Publishing Working Group Telco — Minutes
Date: 2017-09-25
See also the Agenda and the IRC Log
Attendees
Present: Deborah Kaplan, Baldur Bjarnason, Nick Ruffilo, Avneesh Singh, Ivan Herman, George Kerscher, Leonard Rosenthol, Tzviya Siegman, Ric Wright, Jun Gamou, Lillian Sullam, Evan Yamanishi, Chris Maden, Romain Deltour, Marisa DeMeglio, Luc Audrain, Joshua Pyle, Benjamin Young, Jeff Printy, peter krautzberger, Wendy Reid, Laurent Le Meur, Heather Flanagan, Hadrien Gardeur, Garth Conboy, Brady Duga, Ben Schroeter, Harriett Green
Regrets: Rachel Comerford, billk, Dave Cramer, Tim Cole
Guests:
Chair: Tzviya Siegman
Scribe(s): Nick Ruffilo
Content:
Tzviya Siegman: I don’t believe we have any new members this week. Lets review the minutes from last week.
Tzviya Siegman: https://www.w3.org/publishing/groups/publ-wg/Meetings/Minutes/2017/2017-09-18-minutes.html
George Kerscher: “Reading through the minutes - I didn’t see any mention of audio publishers in the discussion. Generally the audio publishers are some of the less technical people. They are great with the audio products, and very talented, but from a tech perspective they need help. Perhaps we could engage the audio publishers that are already part of W3C publishing group. hachette, random house audio, etc…
Jeff Printy: I am interested in this aspect, my dearest wish is for Audible books to have chapter metadata
George Kerscher: I could take an action item to get in touch with a key person in each of those houses.
Luc Audrain: +1
Tzviya Siegman: That would be great.
Lillian Sullam: I’d be happy to help also (from PRH side)
Luc Audrain: I can be the contact for hachette livre. and I can find a contact for the group in NY.
Tzviya Siegman: We resolved the issue with the github bot, Ivan…
1. metadata
Tzviya Siegman: With that, the mintues are approved. Baldur and luc - you’re both here?
Luc Audrain: https://github.com/w3c/wpub/issues/66#issuecomment-331926413
Ivan Herman: github: https://github.com/w3c/wpub/issues/66
Luc Audrain: I will put the link in IRC. We had our first pull request - we had no comments on it…
… We are not here in what is mandatory, and we are trying to determine what is required in metadata. We are pushing two dates - but are trying to determine may VS should. We prefer publication date and modification date - they should be both required.
Baldur Bjarnason: I would like to add to that, and the only reason I am convinced they are ‘shoulds’ is that they are very important in portable context.
… (correctly - Luc said SHOULD not REQUIRED)
Baldur Bjarnason: This helps greatly with syndication, etc. But I see the rational as having them as ‘may’ to maximize the creation - it’s really about what’s the best balance to strike with web publications.
Luc Audrain: Without comments it closes the pull request. The first bullet is a list of creators and their possible role, the modification date for the whole publication. This section is about being able to access for accessibility.
Leonard Rosenthol: We really need to detail what modification date means, especially in the non-portable or non-packaged case. If I have a publication generated from a content management system, if a template changes, does that change the mod date? If the accessibility status changes, does that count as a modification? Is there a modification of the package, the content, the metadata? Otherwise, this is a great start to moving things forward.
Tzviya Siegman: You should open a ticket on this leonard.
Tzviya Siegman: We should say should for publication, may for be modified - but we can address later.
Ivan Herman: The discussion about may or not may, what it tells me is that some of these nice-ities might be different from a publication VS a web publication. if a certain metadata is a may when it’s on the web, might become a must when it becomes packaged. I don’t want to go into the details of which will be what, but that kind of destinction makes sense. The other comment I had which was independent of this, we find there are some of these extra items that are listed. Purely from an editorial pov, i don’t see why they stay where they are, or could be listed as required metadata somewhere on the top. It’s editorial thing that can be done when it’s merged, but i don’t know if they are a separate category, or just a title…
Garth Conboy: I would be in favor of merging and keeping the shoulds to keep in mind that when we get to packaged/epub4, if epub classic is any indication, those might get upgraded to ‘must’ at least for modification.
Benjamin Young: I wanted to add a note on testing - we don’t test shoulds/may musts are what matters - so keep an eye on what might be a must later. Shoulds and things don’t get you a gold star in w3c testing…
Leonard Rosenthol: +1 to merge
Garth Conboy: Are we leaving for “should”? Silence is consent?
Luc Audrain: +1
Garth Conboy: OK - we can merge. Are there other discussion points and/or on metadata? Luc/baldur?
Luc Audrain: Not on my end.
Baldur Bjarnason: There was the suggestion on how URI templates - what role they play within links, but i think that’s a separate issue in the issues list, so it should be … it arose from this.
