in EPUB but also in other web-based formats
… movies, TV drama, music, all going to streaming; we
may need to look into more streaming services for digital pubs
… maybe streaming can help with the piracy issue
… people asked me if EPUB is a suitable format for
streaming
… we need to look into these
… in April we can look into educational publishing
<Zakim> tzviya, you wanted to make a few suggestions
Tzviya: if we do these too
often we'll get lower attendance
… people are tired of on-line conferences
… maybe do them once a quarter
… since the whole idea is to get community engagement,
I suggest reducing the number of speakers for the 90 minutes
… maybe at most 3 speakers; allow a maximum of 60
minutes for the speakers
… in another successful style the organizer does a
dry-run beforehand and prepares some questions to get the audience
started
… a presenter can address a question as "I've heard
people ask ..." and that gets the ball rolling to get engagement
Daihei: I appreciate that
advice
… a number of people came back to me and said that
they wanted to talk more than the 90 minutes
… they wanted more time to ask questions
… it's a matter of what is satisfactory to the
audience
… and whether the discussion can support the business
… for the NA/Japan session I did not hear any
complaints about the length of the meeting
Tzviya: just make sure to
leave more time for questions
… many people can't stay later
Liisa: I appreciate the
advice for April
… this time we were in a tough spot in not having
confirmation from some of the speakers even up to a day before
… and one of the speakers had to drop out at the last
minute
Tzviya: just trying to give constructive feedback
Liisa: should we try for
April or wait to May?
… right now quarterly puts us on odd dates
Tzviya: OK to push it off; no one says we do not have to have a conference day in April
Wendy: the chairs get to
pick the schedule that works for you
… pick what works for you and the presenters; be kind
to yourselves
Liisa: we did our best and it worked out better than we'd worried the day before
Daihei: we'd like to make
this work for the members and Publishing@W3C
… people are paying attention and want to hear more
… but it does require a lot of coordination
… my folk transcribed and translated the video in a
few hours
… I think we did a good job
<ralph> incredible!
Liisa: after education, the
only other request for a topic we have is NFTs
… we have people with some very interesting use cases
in Europe
Tzviya: it's important to entertain things that are in scope for W3C
<zheng_xu_> I like to hear about NFT
Tzviya: I'm pretty certain that there would be objections to Rec-track work on NFTs
Ralph: just because a topic might be out of scope for W3C Rec track work shouldn't stop the BG from organizing a session to learn about it
Daihei: it's worthwhile to share information about other things that are challenges to publishers
Tzviya: there's a lot of confusion about what NFTs are; I'd suggest starting with an explanation of that
Update on BG/CG joint meeting
Mateus: we've been
communicating by email; it's difficult to find a time and date that
works
… we need to get an agenda in place
… I'll be optimistic and say that mid-March may work
for all of us
Wolfgang: Zheng and I have
started to develop a template for use cases
… we've written an explainer
Wolfgang: the template has a
recommended format
… to be precise about the roles, what position you
have in the ecosystem
… be specific and not have global statements about the
goal
… which role in publishing requires what functionality
and what is meant by that
… e.g. people say "I want a big battery for my
electric car" but really they want to be able to drive a long
distance
<tzviya> https://
Tzviya: maybe move the sample text to the top and the directions below so people who don't need the directions can just fill-in the text
Liisa: this is really good
for forward-thinking and trying to come up with something that doesn't
currently exist
… how do we deal with things that are currently issues
or that people don't know are currently issues?
… e.g. dealing with complicated tables and controlling
column widths but not realizing that there is a fine line of what
you can control across various reading systems that won't be chewed
up in production systems
Tzviya: you've explained an
implementation
… "as a reader on a mobile reader, I would like to be
able to view large tables"
… you know the problems in implementation; you have
additional information about how RS behave
… you can add notes to that effect
… .but the user description is "I like to see the full
width of the table"
… or "I want to be able to view the table"
… we're just defining the problem in the use case and
not the solution
… we're writing about the specifications and not
necessarily the implementations
Zheng: the use cases are not
only for future needs
… we can create use cases for current needs
… the format can work for both
… try it out
… I just found out some interesting things about media
overlay; I might try that first
Tzviya: it's mean to be a low barrier for documentation
<tzviya> https://
Heads-up on TPAC survey
Ralph: please have
conversations in your groups and give us your best guesses as to
whether you might have critical mass for an in-person component along
with remote participation
… we need to make a go/no-go decision the first week
of April
… we know you won't have perfect information; please
give us the best you can
… we're unlikely to be able to accommodate CGs but if
there's a lot of interest in in-person I'd still like to know
[adjourned]