W3C

– DRAFT –
Publishing Steering Committee

10 June 2022

Attendees

Present
Avneesh Singh, Bill Kasdorf, Cristina Mussinelli, Dave Cramer, George Kerscher, Liisa McCloy-Kelley, Ralph Swick, Tzviya Siegman, Wendy Reid, Wolfgang Schindler, Zheng Xu
Regrets
-
Chair
Tzviya
Scribe
Ralph, wendyreid

Meeting minutes

previous 8 April

Quick updates around the table

Dave: EPUB 3 is in CR!!

Wendy: Yay!

Dave: we're working on security & privacy stuff now, after an academic paper was published
… we invited the author of that paper to our WG meeting last week

Tzviya: it was really interesting
… any announcement for WAI? just a blog post?

Wendy: I fixed the tags; adding the ebook tag

Ralph: congratulations to the WG; the testing work is a huge contribution

Ivan: and it's not yet done; we need more testers to both write and run tests
… there's documentation on how to do this
… and also a slack channel

<wendyreid> https://github.com/w3c/epub-tests

Liisa: the BG has been struggling to find time to meet
… the co-chairs have been traveling a lot
… and trying to figure out what to communicate w.r.t. EAA
… we're trying to get together the education community thing we had talked about
… slow going at the moment
… we are trying to get a meeting before the end of June

Tzviya: maybe we can try a joint meeting in the BG timeslot
… could be on use cases

Liisa: I'd love to have a joint WG meeting to talk about FXL
… piracy is also big on people's minds; we're hearing that people are spending a lot of time on that

Wendy: piracy is a hard problem

Liisa: there could be some idea sharing; there are things that can be done

Tzviya: sounds like a joint meeting with the CG

<Ralph> +1

Liisa: I'll reach out to the CG and see if we can schedule a joint session

Zheng: the CG had a joint meeting with the WG
… the topic naturally narrowed down to education and annotation
… we also discussed an approach to how the CG can work with the WG to provide more use cases
… and start to discover more practice
… the CG has a lot of work to do
… we look forward to a joint meeting with the BG
… a lot of the CG is interested in FXL
… feel free to reach out to us via the CG mailing list
… we encourage peopel to throw questions in there
… in terms of piracy, I have some ideas there too

Wolfgang: we started a TF lead by Paul Belfante to collect use cases for education
… from people interested in education publishing

Wendy: a joint meeting with the FXL TF might be productive
… we're trying to work on best practice documentation
… it would be very helpful to know what best practice ideas would you like documented

Outcomes from the 8 June WG/CG joint meeting

Discussion/Planning for "Web Digital Publishing futures" TPAC session

Wendy's initial proposal

Wendy: we don't yet have a plan for what work needs to be done after the current WG ends
… I thought it would be a good idea to hold something at TPAC to find out what people from the publishing industry need in the next generation of standards
… I'm being intentionally vague; the idea is to come with problems and not solutions
… focus on what problems people have now, what are their requirements for a digital publishing standard
… involve publishers from all parts of publishing, including the various parts of trade publishing
… include tool vendors, retailers, ...
… make sure we include everybody and brainstorm together
… whatever we do next should be cognizant of the various parts of the industry
… talk about what people hope to get from the next generation of standards
… and propose a charter that can get multi-stakeholder support

<Zakim> tzviya, you wanted to talk brainstorm

Wendy: we should be sending invitations very soon

Tzviya: we're envisioning a whiteboarding session in an accessible way
… thinking back to how IDPF did things when we came to the close of specification work
… what problems do we have with this spec?
… a brain dump; we won't be able to work on everything everyone suggests
… we want to get an idea of what people want though we may only work on 1 or 2 of them
… we're trying to get the idea of what people's problems are and what we can come to consensus to work on

Bill: I love the idea
… to get an appropriate cross-section of people, I'm very glad we're considering hybrid
… it's an excellent recruiting opportunity

Tzviya: the invitations cannot be "so we want you to join W3C"

Bill: no; I'd draft specific people to join the conversation
… I have a lot of contacts with people in various parts of publishing who might come to the discussion
… I can identify good people in a variety of sectors

Ralph: +1 to make this as broad

<liisamk> +1 to the idea and to a broad conversation

<wolfgang> +1 to Wendy's idea to elicit more feedback from the whole range of the publishing business

<Zakim> tzviya, you wanted to ask about some logistics

Tzviya: are we thinking 2 hours, 4 hours, 40 people? 100 People?

Wendy: 8 hours is too much; I'm thinking 2-4 hours
… it depends on the number of people and how many might be remote
… remote participation will add time
… maybe an introductory whiteboarding session where people dump everything they can think of, then a break, then group the ideas into concepts
… there will be a lot of ideas that we'll have to distill

Liisa: I'd like to find a way to make the break useful to the remote participants
… so it's not biased to the in-person attendees

<Ralph> very strong +1 to engaging the remote participants

Tzviya: maybe we can do Zoom breakouts?

Wendy: I'm happy to facilitate and will lean on colleagues to help

Wolfgang: how will we deal with the timezone difference?

