12:04:33 RRSAgent has joined #pmwg 12:04:37 logging to https://www.w3.org/2025/05/15-pmwg-irc 12:04:37 RRSAgent, make logs Public 12:04:38 Meeting: Publishing Maintenance Working Group 12:05:10 ivan has changed the topic to: Meeting Details 2025-05-15: https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-pm-wg/2025May/0023.html 12:05:11 Chair: wendy 12:05:11 Meeting: Publishing Maintenance Working Group Telco 12:05:11 Agenda: https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-pm-wg/2025May/0023.html 12:33:26 DaleRogers has joined #pmwg 12:59:31 toshiakikoike has joined #pmwg 12:59:34 duga has joined #pmwg 12:59:38 MasakazuKitahara has joined #pmwg 12:59:43 present+ 12:59:46 present+ 12:59:51 present+ 12:59:52 wendyreid has joined #pmwg 12:59:55 present_ 13:00:00 present+ 13:00:08 AvneeshSingh has joined #pmwg 13:00:10 s/present_// 13:00:18 present+ DaleRogers 13:00:26 gautierchomel has joined #pmwg 13:00:29 present+ 13:00:40 present+ 13:00:57 present+ gautierchomel 13:00:58 rdeltour has joined #pmwg 13:01:02 present+ wendyreid 13:01:15 mgarrish has joined #pmwg 13:01:55 CharlesL has joined #pmwg 13:01:58 present+ george 13:02:09 present+ seuneu 13:02:18 present+ rdeltour 13:02:33 present+ 13:02:34 George has joined #pmwg 13:02:56 present+ mgarrish 13:03:07 present+ 13:03:27 present+ 13:03:47 SeuNeu has joined #pmwg 13:04:09 scribe+ SeuNeu 13:04:13 present+ 13:04:38 George has joined #pmwg 13:04:41 present+ 13:04:42 Topic: HTML in EPUB - https://github.com/w3c/epub-specs/issues/2715 13:05:58 shiestyle has joined #pmwg 13:06:03 present+ eric_hellman 13:06:32 q+ 13:06:35 ack duga 13:06:56 present+ 13:07:39 We were discussing adding HTML to EPUB online and via email, let's continue the discussion here 13:07:44 George has joined #pmwg 13:07:59 s/We/wendyreid: We/ 13:08:06 duga: I don't know about adding a flag about HTML in the file 13:08:31 gluejar has joined #pmwg 13:08:36 q+ 13:08:40 ack George 13:08:49 I'm not sure what this would do, it is something we've tried before 13:09:38 s/I'm/... I'm/ 13:09:40 George: with Rick's suggestion about HTML vs XHTML, adding a flag in the OPF would avoid that 13:10:00 q+ 13:10:03 ack CharlesL 13:10:33 q+ 13:10:38 q+ 13:10:42 ack wendyreid 13:10:53 Charles: It would be nice from a consumer point of view — you'd like to know if a book would work on your reading system 13:11:00 q- 13:11:27 wendyreid: it would be nice from a vendor perspective to differentiate books, like fxl vs reflowable, 13:11:58 … it might be hard to communicate to a consumer the difference between XHTML and HTML 13:12:22 q+ 13:12:27 q+ 13:12:28 ack duga 13:12:28 …we could say something like "might not work on some reading systems" 13:13:09 duga: agree it might be difficult to exchange, and a flag would be redundant with the mime types in the manifest 13:13:34 … publishers may not be accurate about the flag, they haven't been accurate with similar things before 13:13:39 ack CharlesL 13:14:06 CharlesL: The cost of us adding the flag is negligable 13:14:14 q+ 13:14:38 … a reading system could then make a patch that could utilize it to tell users if a book would work on their system 13:15:05 "quick patch" = ~3 years, I think 13:15:06 …plus a flag could be used to get data about how many publishers are using HTML 13:15:07 q+ 13:15:11 ack gautierchomel 13:15:38 q+ 13:15:46 gautierchomel: Its not that the publisher will use this information, 13:15:50 Hadrien has joined #pmwg 13:15:59 ack wendyreid 13:15:59 present+ 13:15:59 …what about a file with mixed HTML and XHTML content? 