W3C

Publishing Steering Committee

13 September 2024

Attendees

Present
avneesh, Bill_Kasdorf, cristina, daihei, Gautier, george, graham, ivan, leslie, liisamk, Ralph, shinya, tzviya, tzviya8, wendyreid, wolfgang
Regrets
Rick
Chair
graham
Scribe
Ralph, wendyreid

Meeting minutes

<tzviya8> my new email tzviya@w3.org

previous: 2024-08-09

TPAC Updates

<wendyreid> https://www.w3.org/events/meetings/12a090ec-425d-4163-b14b-2fca1bb19fa4/

Wendy: we have time planned in TPAC for a full-day meeting
… the plan is to start the day by discussing whether to make substantial changes to EPUB and implications on charter updates
… decision on web tunes and scrolled content
… annotations
… discussion on legislation and a11y
… ADA updates, including talking about any remaining work we may want to do as a community
… audio a11y and TTS
… limited AOB time, but planning for a discussion on next steps for publishing an EPUB 3.3
… and moving to ISO
… or not

Graham: a fairly full day with some meaty topics
… unfortunately I'm not able to attend

George: Janina from APA WG asked for my availability
… APA WG wants to meet Tuesday morning with a topic on fixed layout and concerns they may have

Wendy: I think we have a scheduled time with APA in the calendar
… I think on Friday

<wendyreid> https://www.w3.org/events/meetings/35b794a5-23c7-47f1-adeb-09cc1537c402/

Wendy: yes, Friday at 1630; joint meeting

Ivan: that's in the official agenda as well

Wendy: great that Janina is reaching out to George but please ask them also to reach out to Shinya and me

George: sure

Liisa: should we encourage more people to come to TPAC?

Wendy: yes
… I can send something with the agenda

Gautier: re: APA, I've been participating a bit in that group
… I feel a lack of understanding [there] on what is in EPUB
… beyond layout I think it's important that we use the joint meeting to provide them a better understanding and view of what is EPUB

Graham: the fundamental nature of EPUB or very specific questions?

Gautier: remind folk of the basics of EPUB
… I've heard concerns about not being able to fix reading order
… outside of the EPUB WG sometimes people don't realize what is EPUB

<ivan> There is an updated overview: https://www.w3.org/TR/epub-overview-33/

Gautier: APA in particular should have a good knowledge of this standard

Graham: that touches on outreach

Tzviya: this is helpful feedback, Gautier
… it's also confusing as people in this group have worked with APA for years
… it's a good opportunity to go and do an overview
… it's not surprising they have questions about fixed layout

Graham: there's a mix of questions
… is this going to be a joint meeting of the Publishing Activity folk and APA or specific people?

Wendy: officially it's a joint meeting of the Publishing Maintenance WG and APA
… but we can extend the invitation to PubCG and PubBG participants who wish to attend

Graham: is there a process for doing a structured refresher on EPUB in that meeting or would you propose a separate meeting to do that outreach to help with the understanding?

Wendy: good question; we need to know what is not being understood

Graham: so you plan to use the meeting to explore what they need and deliver that later?

Wendy: [nods]

Ivan: we took some time to refresh the EPUB documents
… this may be enough to give a high-level view of what EPUB is

<ivan> https://www.w3.org/TR/epub-overview-33/

Ivan: perhaps Gautier could point APA to that

Avneesh: it is important to know who are the individuals who need to know more about EPUB
… Janina and others have been so engaged in the EPUB world for a while, so it's a little surprising that there are some who need basic information

New documents

Avneesh: 2.0 of the publishing metadata
… and a complete rewrite of the guide
… forwarded widely
… I suggest you all look at the document and provide feedback

<AvneeshSingh> Principles: https://w3c.github.io/publ-a11y/UX-Guide-Metadata/2.0/principles/

Avneesh: if we have to adjust our path, now is the best time to tell us

<AvneeshSingh> ONIX metadata techniques: https://w3c.github.io/publ-a11y/UX-Guide-Metadata/2.0/techniques/onix-metadata/index.html

Avneesh: ^^ Principles

<AvneeshSingh> EPUB accessibility metadata techniques: https://w3c.github.io/publ-a11y/UX-Guide-Metadata/2.0/techniques/epub-metadata/index.html

<AvneeshSingh> Issue tracker: https://github.com/w3c/publ-a11y/issues

Avneesh: and ^^ issue tracker
… Rick Johnson and some others have volunteered to produce implementations

Graham: I was peripherally involved in some of the work on EPUB-A
… it's a little closer to standardization

Liisa: the question that came up about whether we are going to have guidance on PDF or not ...
… are we really going to develop guidance on PDF?
… or are we going to pull that back to provide guidance elsewhere?

