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15:50:27 <RRSAgent> logging to https://www.w3.org/2023/02/10-pbgsc-irc
15:50:29 <tzviya> zakim, start the meeting
15:50:29 <Zakim> RRSAgent, make logs Public
15:50:30 <Zakim> Meeting: Publishing Steering Committee
15:50:39 <tzviya> date: 2023-02-10
15:50:42 <tzviya> Chair: Tzviya
15:59:31 <wendyreid> present+
15:59:37 <tzviya> agenda+ EPUB 3.3 PR and associated issues
15:59:37 <tzviya> agenda+ What’s next for the Publishing Activity?
15:59:37 <tzviya> agenda+ Around the Room
15:59:42 <tzviya> present+
15:59:58 <tzviya> regrets+ wolfgang
16:00:10 <tzviya> regrets+ george
16:01:23 <AvneeshSingh> AvneeshSingh has joined #pbgsc
16:01:58 <Bill_Kasdorf> Bill_Kasdorf has joined #pbgsc
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16:02:17 <liisamk> present+
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16:02:46 <Daihei> present+
16:02:48 <Bill_Kasdorf> present+
16:03:08 <tzviya> zakim, take up next
16:03:08 <Zakim> agendum 1 -- EPUB 3.3 PR and associated issues -- taken up [from tzviya]
16:04:10 <Bill_Kasdorf> dauhwe: Our PR was rejected because it had been too long since we did a CR snapshot
16:04:24 <Bill_Kasdorf> ... despite the fact that our changes were extremely minor
16:04:41 <Bill_Kasdorf> ... We had a call the other day and are in better shape than we thought.
16:05:01 <Bill_Kasdorf> ... We need emails from APA and the TAG saying we're oka
16:05:26 <Bill_Kasdorf> ... and then restart the PR process and submit the CR request again.
16:05:42 <Bill_Kasdorf> ... Messy, but we can probably be to PR by May.
16:06:09 <Bill_Kasdorf> wendyreid: We're okay on APA; we need PING and TAG.
16:06:28 <Bill_Kasdorf> tzviya: We should actually be okay on both of those, we have good contacts.
16:06:50 <Bill_Kasdorf> dauwhe: We're already doing most of the things they're asking us to do.
16:08:41 <Bill_Kasdorf> s/oka/okay/
16:09:20 <Bill_Kasdorf> tzviya: we should still be on our way to PR soon. Thanks to everybody for the good work.
16:10:27 <tzviya> zakim, take up next
16:10:27 <Zakim> agendum 2 -- What’s next for the Publishing Activity? -- taken up [from tzviya]
16:10:59 <Bill_Kasdorf> tzviya: We keep having this discussion. What are the issues that keep you up at night?
16:11:10 <Bill_Kasdorf> ... The CG is building up a collection of use cases.
16:11:16 <liisamk> q+
16:11:22 <tzviya> ack liisamk
16:11:31 <Bill_Kasdorf> ... Is there something concrete that will lead to real action in the publishing activity?
16:12:00 <Bill_Kasdorf> liisamk: We had talks mostly about detailed accessibility stuff that people are worried about.
16:12:30 <Bill_Kasdorf> ... Cristina brought up the fact that we gathered a lot of info from TPAC and got a good report from Wendy and Mateus.
16:12:41 <Bill_Kasdorf> ... Have people really spend meaningful time with that?
16:12:54 <Bill_Kasdorf> ... We should surface some of those issues and pursue them.
16:13:38 <Bill_Kasdorf> Daihei: Big discussion of going to ISO with EPUB 3.3.
16:14:05 <Bill_Kasdorf> ... The Japanese publishing industry supports the W3C rec.
16:14:32 <Bill_Kasdorf> ... Even without the Japanese government accepting it, the publishing industry supports the rec.
16:15:09 <wendyreid> q+
16:15:19 <Bill_Kasdorf> ... Maybe we don't need to worry about the ISO standard issue once EPUB 3.3 becomes a rec.
16:15:36 <Bill_Kasdorf> ... In a recent meeting there was no disagreement on this.
16:15:58 <tzviya> q+ to ask if going to  ISO is problematic
16:16:02 <Bill_Kasdorf> ... We are looking at getting other publishing organizations to support this in Japan:
16:16:05 <tzviya> ack wendyreid
16:16:14 <Bill_Kasdorf> ... relying on EPUB 3.3 Recs and not needing ISO.
16:16:43 <Bill_Kasdorf> wendyreid: We had some conversations with Cristina because this is a big issue in the EU.
16:17:13 <Bill_Kasdorf> ... It's good to know Japan is fine with the W3C rec, which we've aligned with the EU EAA requirements.
