Publishing Working Group Telco — Minutes

Date: 2018-11-05

See also the Agenda and the IRC Log

Attendees

Present: Dave Cramer, Tzviya Siegman, Wolfgang Schindler, Deborah Kaplan, Ivan Herman, Jasmine Mulliken, Luc Audrain, Wendy Reid, George Kerscher, Teenya Franklin, EvanOwens, Jeff Buehler, Benjamin Young, Rachel Comerford, Franco Alvarado, Vladimir Levantovsky, Chris Maden, Joshua Pyle, Matt Garrish, Avneesh Singh, Caitlin Gebhard, Ric Wright, Marisa DeMeglio, Brady Duga, Garth Conboy, Hadrien Gardeur, Charles LaPierre, Juan Corona, Romain Deltour, Ben Walters, Laurent Le Meur, Caroline Hayes, Ben Schroeter, Gregorio Pellegrino, Bill Kasdorf

Regrets: Tim Cole, Murata Makoto

Guests: Ralph Swick

Chair: Tzviya Siegman

Scribe(s): Dave Cramer, Rachel Comerford

Content:

Tzviya Siegman: we’ll get started in another minute
… let’s get started
… did we approve minutes before F2F?

Ivan Herman: no

Tzviya Siegman: let me get the link…

Tzviya Siegman: https://www.w3.org/publishing/groups/publ-wg/Meetings/Minutes/2018/2018-10-15-pwg.html

Dave Cramer: let’s approve them

Tzviya Siegman: minutes approved

Resolution #1: minutes from 15 oct approved

Tzviya Siegman: https://www.w3.org/publishing/groups/publ-wg/Meetings/Minutes/2018/2018-10-22-pwg.html

Tzviya Siegman: here are minutes from TPAC day one

Resolution #2: minutes of 1st f2f day meeting approved

Tzviya Siegman: https://www.w3.org/publishing/groups/publ-wg/Meetings/Minutes/2018/2018-10-23-pwg.html

Tzviya Siegman: first day minutes has an equal sign in date, second day says “minutes” twice

Resolution #3: minutes of the 2nd f2f day meeting approved

Tzviya Siegman: those minutes are approved as well

Tzviya Siegman: we have a new member

Caroline Hayes: I’m the metadata manager at Norton

1. TPAC memories

Tzviya Siegman: https://www.w3.org/blog/2018/11/publishing-at-tpac-2018/

Tzviya Siegman: wendyreid wrote a nice blog post

Tzviya Siegman: please read through it
… feel free to comment on anything that stood out to them

Tzviya Siegman: we were going over our meeting in Lyon a few weeks ago

George Kerscher: thanks for writing the blog post!

Luc Audrain: +1

Ivan Herman: +1000

Hadrien Gardeur: there’s a long and confusing discussion on the mailing list about EPUB 3.2, doesn’t feel like there’s much consensus

2. (Possible) Rechartering

Tzviya Siegman: if we choose to bring 3.2 into the wg, or if we choose not to work on some things in our charter than we need to recharter
… we need to discuss what to include
… the charter will be written by the chairs, ivan, the pub champion, with input with the SC, etc
… the SC did have some discussions about this on Friday
… it looks likely that we will bring EPUB 3.2 into the working group
… for now, we’ll focus on the other side of this
… let’s assume, for the moment, that the BG decides that EPUB should move into the WG. what will that mean for us?
… right now we’re working on WPUB
… it’s a large doc which encompasses a lot
… perhaps we can make a slimmer document which just addresses the manifest, and moving the affordances section elsewhere
… we could talk about a minimum viable web publication
… we could move affordances into the use case document
… we could create modules, with audio books as the first
… and then comics, scholarly…
… we need to figure out what modules would mean in this context
… we start with audio because we have a business case
… these are the real-world scenarios which use a manifest
… then audiobooks and manifest become rec-track documents
… and we have to decide about EPUB 4
… we can’t talk about packaging yet
… we would like to hear your thoughts; we don’t have a timeline for this

EvanOwens: what does this mean for the thursday calls?
… is that group dissolving or merging?