13:16:16 q+ 13:16:44 wendyreid: publishing moves slow, if we release this change tomorrow, we won't see HTML epubs in the pipe line 13:17:05 …they will be some people who try it right away, some people are already doing this internally 13:17:19 …it will take time for us to see this, but that's good 13:17:19 q+ 13:17:31 …we will see people and platforms experiment with it 13:17:47 …what does HTML offer the XHTML doesn't? 13:18:04 q+ 13:18:06 ack mgarrish 13:18:08 …this change is more about longevity 13:18:27 mgarrish: We don't need to get into the solutions right now 13:18:39 …it is important to find out what the issues are across the board 13:18:39 q+ 13:18:53 q- 13:18:53 …vendors who don't want HTML will simply not accept the content 13:19:22 …vendors will be the barrier, this will take a long time 13:19:53 …we have problems that already exist, I'd like to go back and fix those 13:20:19 ack gluejar 13:20:26 …it may take time, 10 + years, before the tools and all people adapt for HTML 13:21:18 eric_hellman: I've maintain the software that turns html files into epubs at project guttenberg 13:21:30 …we regenerate our files every month 13:21:48 …we are able to do this for a lot of files without much intervention 13:22:07 …we have changed our preferred format from XHTML to HTML5 13:22:37 …my software deprecates that to EPUB3 and EPUB2 13:22:51 qq+ 13:22:55 …we give our books away for free and have no control over the platforms 13:23:17 …there is a demand for EPUB2 it works better 13:23:51 …the difficulty is, we have millions of users and thousands of different reading devices 13:24:01 …we are conservative about what we allow 13:24:25 …we don't want HTML5 in the EPUBs because we will get problem reports 13:24:52 …we have no staff to deal with this, so we strip out new things when we make the EPUB files 13:25:11 …we control the distribution and production, but no control over the reading platforms 13:25:26 q? 13:25:47 …things that should work across devices but don't, are a source of problems 13:26:24 …for instance ADE doesn't respect CSS pagebreak in EPUB 3, but did for EPUB2 13:26:37 …we have to watch out for any potential problems 13:27:02 …if people are getting errors with files using HTML in the EPUB, we will stop using it 13:27:16 …I would love to be able to put HTML5 in an EPUB 13:27:40 …my concern is the rate at which reading systems will be able to render the HTML files 13:28:11 …a lot of people experienced with the XHTML files made mistakes producing HTML5 files 13:28:50 …I fear that a lot of y'all may underestimate the failures that occur when you try to render HTML5 with something used to seeing HTML4 13:29:18 …I was surprised with the failure modes we found looking over our 75k+ flies and all that the reading systems do 13:29:32 …this group should think about how to promote adoption of new features 13:29:45 …especially features that could ruin the experience for the reader 13:29:57 …just having a flag will not be enough 13:30:16 …I'd like to see an HTML5 only format that could be the bright new thing 13:30:22 …with appropriate branding 13:30:35 …and some level of javascript, sound rendering 13:30:35 CharlesL1 has joined #pmwg 13:31:07 …a new brand could be promoted by the reading systems, "we can now do this" 13:31:39 …not doing the branding has lead to slow adoption of the features in EPUB3 13:32:06 …if you really want to have new features adopted, you need to give them some gold stars they can use to sell their reading systems 13:32:11 ack wendyreid 13:32:11 wendyreid, you wanted to react to gluejar 13:32:36 wendyreid: This is incredibly valuable information, we've been talking about EPUB3 adoption 13:32:52 …what we've found is that EPUB3 is well adopted 13:33:07 …but we don't have any examples except ADE 13:33:21 …because ADE is no long being developed 13:33:38 …you have lots of information that would be really helpful for us 13:33:56 q+ 13:33:56 ack CharlesL 13:33:58 …can that be shared? It would answer questions for us 13:34:11 q+ 13:34:55 CharlesL: Thinking down the line 10 years, now reading systems only support HTML, they can use a flag to identify XHTML files that won't work anymore 13:34:56 ack DaleRogers 13:35:39 DaleRogers: If I'm creating an Ebook, and I want it to be in KDP, I need to go to their docs to find our what they support 13:36:05 …as a content creator I always have to start with the output and design my files to be compatible with the outpt 13:36:15 …as part of this group I put on a different hat 13:36:34 …I hear what people are saying about some reading systems being up to speed and some not 13:37:17 ack ivan 13:37:34 …do we always have to check what standard a reading system supports? 