EPUB 3 Working Group Telco — Minutes

Date: 2020-11-06

See also the Agenda and the IRC Log

Attendees

Present: Ivan Herman, Masakazu Kitahara, Ben Schroeter, Laura Brady, Matthew Chan, Wendy Reid, Toshiaki Koike, Avneesh Singh, Zheng Xu (徐征), George Kerscher, Laurent Le Meur, Brady Duga, charles, Garth Conboy, Matt Garrish, Juliette McShane, Gregorio Pellegrino, Charles LaPierre, Dave Cramer, Bill Kasdorf, Hadrien Gardeur, Teenya Franklin

Regrets:

Guests:

Chair: Wendy Reid

Scribe(s): Dave Cramer, Wendy Reid

Content:

Wendy Reid: let’s get started

1. F2F review

Wendy Reid: I thought the meetings were productive, and we covered all of our topics
… and we came to conclusions on our XML issue
… we had volunteers for testing
… and we’ll have a meeting next week about FXLA11Y
… we’ve got a lot of work to do

2. Series of editorial changes on the content spec

Wendy Reid: mgarrish has been REALLY busy revising the documents
… there are lots of PRs
… lots of cleaning up of errors

Matt Garrish: we’ve done some more shuffling, now that we don’t have five separate docs
… we can find a more natural place for stuff
… we merged a big one on the vocabs
… there’s stuff that was used in packages, content docs, and MO
… so Ivan suggested a general overview
… so now we reference an appendix
… and epub:type is an appendix
… it simplifies the cross-linking in the docs
… and there was the FXL section which got sliced up in 3.0.1
… the structural semantics vocab was an outlier
… now we don’t have plans for extensive revisions for SSV, so it makes sense to put it in the core
… and there have been lots of editorial cleanup

Ivan Herman: two more things
… nav doc is now a top-level section; it used to be hidden in content docs; it’s more readable
… and we had three or four different conformance sections, and now they have been unified

George Kerscher: the a11y spec is inside or outside of the core

Matt Garrish: outside

Wendy Reid: there are still some satellite specs

Avneesh Singh: I was not aware of an FXL call ; I thought it was for EPUB a11y revision

Wendy Reid: any other questions about the reorg/editorial revisions?
… most of them are merged so you can see them in the draft
… you can also look at the previews and diffs in open or closed PRs

Ivan Herman: mgarrish did an amazing job on this

Charles LaPierre: +1 Matt, way to go!

Garth Conboy: +1

Ivan Herman: it’s much more readable

Matt Garrish: it’s fun to clean up the wreckage of history :)

Wendy Reid: some of these PRs were purely editorial
… some of these PRs have addressed open issues

3. DTDs

Wendy Reid: we had resolutions at the F2F, and further discussions on github
… and came to a happy place

Matt Garrish: https://github.com/w3c/epub-specs/pull/1368

Matt Garrish: where we ended up was…
… we put in an allowance for a specific set of external identifiers that we have put in an appendix
… we have SVG and MathML that are allowed to be used in content docs or in separate files
… and we made a restriction against external entities in the internal DTD subset
… so it prevents some security issues but eases authoring
… so we’ll no longer force people to remove SVG DTDs from tool-generated files
… I’m hoping this is it :)

Ivan Herman: tech comment
… in fact, the changes are such that
… makes possible something that I’m not sure we really use
… I can define as part of an internal entity something that won’t go out to the network
… I’m not sure if this feature is in use
… formal comment
… there was a formal resolution on the previous version; this PR slightly changes that
… can we get a formal resolution to merge, and also close a bunch of issues which were examples of the problem?

Proposed resolution: Merge PR #1368 to address outstanding DTD issues, and close GH issues 1369-1373 (Wendy Reid)

Garth Conboy: +1

Matt Garrish: +1

Ivan Herman: +1

Charles LaPierre: +1

Matthew Chan: +1

Wendy Reid: +1

Brady Duga: +1

George Kerscher: +1

Laura Brady: +1

Bill Kasdorf: +1

Ben Schroeter: +1

Resolution #1: Merge PR #1368 to address outstanding DTD issues, and close GH issues 1369-1373

4. New Patent Policy

Wendy Reid: https://www.w3.org/Consortium/Patent-Policy-20200915/

Wendy Reid: our WG was chartered right before the new patent policy
… W3M has asked if WGs are interested in upgrading to the new patent policy
… I can’t describe the new policy
… should we move to the new policy?

Ivan Herman: ianal…
… the essence of the policy may not be absolutely clear, let me summarize it
… the main goal of the patent policy is that, if you implement a spec, then you should not have to worry about other WG participants having a patent and coming after you to pay a royalty.
… the patent policy aims to prevent this
… if an organization joins a WG, by default it signs a statement
… even if I have a relevant patent somewhere, I will not go after anyone implementing the spec
… the 2017 patent policy comes into effect when you publish a REC
… but in many WGs, specs are implemented before reaching REC
… and during CR phase there’s no patent protection
… so that’s the legal loophole in the 2017 policy
… so the 2020 policy, CR starts the process for patent claims, rather than REC
… so the question is, is this work IPR-heavy?
… is there a danger of infringement? If so, we should move to 2020 policy
… but if we think the risk is low, then we can forget about it
… if we move to 2020 policy, people would have to rejoin the WG
… we can’t decide today, because people might need to talk to their lawyers

Avneesh Singh: I want to check about using evergreen feature of process 2020
… the IP used to trigger at REC, now it starts at FPWD, so specs can remain evergreen at CR
… might some sections not getting implementations, and keeping them in CR?