<Bill_Kasdorf> One of the people I would ask to join is in Estonia.

Wolfgang: it's nine hours difference between Vancouver and Europe

Avneesh: I fear putting all eggs in one basket and the uncertainties of what might happen in September
… Vancouver is challenging w.r.t. timezones
… if Bill has an idea of who to contact already, let's start the public engagement sessions before TPAC so we're not completely dependent on TPAC
… that would also help solve the timezone issues
… one or two calls starting in July
… collect ideas and start to shape them before TPAC

<Ralph> +1 to Avneesh as well

Cristina: it makes sense to duplicate sessions and define some well-structured topics that can be done twice
… similar to a PBG meeting
… allow people to participate in a more comfortable way
… define in the Zoom room(s) specific topic to discuss

Tzviya: good points that we're putting too much value on the f2f meeting
… people get excited about brainstorming together
… but I like Avneesh' suggestion to start before TPAC
… maybe Wendy and I can start a document on what we're looking for
… and maybe hold one session in July at an Asia-friendly time
… perhaps another in August before TPAC

<Zakim> tzviya, you wanted to talk about next steps

Cristina: I was thinking about areas of discussion, not necessarily specific topics

Liisa: we could also use some of the PBG time this summer to start the conversation and get people thinking about gathering ideas

George: I like Avneesh' idea; could we have rotating chairs of the smaller meetings?
… different people attract others with different ideas
… not one person running all of them

Bill: the preliminary meetings are a great idea, but should not be solely for the participants of the current groups
… most of the people I would invite are from other communities
… and not necessarily candidates to join any of these groups

Tzviya: Wendy and I will write a draft
… the sessions will be open to anyone

ACTION: Tzviya and Wendy write a draft TPAC publishing brainstorming session

Ralph: For event planning, we need some kind of estimate of what to ask for TPAC planning
… we might ask for no more than 2-2hour sessions for 20-25 people, if it's WG people plus others, the largest room is for 50 people
… if you want me to put in a bid for the largest room, I can try

Tzviya: if we're going to have two 1-1.5 hour sessions with a break inbetween, it would be nice to have that in one room
… hard to know how many might attend
… if it's the same day as the EPUB WG meeting, then I'd expect all of them to attend

Bill: the kinds of people I'd invite would be mostly remote

Avneesh: +1

Ralph: I was thinking that some of the people we'd like to participate will already be there for other TPAC meetings

Wendy: the same space we've asked for the WG is probably sufficient
… maybe Tuesday morning as the WG is meeting in the afternoon
… that would accomodate Europe

EPUB 3 Titles for use as references

EPUB 3 titles for use in marketing and testing

George: I was in a call on Monday talking about K12 and we wanted to point to some example EPUB documents
… someone suggested some titles

<dauwhe> https://github.com/IDPF/epub3-samples

George: I've had the experience of large ebooks that crash some reading systems
… I was thinking about books that stress reading systems, with a range of content
… the industry needs such a place where they can find content they can use for testing, demonstration, and testing

Ivan: the EPUB tests are not the right thing for this

George: right; this is a CG thing where we build out a set of books people can use

Tzviya: perhaps take a look at the old epub sample library and update the files

Wendy: what parameters are we trying to test? large books? what's "large"? thousands of chapters in individual files or in one file?
… write the test cases; are videos remote or embedded? audio remote or embedded?

George: I have an immediate need
… I think we could work with standardebook.org
… make sure their book is up to snuff and push fixes
… if we want to do something separate in the CG, I think that would be interesting

Dave: there is the EPUB3 sample repository ^^
… with existing infrastructure
… it probably has an old epubcheck

Zheng: I like the idea to have more EPUBs for demonstration, testing, and marketing
… I'd like to find more examples to demonstrate my platform
… I like the idea
… we should create something everyone can use

George: can the CG set up the infrastructure? that would be great
… we can mark things as to when they are updated
… and let people contribute

Tzviya: who runs standardebook.org?

Wendy: Alex Cabal

Ralph: I'm happy to assist in creating the backing store for this

Bill: it's a good idea; there are two use cases
… 1. testing
… 2. good examples of EPUB
… we're talking about both, right?

George: and a 3rd; interesting content that will turn people on

Bill: yeah; "did you know you could do this with EPUB?"

Tzviya: something good for the CG to take up and anyone can contribute content
… the books in the repository should be EPUB 3.1 and should be easy to update
… there's a lot of demonstration of MathML that we might not want to show off yet

Next meeting

Tzviya: I can't join you on 8 July

Liisa: how about 15 July?

Tzviya, Wendy: the 15th works better for me

ACTION: Ralph (re)schedule the July SC meeting for 15 July

Ivan: likely regrets

[adjourned]

Summary of action items

  1. Tzviya and Wendy write a draft TPAC publishing brainstorming session
  2. Ralph (re)schedule the July SC meeting for 15 July
Minutes manually created (not a transcript), formatted by scribe.perl version 185 (Thu Dec 2 18:51:55 2021 UTC).