16:17:14 <tzviya> ack tzviya
16:17:14 <Zakim> tzviya, you wanted to ask if going to  ISO is problematic
16:17:28 <Bill_Kasdorf> ... There's still a question whether we should go to ISO or just stick with rec?
16:17:45 <Bill_Kasdorf> tzviya: Does Japan have a problem with ISO?
16:18:15 <Bill_Kasdorf> Daihei: The issue was that there is no need, but not whether it would be a problem.
16:18:43 <Bill_Kasdorf> ... Currently EPUB 3.2 is going to be released in April as an ISO standard.
16:19:01 <Bill_Kasdorf> ... JIS--Japan Industry Specification--is supposed to align with ISO.
16:19:22 <Bill_Kasdorf> ... That means JIS may make EPUB 3.2 the standard.
16:19:31 <Bill_Kasdorf> ... But this can take years.
16:20:09 <Bill_Kasdorf> ... Practically speaking, there is no synchronization necessary by EPUB 3.3, including JIS.
16:20:49 <Bill_Kasdorf> tzviya: Current W3C process is more speedy than the previous one.
16:21:08 <Bill_Kasdorf> ... If Japan doesn't _require_ synchronization then we can just point to it.
16:21:12 <AvneeshSingh> q+
16:21:14 <tzviya> ack AvneeshSingh
16:21:35 <Bill_Kasdorf> AvneeshSingh: The whole point of going to ISO is to prevent fragementation.
16:22:21 <Bill_Kasdorf> ... The main bottleneck is the political issues re the EAA.
16:22:37 <Bill_Kasdorf> ... Ultimately, the issue is whether there is HARM going to ISO.
16:22:52 <Bill_Kasdorf> ... If there is no harm, then it's good to have all the standards synchronized around the world.
16:23:16 <Bill_Kasdorf> tzviya: The education task force has been working on use cases.
16:23:28 <Bill_Kasdorf> ... I've been working on one on courses with Rick.
16:23:44 <Bill_Kasdorf> ... I would like to see more participation in that CG TF.
16:23:52 <Bill_Kasdorf> ... Any ideas?
16:23:55 <tzviya> s/CG TF/CG
16:24:31 <Bill_Kasdorf> liisamk: I don't have anything specific in mind.
16:25:00 <Bill_Kasdorf> ... We do need to pursue some of the issues, find a small group of people who want to talk about it.
16:25:17 <Bill_Kasdorf> ... There are at least 2 or 3 issues that would work.
16:25:29 <Bill_Kasdorf> tzviya: One big issue is the concept of page numbers and locators.
16:25:56 <Bill_Kasdorf> ... Nellie is doing a recording on this, which will be terrific. We should publicize that.
16:26:02 <wendyreid> q+
16:26:22 <Bill_Kasdorf> ... Locators, annotations, bookmarks, notes, etc. etc. are all needed and have been talked about for a long time.
16:26:33 <Bill_Kasdorf> ... Some of the problem is RS limitations,
16:26:47 <Bill_Kasdorf> ... some that ebooks are not just in browsers;
16:27:12 <Bill_Kasdorf> ... plus the implementations in RSs are variable despite the fact that there is a web spec for annotation.
16:27:27 <Bill_Kasdorf> ... We aren't going to rewrite an existing standard.
16:27:38 <tzviya> ack we
16:27:40 <liisamk> q+
16:28:10 <Bill_Kasdorf> wendyreid: There are a lot of problems, or themes of problems like these that come up.
16:28:29 <Bill_Kasdorf> ... Speaking as an RS, we have our own implementations of annotations etc.
16:28:49 <Bill_Kasdorf> ... There is a movement looking for better interoperability.
16:29:11 <Bill_Kasdorf> ... A big catch is the DRM issue. It's really hard to move books and data around because of DRM:
16:29:26 <Bill_Kasdorf> ... the current frameworks (note plural) we use for DRM.
16:29:52 <Bill_Kasdorf> ... At the NNELS Accessible Publishing Summit, the issue of audiobook accessibility came up.
16:30:11 <Bill_Kasdorf> ... Our audiobooks rec doesn't get into this much.
16:30:31 <Bill_Kasdorf> ... Something like EPUB Accessibility 1.1 is really needed for audiobooks.
16:30:36 <tzviya> ack liisamk
16:30:51 <tzviya> q+ to talk about watermarking
16:31:06 <Bill_Kasdorf> liisamk: Page numbers is a good place to start because there are a lot of people who don't know how to do page numbers,
16:31:29 <Bill_Kasdorf> ... what are best practices re page numbering wrt accessibility, especially when words break over pages.
16:31:59 <Bill_Kasdorf> ... When we say a11y for audiobooks and commercially sold audiobooks not being accessible, what does that mean?