Wendy Reid: acl ivan

Ivan Herman: we have to separate process from 2020 from IPR 2020
… process 2020 we are already in
… the only thing it gives us is the possibility it describes of infinite CR cycles
… I would prefer a traditional REC
… but once we have a REC, we can add/change much more easily than under older process docs
… but we can do that with either patent policy

Avneesh Singh: they are independent

Wendy Reid: I’ll send an email to the list, with a link to the patent policy
… and we can decide next week

Ivan Herman: There is a PP 2020 Explainer.

Ivan Herman: we had a discussion in the DiD WG
… and made slides about the differences, see the slide deck of the DID WG.

Wendy Reid: dauwhe: I just want to mention that this WG is involved with a spec whose outlines were defined 20 years ago

Wendy Reid: … our exposure to new IPR is minimal at best

Wendy Reid: … it’s not come up before

Wendy Reid: … does any possible change in IPR affect [the situation]

George Kerscher: I like the new policy better than the old policy, as things are settled well before rec

Wendy Reid: I’ll send an email with links and let people discuss with their organizations
… I think it’s a net positive
… AOB?

George Kerscher: were there media types on the agenda?

5. Issue on WebP

Wendy Reid: https://github.com/w3c/epub-specs/pull/1347

Wendy Reid: I thought we were waiting for an answer from someone

Ivan Herman: perhaps in a non-normative fashion
… it’s not registered anywhere

Dave Cramer: When we were talking about WebP, it’s an internal doc at Google
… the person who wrote the spec didn’t want to register the media type
… various W3C people have offered to help register the type
… some concern that google could change the spec

Wendy Reid: Chris Lilley had offered to help with media type registration

Ivan Herman: what we could do is… we can do two things
… one, keep the PR open and come back in a year
… two, we put it in with a big yellow warning saying this is a feature that may be taken out
… because status is unclear
… I don’t know which of the two is better

Dave Cramer: I would be curious to see if WebP works in existing reading systems

Hadrien Gardeur: It works in readium

Ivan Herman: does it rely on google engine?

Hadrien Gardeur: Whatever is around, if you’re on iOS 14 it works there, on android it has worked for a few years
… has worked on Android for a while

Ivan Herman: what about thorium?

Hadrien Gardeur: Thorium uses chromium, so it works, even on a mac

Ivan Herman: even on a mac?

Hadrien Gardeur: yes
… I would expect it would work in a lot of places, because it’s supported by many webviews
… probably won’t work on RMSDK

Garth Conboy: I agree with Dave and Hadrien
… I think we should put it in with a warning
… that might drive more learning

Matt Garrish: a third option is reconsider mandating support in the spec
… there are custom implementations, we need a baseline… I don’t know if that’s something the spec needs to say
… and not getting into the whole restricting things that are outside of our control
… that’s a separate discussion

Wendy Reid: I support putting in WebP with a warning

Ivan Herman: to follow up on what matt said
… we are already in an awkward situation
… there are some media types where we are explicit
… we don’t have a list of video types

Dave Cramer: Difference between video and images, 99% of EPUBs have images, but very few EPUBS have video

George Kerscher: I would love to see us start testing video in the titles
… people are waiting for that quality of content being added to educational materials
… putting it in the spec would protect from Google IP

Hadrien Gardeur: ivan hinted at the larger question
… can we tackle that larger question?
… I don’t think it’s sustainable
… it belongs in a best practices doc
… we are not consistent with how we deal with HTML/CSS vs images

Gregorio Pellegrino: for the image format I’m concerned about e-readers
… there are a lot of old e-readers which would never support webp
… and new content wouldn’t work

Garth Conboy: I would like to get to Hadrien’s discussion
… we can have a vote now about WebP
… then return to the larger issue
… should we move image specificity to video specificity

Ivan Herman: garth almost said what I wanted to say
… let’s decide on webp today
… and open an issue on github

Proposed resolution: Merge #1347 with an additional warning about support for WebP (Wendy Reid)

Ivan Herman: +1

Garth Conboy: +1

Matt Garrish: +1

George Kerscher: +

Hadrien Gardeur: +1

Bill Kasdorf: +1

Charles LaPierre: +1

Juliette McShane: +1

Gregorio Pellegrino: 0

Brady Duga: 0

Wendy Reid: +1

Matthew Chan: 0

George Kerscher: I think it’s great if we put this in

Toshiaki Koike: 0

Laurent Le Meur: +1

George Kerscher: if it moves to a best practice that’s fine

Ben Schroeter: 0

Masakazu Kitahara: 0

George Kerscher: but we get the format into implementations and documented

Wendy Reid: that’s another discussion

Resolution #2: Merge #1347 with an additional warning about support for WebP

Wendy Reid: happy weekend all!

6. Resolutions