Re: [Glossary] Definition of a portable document (and other things...)

[Combined response to both Deborah and Ivan]

>General purpose: yes. But getting into all the details of how they behave outside the realm of Digital Publishing
>(whose focus, I believe, should be Portable Web Documents only): I do not think we can and we should.
>
I can think of numerous types of documents that would like to be Portable Web Documents but have NOTHING to do with DigPub – and I would HOPE that we would want all of those to be included by our definitions.    If our goal is only to define terms for DigPub, then we should be using DigPub specific terms such as a “Portable Digital Publication” and not the more generic “Portable Web Document”.     This is something, you may gather, that I feel VERY strongly about.


>A Portable Web Document is a Web Document whose all constituent Web Resources are Portable.
>
It’s not a great definition, but I can live with that.  However, it now takes us into the definition of portable.

>>>A Web Resource in a Web Document is Portable if an OWP compliant user agent can render its essential content by relying exclusively
>>>on the Web >Resources within the same Web Document
>>- An EPUB that uses CSS such as { font-family: Helvetica } will not qualify since the OWP UA is using a resource not in the document.
>I do not believe that is a problem. The user agent is able to render the essential content of the relevant HTML using a fallback font
>
Then perhaps we have a language problem.   The word exclusively (<http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/exclusively?s=t>) has a very clear and unmistakable meaning that NOTHING ELSE can be used – that means “fallbacks” are not included.    It is that word in that sentence which is the problem.  If you remove exclusively and/or replace it with another word (predominantly?  Mostly? ??) then I believe we are OK.


>We are defining terms that are focused on the particular needs of Digital Publishing.
>
Then they should be specific terms, not general ones.

>As I have pointed out earlier in the thread, if you look at definitions on the W3C alone, you will see that the same word is defined numerous ways >across different working groups and interest groups, and for different specifications and guidelines.
>
Can you please give an example? I am not aware of a case where the same term is defined in a contradictory manner.  Sure, the same term may be defined with more or less specificity or with a particular focus in mind but that’s taking the generic->specific and NOT the reverse (which is what you are implying we should do).

>We cannot define general-purpose terms for all industries that touch on digital publishing;
>all we can do is define the terms as they will be used in our documentats and communications.
>
For terms that already exist, I agree.  However, we are creating NEW TERMS and those terms are NOT specific to DigPub…and that’s the problem.


>I would prefer not to touch to that document now. But, as I said, that is why this conversation is important.
>
Again, then we have a serious disagreement as that document is a big part of the work of this committee and the longer that it remains invalid that more confusion that is caused by anyone wishing to join this effort.   I’ve already most of the work to remove that term, but haven’t pushed it yet.

Leonard

From: Deborah Kaplan
Date: Friday, September 11, 2015 at 10:26 AM
To: Leonard Rosenthol
Cc: Ivan Herman, W3C Digital Publishing IG, Bill McCoy, Olaf Drümmer, Liam Quin, Ralph Swick, Tzviya - Hoboken Siegman
Subject: Re: [Glossary] Definition of a portable document (and other things...)

+1 to Ivan's definition.

Also, Leonard, I believe that Ivan's definition does correctly synthesize yesterday's discussion. A Portable Web Document is not a web document that can only exist in an off-line state, it is a web document which must be able to exist in an off-line state.

Ivan's definition:

 A Portable Web Document is a Web Document whose all constituent Web Resources are Portable.

Encapsulates this perfectly.


While I recognize that this group was formed to focus on the particular needs of Digital Publishing – if the group is going to take on defining globally applicable terms (such as Web Document and Portable Web Document), then those definitions MUST be general purpose as well!   Either that or we should pick terms that are focused strictly on DigPub.

We are defining terms that are focused on the particular needs of Digital Publishing. As I have pointed out earlier in the thread, if you look at definitions on the W3C alone, you will see that the same word is defined numerous ways across different working groups and interest groups, and for different specifications and guidelines. We cannot define general-purpose terms for all industries that touch on digital publishing; all we can do is define the terms as they will be used in our documentats and communications.  This is the standard way to use specific terminology, not just across the W3C, but in all standards bodies. It is impossible to create general-purpose terms which will have the specificity we need, which is precisely why we have a glossary.

Think of this as a namespace issue. We are creating a glossary for the digital publishing namespace.

>• A Portable Web Document is a Web Document whose all constituent Web Resources are Portable.
>
On the surface, these definitions sounds reasonable.  Unfortunately, as soon as you start diving into them, they fall down fairly quickly.   Let me give a simple and easy case (using EPUB as an example of a Portable Web Document):
- An EPUB that uses CSS such as { font-family: Helvetica } will not qualify since the OWP UA is using a resource not in the document.

This would actually cause no problems at all, because of the way "Portable" has been defined for the purposes of this document:

 A Web Resource in a Web Document is Portable if an OWP compliant user agent can render its essential content by relying exclusively on the Web Resources within the same Web Document.

(Emphasis mine.)

Since we have defined portability to mean "essential", and we have defined "essential" as well, we have avoided this minefield. Unless te EPUB is an illustration of what the hell that if the font looks like, in which case, it is only portable if the font is encapsulated in EPUB, because in the case of that EPUB, the Helvetica font family is essential.

Deborah