Resolution #1: leave those should-s and we go ahead an merge #71
Garth Conboy: Sounds good. Who’s next. We should probably table the discussion on Section #5 - establishing publications and lifecycle.
Tzviya Siegman: Please read it and give your thoughts about it - it’s an important section.
Ivan Herman: When it’s available to read….
Garth Conboy: Also likely for next week, the security section… Directions or input on the group?
Leonard Rosenthol: I’ll get something out this week that we can review at next weeks’ call.
2. tpac
Tzviya Siegman: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1hCC4pK8hUPEb53BMBHVQzY9R1yU4gYKITW2QIC6AvMg/edit?usp=sharing
Garth Conboy: as Tzviya is want to point out, we’re heading towards TPAC. I would like to take this opportunity to look at what topics and agenda would be. The most important thing to plan for is other groups we would like to meet with. One obvious is pagination with the CSS group. And tzviya and I wanted to talk with the webapp manifest group. At this juncture, at a high level - what agenda items and also joint sessions you have in mind - just join the queue.
Leonard Rosenthol: I saw the google doc - added there - web security group might be good. Esepcially concerns around origins and the like.
Garth Conboy: We have 3 on the wishlist, but we’ll add more. I will put another section for high-level topics. Having early input from the group would be great for high-level topics.
Ivan Herman: Two things, one - I don’t know if we will get to the point where it’s worth chatting with jeffrey. I don’t know where his next packaging issue will be decided…
Garth Conboy: He won’t be at TPAC…
Ivan Herman: Oh ok, that’s moot. Then not. The other issue is not the tech side - I’ve been warned by our organizers that it is the last minute to sign up. The prices for hotels skyrocket because Salesforce has a big conference there, so that swallows up everything. if you want to come - do it quickly, even the participation fee deadlines and the hotel fees go up. Please come - and if you can do it quickly, that’s best.
Garth Conboy: There’s a list that you or Tzviya proposed that certain people should get guilt or special invice. Who else was on the list that we should [call out nicely]
Tzviya Siegman: We know costs are an issue, if you can come, it would be great to see you. The cost for registration goes up next week.
Avneesh Singh: It may happen with other accessibility, but how the items go in, and the roadmap, would be a good discussion to have.
Garth Conboy: Any other contributions, speak up, etc.
Garth Conboy: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1hCC4pK8hUPEb53BMBHVQzY9R1yU4gYKITW2QIC6AvMg/edit#
Garth Conboy: I encourage folks to look at the doc and comment as necessary. It would be helpful to the chairs that it was fleshed out a little bit. The high-level topics….
Garth Conboy: If we end a bit early - take a minute or two there…
Garth Conboy: All the groups are on the registration form…
Luc Audrain: there is a list of group meeting on TPAC website
Ivan Herman: List of groups at TPAC: https://www.w3.org/2017/11/TPAC/schedule.html
Tzviya Siegman: https://www.w3.org/Consortium/activities
3. PWP
Garth Conboy: The progress we’ve made on WP - we’ve made no progress on the first draft of PWP. Ivan says it will be easy is because we’ll be just saying ‘we’ll package it somehow.’ Will you pontificate?
George Kerscher: With A11Y, do we invite WAI to join us, or do some of us join the WAI?
Ivan Herman: I do NOT pontificate… :) When we talk about the first public working draft, we would list one or two alternatives with pros and cons. We would tell the community ‘here are our options, which direction should we go’ and then we’ll have feedback. From me, what I see as the first public working draft, we see what if we go with zip, or if we go with the current version of the web-packaging, to have pros/cons well layed out. I don’t know if there are any other issues - maybe in the security areas, i don’t know if there are any other issues around the packaging.
Garth Conboy: I wouldn’t be surprised if we have different metadata requirements.
Leonard Rosenthol: I wasn’t going near security - not sure if it’s a ? or a statement. What is a little confusing to me about what Ivan said - I thought we were going to treat PWP as a package-format-neutral specification, that would apply to any specific form of packaging. Then, profile from that, epub4, or something else, and explain how to use it . So whatever a user chooses, they can do that. Those become profiles of PWP.
Hadrien Gardeur: Talking about PWP - we had a quest explaining web packaging, but we didn’t have a follow up discussion about that. That’s something we’re really missing here. At least… The guest was very useful, but web packaging is something very early and we don’t know if it will be IETF or W3C, could change in months or years and doesn’t fulfill some of the use-cases for PWP, and it doesn’t fill all use casees such as where something is natively a WP. I’m not sure we can even get to that list of pros and cons. It’s a discussion we need to have. Even if we are vague.
