DPUB IG Telco, 2015-11-09: DPUB-ARIA Update, CSS WG examples, POM

See minutes online for a more detailed record of the discussions. (The headers below link into the relevant sections of the minutes.)

DPUB ARIA Update

The latest version of the DPUB ARIA Module Working Draft was published in July; a new version should come soon. Tzviya Siegman summarized some of the new terms that have been added since: colophon, credits, epigraph, errata. There were also discussion on noteref, glossref, etc.

There were also discussions on the ARIA mailing list on how to handle roles on links. EPUB has been doing that ('noteref') and it is very useful for Assistive Technologies. It is not clear, at this moment, whether @role should be used for that, or whether, for example, @rel is more appropriate. This is a decision the ARIA WG should make.

Another issue is the long term planning of the evolution of the vocabulary vs. the vocabulary currently available in EPUB (the latter is much larger). At the moment the plan is to back port the ARIA terms into EPUB and, at the same time, shrink the EPUB terms. A golden middle will have to be found. (There are some tensions with the ARIA group about how many terms we should use there.)

Overall, the IG is in favor of publishing a new WD (although the final decision is the ARIA WG's). There is also a call for testimony from organizations that use, or plan to use, this vocabulary.

CSS WG Examples

The discussion with the CSS WG at TPAC (see the minutes of the relevant TPAC session) revealed that a more systematic set of use cases should be provided, including screen dumps, etc, to show what should be rendered and how this should be achieved through CSS. Florian (who is also part of the CSS WG) gave additional rationale for this.

There were some discussion on how to do that in practice, and what the priority for those should be. At the moment, two use cases came to the fore for a first round: table alignment (e.g., aligning table cells on, say, the fraction sign of numbers) and inline grid management for CJK languages. A wiki page will be set up to collect these and there is a general call for members of the IG (and anybody else…) to provide as many cases as possible.

Publication format for the POM CG

The Publication Object Model Community Group has been set up by Daniel Glazman, following a discussion at TPAC. That community group needs examples for various publication format beyond EPUB and PDF to have enough input to be able to define the POM API in a general way. This may include Manga and Comic formats, and also KF8. It is important to provide such information to the POM CG. (Information on Kindle’s KF8 has already been provided after the meeting.)