16:32:26 <Bill_Kasdorf> wendyreid: They don't have frontmatter and endmatter or meaningful navigation, for example.
16:32:51 <tzviya> http://kb.daisy.org/publishing/docs/navigation/pagelist.html
16:32:54 <Bill_Kasdorf> ... Image descriptions are not provided. Plus the most common supplemental content is PDFs.
16:33:02 <tzviya> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QIBHLd8SMSs
16:33:23 <tzviya> q?
16:33:28 <tzviya> ack me
16:33:28 <Zakim> tzviya, you wanted to talk about watermarking
16:33:28 <Bill_Kasdorf> Tzviya: here are links from the DAISY KB and from Nellie McKesson on this.
16:33:54 <Bill_Kasdorf> ... Also, re DRM: I wrote up something about this for Wiley a couple of years ago.
16:34:12 <Bill_Kasdorf> ... Got close to getting Wiley to move away from DRM to watermarking.
16:34:30 <Bill_Kasdorf> ... We're unlikely to convert people to alternatives like watermarking.
16:34:54 <Bill_Kasdorf> ... There are plenty of tools for watermarking available. We don't want to support specific commercial tools.
16:35:08 <Bill_Kasdorf> ... We can't do much more that simply advocate.
16:35:15 <Bill_Kasdorf> s/that/than/
16:35:22 <tzviya> q?
16:35:59 <tzviya> zakim, take up next
16:35:59 <Zakim> agendum 3 -- Around the Room -- taken up [from tzviya]
16:36:34 <liisamk> q+
16:36:48 <Bill_Kasdorf> tzviya: Avneesh, Wendy has just asked the CG TF to do a spec for audiobooks a11y.
16:37:08 <tzviya> ack liisamk
16:37:10 <Bill_Kasdorf> ... Let's have a call between you, me, and Wendy on this.
16:37:42 <Bill_Kasdorf> liisamk: Where we have to start with that audiobook a11y conversation is to help people understand the issues.
16:38:02 <Bill_Kasdorf> ... The audiobooks folks see their work being very separate from both print and the ebook.
16:38:13 <Bill_Kasdorf> ... Lots of things in those formats are not included in the audiobooks.
16:38:14 <wendyreid> q+
16:38:39 <Bill_Kasdorf> ... Would anybody actually want the FM, BM, and Index spoken out in an audiobook?
16:39:06 <Bill_Kasdorf> ... The big issue in audiobooks is AI-generated voice, which is not the same as TTS.
16:39:20 <tzviya> ack we
16:39:25 <Bill_Kasdorf> ... Our job is really explaining what is needed and why it is important.
16:39:55 <Bill_Kasdorf> wendyreid: Fundamentally, it's the right thing to do. We don't want to lock people out of experiences. It's about giving users choices.
16:40:21 <Bill_Kasdorf> ... Users will buy the format they want. We are telling a subset of users that we don't care about their needs.
16:40:38 <Bill_Kasdorf> ... Some people use audiobooks because the like them; some people HAVE to use them.
16:40:41 <AvneeshSingh> q+
16:41:00 <Bill_Kasdorf> ... People don't have that different users have different needs and different expectations.
16:41:15 <Bill_Kasdorf> ... Publishers need to be more thoughtful and more flexible.
16:41:38 <Bill_Kasdorf> ... You no longer need to make a human speak an index because AI can do it now.
16:41:47 <tzviya> ack AvneeshSingh
16:41:58 <Bill_Kasdorf> ... Also, people assume there's no audience for things for which there really is.
16:42:21 <Bill_Kasdorf> AvneeshSingh: We have DAISY members who have deep and broad experience in this.
16:43:00 <Bill_Kasdorf> ... Mapping everything in a traditional DAISY book may be overkill; we may need to find a middle ground.
16:43:21 <Bill_Kasdorf> ... At that time, it was old technology. That has changed significantly now.
16:44:06 <Bill_Kasdorf> ... wendyreid: Absolutely. There has to be a middleground between _everything_ has to be included an _nothing_, which is what we have now.
16:44:34 <Bill_Kasdorf> tzviya: This is fundamental. We have long recognized the importance of making things skippable.
16:44:46 <tzviya> q?
16:44:46 <Bill_Kasdorf> ... There shouldn't be a barrier to including things that can be skipped.
16:45:05 <Bill_Kasdorf> ... This is a fertile area for discussion.
16:45:26 <tzviya> rrsagent, make minutes
16:45:28 <RRSAgent> I have made the request to generate https://www.w3.org/2023/02/10-pbgsc-minutes.html tzviya
16:45:44 <Bill_Kasdorf> thanks!
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