Ivan Herman: Several things - one: What Leonard said - I understand and am perfectly fine - if we have a general thing about PWP then we have different profiles. I think that we have to define a profile - that is not necessarily epub4 - we have to come with a text that is not necessarily epub4, but if you want to download scholarly articles, then there is a format that everyone understands. it needs a basic profile. That doesn’t mean that communities cannot pick a different profile/format. It becomes an editorial issue. If the PWP document has two parts, that’s OK. For Hadrien, yes, we don’t know where or when it will go. The decision we have to take can be taken way later. Today, we cannot make this choice because we cannot know what the situation is. I think it’s fine. I always come back to the same story - the first public draft gives the outside world where we will be going.
… if we do say ‘yes we need a basic profile for packaging’ then we have these options - we make it clear that some of these alternative are still very at the start, and we don’t know where it will go, but it’s very important. It’s those statements, and those instructions. I’m happy to go in. Maybe it will be one of the last things we put there, because we need several weeks to have that discussion - which we do need to have.
Baldur Bjarnason: I wanted to reiterate the concern of specifiying this too early. There is a huge risk that, whatever we put together, may become instantly obsolete overnight, turned into a niche format used only by publishing. Using a specific packaging format, there is a huge risk in terms of - i can see the format itself being put at a risk, if we go too early and specify too early. I’m worried we may be trying to move too quickly on the packaging.
Tzviya Siegman: I think we’re all saying the same thing, but in different words. We’re all saying we don’t want to move ahead too early, but we do have to say SOMETHING. For the first draft, we say that with PWP - ‘this will be packaged, but sometime later’. We might want to say strongly that web packaging is viable, but we do have to figure it out. Right now we know it’s too early to make a decision, but we do have to do something.
Garth Conboy: I wanted to circle back to what ivan said, I’m a little bit nervous of a path where we would define a profile that is not epub4 or pdf, to have a generic profile, then a epub4 profile, etc, and I’d be concerned about a profile fighting.
Leonard Rosenthol: I’m not in objection to putting - at the end of the document - noting ‘here are some packaging types that we’re looking at’ We should let people know what we’re thinking, but let them know our view.
Garth Conboy: Any other commentary?
Ivan Herman: One small thing, but because I may be the only one not knowing - at some point in time it would be good if there was a 10 minute introduction or information about what exactly it would mean to have PDF packaging format as a separate format. i don’t know as a technical format what PDF packaging entails. If we even talk about it, we should have an idea about it…
Leonard Rosenthol: I did 5 minutes in the F2F in NYC, but I’ll give more detail next week.
Garth Conboy: Action item - throw this as a high level item on the TPAC list for Leonard…
4. AOB
Garth Conboy: What I put as the… There is a writing agenda item. Any comments or did we nail this last week?
Tzviya Siegman: Let me take a look. We still have a pretty empty document. Reading enhancements, search & pagination, etc…
Garth Conboy: we have text on pagination, and hopefully Dave will be able to proxy for florien on that…
Tzviya Siegman: Ok, i think we’re doing OK on writing….
Ivan Herman: What I expect in the coming week is that there will be a number of texts coming in. We have the one from florien. Matt is working on the lifecycle one. Security might come in. I think it would be really good if all of us found time to read it ahead of time, so next week we could handle many of those…
Garth Conboy: That would be substantial progress.
Tzviya Siegman: May I make another comment about writing - i did some work with verifiable claims, but their spec reads like normal language - like English. Even those it’s a complicated process. My hope is that it doesn’t come across by 12 different authors…
Tzviya Siegman: That spec is easy to read - I would love to present something like that so check it out
Leonard Rosenthol: if anyone wants to read up on next generation PDF - you can see my keynote at https://www.pdfa.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/1030-Introducing_Next_Generation_PDF.pptx
Nick Ruffilo: Heather/Nick: We can review when things are done to make things more cohesive
Garth Conboy: We have 14 minutes - the placeholder on the agenda - if folks wanted to nominate pending issues for discussion - we can do that now, or we can end a little early, so they can spend 5 minutes nominating high-level work for TPAC
Tzviya Siegman: https://github.com/w3c/wpub/issues
Ivan Herman: It’s a small question - we did agree to merge the metadata pull request, does it mean that we can also close the issue on metadata that we had - or do we want to keep it open? The ‘should’ one…
Garth Conboy: You ‘must’ close it because it’s what you ‘should’ do :) We’ll have the text merged in, if folks want to add issues on the merged text, but lets hear from luc…
Luc Audrain: I was wondering if we leave the issue open, does it bring people information? Does it help them to understand that we came to the proposition?
Ivan Herman: Nothing is lost - you can look at all the closed issues…
Luc Audrain: Ok we can close it.
Garth Conboy: Sounds like a decisions. Any other issues?
Garth Conboy: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1hCC4pK8hUPEb53BMBHVQzY9R1yU4gYKITW2QIC6AvMg/edit#
Garth Conboy: I really encourage people to throw some nominations on there. will talk a week from today!
5. Resolutions
- Resolution #1: leave those should-s and we go ahead an merge #71