Avneesh: we have an action item to invite some of the PDF people to an upcoming call
… the general mindset of the group is that we should include PDF if we can
… we can explore the feasibility with the PDF folk in an upcoming call

<Bill_Kasdorf> Plus ONIX, of course!

Graham: it would be moderately useful to have the various relevant features of PDF displayed in the same way as the same features in EPUB, for consistency

Avneesh: we're exploring whether to include PDF; get a feel of the temperature of the room

George: I believe ONIX has an ability to present information about PDF documents
… the internal metadata in a PDF about a11y needs the experts from that group to inform us what can be done
… we need an expert to be able to come to more informed decisions

Graham: if there's a feature that is in both PDF and EPUB, ONIX uses the same code
… where they implement an equivalent a11y feature we don't separate the codes
… for unique features where we don't know of them, we do need an expert
… guidelines to get consistency on display of equivalent items would be useful

Avneesh: should we do it or should we let others do it?
… any strong feelings? e.g. about a PDF discussion within the A11Y TF

Liisa: I don't think it's wrong for us to try to help consumers to get consistent information

<Bill_Kasdorf> I think Duff has been in the loop, correct?

Liisa: if nothing else it may help them to understand why they might want to buy something other than a PDF
… and to help get better support in the industry for things that will help the workflow
… alt text in PDF is currently very challenging

Avneesh: thank you; we will continue to explore in this direction and hopefully have guidance for PDF also

George: the Vocabulary group updated their crosswalk with ONIX yesterday
… one of the things we need is to get that crosswalk in front of the library MARC people
… I'm trying to find those people

Avneesh: I can forward the announcement to those people

Graham: any pointers to the earlier versions of the crosswalk should update their pointers

<Bill_Kasdorf> To George: Please send me the link to that update as well.

Suggestion to change Publishing Business Group to a Community Group

Graham: [see Ivan's email]

Publishing BG becoming a CG?Publishing BG becoming a CG?

Ralph: [provides pointer to email]
… I mentioned this in the July meeting, and somewhat in passing
… I apologise for the surprise
… Let me give some background about business groups and why we created them
… and why it suits publishing

<Graham> Ralph - some mention of the community group proposal in the July meeting but not widely documented. Ralph gives an overview of community and the group types

Ralph: years ago when CGs were designed, it was clear that the proponents for CGs wanted them to be completely open
… other activities said they would use them, but wanted forums where people have some buy-in or stake to be there
… some will have more or less, but everyone has a stake
… because of the nature of W3C, the way we chose to have people indicate their stake with formal participation was a fee
… the fee varied by size of entity, from a single person to larger companies
… some of the reasoning for fees based on organization size is to offset the cost of providing team resources to business groups
… CGs do not officially get team support or resources, team members can participate if they want to but not support
… BGs can request support
… in return for filtering out those who just want to absorb information, and team support, there's a fee
… the logistics of BGs has not proven effective for us
… the reason I raised this in July, does this community, do you feel that there is a filtering function that is helping the BG or hurting the BG?
… are there people who ought to be participating that cannot
… barred by the fee
… or conversely, are there people who would interfere with the functioning of the BG if anyone can join?
… there was a comment in the email thread about CGs being always technical
… CGs can have a charter, that charter states what the role and purpose of the group is
… there is no reason why the BG's discussions and content cannot be done in the CG context
… the reason I raised it, was to reduce the administrative effort on W3C's part
… I ask you to consider if the admin is supporting the goals of the BG or detracting from it

liisamk: There is only one other BG, they seem inactive
… is there an interest from W3C to eliminate BGs altogether?

Ralph: We're exploring whether BGs serve the purpose we envisioned, if they don't, what do we do?
… if they do, are their needs met by our current BG processes
… last year there were proposals for 4 new BGs, the team evaluated them and met with the proposers, and made the mutual agreement that they didn't need that framework
… we haven't closed any, we haven't opened new ones

ivan: They operate as CGs

Ralph: I need to check on where they ended up, as CGs or otherwise

cristina: Two more comments on the background
… this started with the merger of W3C and IDPF
… W3C could be for strategic advice, the idea of a business group, the people who have the knowledge of the business

cristina: The idea of a BG vs a CG, it's people with knowledge of the business, not the understanding of community
… I think it's important who have interest, and pay, but may not have the money for full membership.
… publishing is made up of a lot of small, medium, large enterprises, but we need to people with a real interest
… people in the CG don't always have a strong business interest
… they join for technology interest
… or to share in the community aspect
… my third point, my impression in the recent time, discussions in the BG, SC, WG, we closed the main goal we had, EPUB and metadata
… what is missing is a clear idea of what to do next
… where do we need to discuss? we first need an idea of what we want to discuss
… we move people around, things have been scattered, if we need to make a choice we need to do it now
… W3C has a new CEO, new Board, we need to re-assess