13:38:24 ivan: CSS features update almost once a week, we expect reading systems to follow this 13:38:45 …some do and some don't, and then the rendering can go wrong 13:39:00 …particularly a problem for accessibility 13:39:15 …HTML5 is a similar problem 13:39:36 …in EPUB3.3 we worked on a testing suite for the purpose of the W3C process 13:39:49 …this suite was used to test reading systems 13:40:01 …the results are publicly available 13:40:28 …if we put more care into this testing suite it could become useful beyond the W3C process 13:40:50 q+ 13:40:54 ack shiestyle 13:40:56 …rendering systems may or may not choose to share the results of the testing suite 13:40:58 q+ 13:41:34 shiestyle: As a publisher we do not provide HTML based EPUB 13:42:16 …since we have to provide encrypted epubs to some vendors we can control versions 13:42:21 q? 13:42:48 q+ 13:42:49 ack duga 13:42:54 …it might be safer for us to expand EPUB generation to HTML for our complicated Japanese titles 13:43:34 duga: I develop reading systems, I would think it was bullsh*t to have to go through every line of code 13:44:28 …where I made decisions about whether a file is renderable 13:44:53 …and I'll be right where I started rendering Ebooks after all that work 13:45:21 …we let other people determine our formats 13:45:37 …and they don't care about XHTML 13:46:04 …at some point, someone will delete the XHTML syntax 13:46:22 …and we will be left with a lot of content built on XHTML 13:46:41 ack wendyreid 13:47:21 wendyreid: a special challenge with EPUB is that we are reliant on standards built with a different industry than ours 13:47:30 …that industry moves a lot faster than ours 13:48:00 …there is an argument we could make that we need to fence off a version that addresses our specific needs 13:48:38 … we are trapped, when tools and browsers evolve, we won't be able to respond 13:48:55 …lots of platforms are on the web or use browser engines 13:49:19 …it is possible that XHTML spec can be deleted and EPUBS will break 13:49:42 …this is a scary change, but important for the long term usability of the format 13:49:43 q+ 13:49:50 …testing is a good thing to raise 13:50:07 …I have a test book with HTML files, I will upload it so reading systems can use it 13:50:15 ack George 13:50:28 …we also have the survey and we can use that to find challenges we aren't seeing 13:50:40 https://github.com/w3c/pm-wg/pull/21/files --> survey text proposal 13:51:04 GeorgeL: it is clear to me from surveys that people who are complaining are using EPUB2, 13:51:24 …it is time for people to update their systems to EPUB3 13:51:48 ack AvneeshSingh 13:51:52 …and get them to use something better than ADE which is bad for accessiblitiy 13:52:37 AveneeshSingh: EPUB is a business format 13:53:16 …release 3.4 with traditional tech, and 3.4+ with HTML and see how it is adopted 13:53:40 …the browser people aren't listening to us, we need to take a step and allow the world to evolve 13:54:44 wendyreid: we could talk about this forever, we don't have the information we need 13:55:03 …we don't know what the challenges and the issues will be 13:55:09 https://github.com/w3c/pm-wg/pull/21/files 13:55:17 …we can't move forward until we know more 13:55:42 …everyone should read over the survey and get feedback from the industry 13:56:23 CharlesL1 has left #pmwg 13:56:25 …until we have that information we will keep circling on the topic 13:57:02 rrsagent, draft minutes 13:57:03 I have made the request to generate https://www.w3.org/2025/05/15-pmwg-minutes.html ivan 13:57:22 DaleRogers has left #pmwg 13:57:44 rrsagent, bye 13:57:44 I see no action items