EPUB3 Working Group Telco — Minutes
Date: 2020-10-01
See also the Agenda and the IRC Log
Attendees
Present: Shinya Takami (高見真也), Toshiaki Koike, Matthew Chan, Brady Duga, Masakazu Kitahara, Wendy Reid, Tzviya Siegman, Teenya Franklin, Ben Schroeter, Kyrce Swenson, Marisa DeMeglio, Zheng Xu (Jeff), Daihei Shiohama (塩濱大平), Yoichiro Nagao
Regrets: Jun’Ichi Yoshii, Matt Garrish
Guests:
Chair: Shinya Takami (高見真也), Wendy Reid
Scribe(s): Dave Cramer, Wendy Reid
Content:
Wendy Reid: let’s get started
… welcome, everyone
… we have one new member, Matt
Matthew Chan: I’m Matt Chan, cross-media assistant at House of Anansi Press
… I do ebook production
… converting from print layouts to ebooks
Wendy Reid: there was a resolution in last week’s meeting; a proposal to approve Matt G’s changes to the doc structure
… https://github.com/w3c/publ-epub-revision/pull/1330/commits
Wendy Reid: https://github.com/w3c/publ-epub-revision/pull/1330
Wendy Reid: you have until the end of tomorrow to comment
1. Media Types
Wendy Reid: we are getting ready to publish our First Public Working Draft
… one of the first steps in the W3C rec process
… but we do want to include a few things in the FPWD
… we started a discussion about media types
… the EPUB survey mentioned some people wanted new media types for images and audio
… Ogg was mentioned
… but the HTML doesn’t specify media types; there is just what the browsers supports
Garth Conboy: overall, not having our own list is really appealing
… but I don’t know how to do that with fallbacks
… things have to fall back to a core media type
… I wonder what Matt G. thinks
Brady Duga: (performs John Cage’s 4:33)
Dave Cramer: I’m wary of adding new media types, partly because of fallback, and the load on reading systems
… and the risk of incompatibilities
… bad user experience
… I think there’s some value in EPUB being a bit more conservative than the web
Brady Duga: this feels like this is an issue for reading systems
… but publishers want things to work magically
… should we expand this question to more implementors?
… Google would take anything and transcode
… we take EPUB on the serving side, but make some changes before presenting to the reader
… can we poll reading systems?
Wendy Reid: there might be issues when people download a random epub
Garth Conboy: I agree with dave, this might get us in trouble
… but Avneesh mentioned an audio format that was optimized for speech
… if there’s an a11y advantage, that might make the case more compelling
… we also decided to leave well enough alone with video formats
Wendy Reid: ogg and opus aren’t the same thing, but are connected
Zheng Xu (Jeff): one issue is how much the platform supports–android, iOS, etc
… and we might need to require a fallback from the publisher
… it’s not our layer
Wendy Reid: opus/ogg is well-supported today, but are there formats that will be well-supported in two years?
Brady Duga: we have two different paths
… one is not to worry about media types and open the floodgates
… the other is that there are some very specific things that we want to allow
… then we need a specific proposal
… or maybe we need a process for proposing new media types
… I don’t know how much opus/ogg support is in iOS
Wendy Reid: I like that
… we’re not finished with this discussion; it’s not a FPWD issue
2. handling issues going forward
Wendy Reid: https://github.com/w3c/publ-epub-revision/issues
Wendy Reid: we’re using the same repo as EPUB 3.2, and EPUB 3.1, and EPUB 3.01, and…
… we did inherit some issues
… there are 88 open issues
… we should probably address some of these
… so we’ll probably try to tackle a handful of issues each meeting
… if there issues you want addressed,
… please comment on the issues and raise them to the chairs
… two issues we want to talk about today are…
2.1. #1224
Wendy Reid: https://github.com/w3c/publ-epub-revision/issues/1224
Wendy Reid: this is about referencing the SSV document, the structural semantics vocabulary
Tzviya Siegman: the EPUB SSV is a list of acceptable values for epub:type
… lots of people don’t know this document exists, including Rush bassist Geddy Lee
… this was never a formal part of EPUB spec
… so the question is how to reference it
… some stuff in the SSV doc came from edupub or other never-finalized “standards”
… and there are lots of draft items, etc.
… needs some cleanup
Wendy Reid: Matt says that SSV is considered an external registry
Tzviya Siegman: we now have the option of creating registries
Kyrce Swenson: I have questions about this doc
… how would we ask questions about this?
… in GitHub?
Wendy Reid: if there are specific questions put them in GitHub
Kyrce Swenson: more questions like what’s deprecated, what is the replacement, why things are there
… some of the semantics don’t quite make sense
Tzviya Siegman: some of them were deprecated because they came from specs that weren’t finalized
… a lot of the draft terms are really old
… and they don’t have the best names
… feel free to file github issues, or we could discuss offline
Wendy Reid: there’s stuff from edupub, comics, etc
… if we go through the registry process we could clean it up or refine it
… the argument from Matt is that this specific issue is about the reference we make to the document
… we want to pull this from IDPF into our documents
… Matt’s OK with closing the issue, if you have objections speak now!
2.2. MathML as core media type
Wendy Reid: https://github.com/w3c/publ-epub-revision/issues/846
Wendy Reid: can we close this issue?
Brady Duga: matt wanted to make more work for me and you’re saying no? I agree.
… unless someone in the real world wants this, I think it’s good to close it
Wendy Reid: there was no call in the survey for standalone MathML docs
Kyrce Swenson: I want to make sure I understand standalone–an entire blob of it?
Wendy Reid: yes, it would be a standalone MathML file
… you can still put MathML into XHTML docs
Kyrce Swenson: I’ve seen close to that but not that
… this makes sense
Shinya Takami (高見真也): I can ask our Japanese participants if they have anything else for today’s meeting
Toshiaki Koike: he is also prepared for the two topics we discussed today, so we don’t have a new topic
3. F2F meeting
Wendy Reid: we’ll release the F2F agenda soon
… will be Oct 22-23
… at this time on Oct 22 (8PM Eastern Time US) but a 3.5 hour session
… on the 23rd will be 10AM Eastern Time
… one of the topics will be EPUB 3 FXL accessibility
… I’ve asked for help from webfolk
… if you know anyone with info on this topic, please contact me
… we will be sending a proper agenda
… any questions?
… if not, we can end a bit early. Thanks!
… we’ll see you next friday