Graham: Many of the initial functions intended for the BG have ended up hre
… what to determine is what the BG should do

cristina: We've discussed this as chairs of the BG too
… too many discussion in too many places
… who is where, there is a lot of overlap in people
… SC started to organize the chairs, but now we're a different group

tzviya8: Cristina makes a lot of excellent points
… we need to figure out what we're doing
… more important than how
… when we worked in IDPF, it was one big group

<Zakim> tzviya, you wanted to respond

tzviya8: one example, Rick looks at things from both business and tech
… he is a useful person to have
… we look at Rick in the WG because we need business expertise
… a large part of what has been missing is this shared experience
… the CG is floundering without BG experience
… if we move away from BG, we should merge with the existing CG and combine the business and the technical
… we used to have it, come up with the reason to do something, and then the technical solution

liisamk: That was the board, we'd come up with a problem and Markus would fix it

tzviya8: Japanese publishers have interests too, Daihei should cover that

Bill_Kasdorf: In the interest of not taking a position on the solution, relating to Ralph's comment on people having a stake in the game
… one of our big problems is the dues structure
… the aspect that is the biggest obstacle, paying on the basis of their size

<wolfgang> +1 to Bill!

Bill_Kasdorf: there's a technical group within the organizations that would contribute to standards, that's an obstacle, it's a subset of the company that wants the stake
… the dues structure forces the whole company

Graham: We've seen this issue in our org too, which is why we have a flat fee structure

liisamk: Part of the reason for wanting a BG was an onramp to transfer what they paid IDPF to join W3C
… it was a small increase
… if we remove this, we take that away
… it's either free or more money than they can afford

Ralph: Thanks Cristina, Liisa, Tzviya for the background
… we do have parallel conversations, and the background
… that was what I hoped for by characterizing the business needs of a community
… we remind the engineers, the WGs, to pay attention to the customers, the users

<Graham> I'm going to allow 3 more minutes on this so we can ensure 5 mins for Liisa's AOB. The remainder of this subject can be transferred to e0mail and then discussed at the next meeting

Ralph: the Publishing BG was meant to be the place where we ask the business needs of the industry
… the technical work shouldn't be disconnected from business need
… all of these conversations are crucial to what we do
… how do we partition the conversations effectively
… the SC is the place where these conversations happen, but should be happening in the BG
… if there are too many places with all the same people, where are the others
… if there's technical folk in Elsevier who want to participate in technical discussions, are they showing any presence at all in places like the CG?
… if there are people we feel should be participating, in any of the venues, are they there?
… If its the same core people who are driving the conversations in all those places, maybe we don't need 4 places

Bill_Kasdorf: I was very pleased to see Wendy's agenda for TPAC, it covers topics I want to see addressed!

Daihei: In Japan the ebook business has increased steadily, it's significant
… the majority of publisher income
… EPUB based ecosystem is crucial
… the POV of management is to be concerned about where the discussion is happening, or its focus on growth
… the Japanese Big 4, they are all full members
… the industry org is a member
… the key people are represented
… their expectation is to seriously discuss our concerns and what is happening
… what creates better business
… to contribute to the growth of digital publishing
… each company only sends their executives, or those in charge of digital publishing
… since Ivan's email, I've exchanged emails with them, their concern is diluting the discussion with too many people
… dedicated to serious discussion

[Daihei's point about senior level people is very much one of the things we had in mind when designing Business Groups]

cristina: We need to consider why we only have some people and some orgs, part of this is the time committment

<tzviya8> +1

cristina: if we don't understand the reasoning for participation, people don't know why to join
… there are lots of companies in W3C, do we have these problems in other sectors?

Graham: There's a lot of discussion to be had, we'll continue this in email

AOB

Liisa: I want to remind us that we need to support Epubcheck

liisamk: We need to keep talking about continue support for EPUBCheck, someone please fix so it supports TDM

Liisa: and we need to have epubcheck support TDM
… currently epubcheck gives an Unrecognized Prefix error

Tzviya: please open an issue on epubcheck

Liisa: I'll do that but we need the support, TDM is coming soon

Avneesh: I hadn't heard this request

Tzviya: it should be an easy fix
… if you can send an example file that would help

Liisa: I can do that

Minutes manually created (not a transcript), formatted by scribe.perl version 229 (Thu Jul 25 08:38:54 2024 UTC).