Ivan Herman: first of all, we have to realize that the chartering takes several months
… in the meantime the CG should go ahead and work out the details of testing
… which is a lot of work
… if the rechartering happens, then indeed the work of the …
… the work of the CG becomes part of the working group
… perhaps the CG becomes dormant for a while
… it’s up to us how we organize our meetings
… the WG will have two major tasks, so we might have two calls. We will have to discuss later.
… what the fate of the CG is years from now, it’s too early to say

Luc Audrain: +1

Tzviya Siegman: CGs often do maintenance in w3c

Laurent Le Meur: you talked about packaging and EPUB 4
… if we stay on audiobook module, there’s an idea that we don’t need to wait for web packaging
… we know there will be many issues with DRM with this format
… we are discussing an alternative OCF-lite based on zip
… which would fulfill the needs of the publishing industry today

George Kerscher: going back to the CG activities
… there’s a lot of work that can be done in starting to design testing
… we have best practices that need to be developed
… and having a CG for anyone to go to for support is important
… having that CG active and strong even while the WG is working is important

Luc Audrain: +1

Ivan Herman: +1 to George

Avneesh Singh: starting from EPUB 3.2, I was going through the email thread
… I would say that we decide at the end of November
… the benefit is not so much the rec track as the testing, the process
… the discussion will happen in the BG

Luc Audrain: +1

Avneesh Singh: on the WP side, you said right now that WP is not usable for you right now. What’s the missing piece? How could it be made useful for scholarly publishing?
… after that we can make a more informed decision about rechartering

Luc Audrain: to add some information, in BG we see that EPUB 4 would disturb the messaging around EPUB 3.X
… we should “icebox” EPUB 4 :)
… “put epub 4 in the freezer” is how Avneesh put it
… the idea is to concentrate on promoting EPUB 3.2, pushing epubcheck
… the CG has a lot to do that will benefit the whole community
… the CG can work as we discuss rechartering

Romain Deltour: there are two CGs, and then a third
… there’s the publishing community group for incubation, which should be taken into account

Benjamin Young: https://www.w3.org/community/publishingcg/

Ivan Herman: on Romain’s comment… the problem I see is that when we define a charter, we need to clearly define deliverables, due to patents etc
… we can’t say that if a CG might produce something in a future

Romain Deltour: some WGs say that things can be added to a charter

Ivan Herman: we can try to do that. Web Platform is an unusual situation.
… I agree with the intention
… back to something Avneesh said, about the value of REC track
… there are two more issues
… this community has not yet hit the issue… the rec track provides patent protection which CG doesn’t
… the other thing is that this whole discussion was influenced by the idea of an ISO version of EPUB
… if we go REC track than ISO is easier
… if we do it via W3c then we ensure that the ISO version is free of charge
… getting an official ISO document can be very expensive
… another thing that is important, when it comes to chartering , the next step is that it has to be voted on by w3c members
… this community will need to vote for the charter in large numbers
… we are adding work to the group. you need to plan for that.

Dave Cramer: … if we don’t have enough votes and enough participation this whole thing won’t happen

Luc Audrain: +1 to Ivan

Dave Cramer: tzviya: I’ll add to what Ivan said

Dave Cramer: … I do a lot of work with the AC now

Dave Cramer: … there are a lot of people who might object to the new charter, unless we can show how it helps the web

Tzviya Siegman: what makes this better in the big picture of the W3C
… it looks like we’re moving backwards to someone not involved in this group
… we have to do a lot of careful wording and campaigning to make sure people understand the audiobook work etc so that they understand we’re not just tacking w3c branding onto old work
… we don’t have to say we’re continuously incubating but we can say proposals come up from the incubating CG

Avneesh Singh: last time we were supported by a lot of tpi memebers
… I don’t know that state of the TPI memberships going forward
… Going to ISO through W3C PAS is not a strong case for EPUB 3.2 going to rec track. EPUB 3 was submitted through Korean govt. fast track and we are doing the same for EPUB 3.0.1
… So, there are other easy processes even if we do not go through W3C PAS.
… We need to make EPUB 3.2 popular so that it becomes national standard in Korea or some other country that has fast track to ISO

Benjamin Young: https://w3c.github.io/publ-epub-revision/epub32/spec/epub-contentdocs.html#sec-overview-relations-html

Benjamin Young: it’s important to note edge’s embedded reader and we’ve moved epub to supporting new web technologies (HTML5 and new versions of CSS) which will help make our case to the W3C

EvanOwens: my question was motivated by the TPI issue - but the W3C is telling us that we have to be a W3C member or a Business group member but if we are a business group member I’m not sure if we can participate in the working group.

Ivan Herman: I wanted to clarify that one of the most important next steps is to see what the PBG says about this
… we want to see if the PBG has any fundamental objections to the plan for 3.2
… the 3 co-chairs, myself, ralph, and Karen will work together on drafting the charter in github where you should contribute. Then we will go into a pre-voting review process for updating and then the eventual formal vote.

Dave Cramer: before we start writing the charter I think it would be worthwhile to gain support from the larger web community
… especially if we are talking about the manifest as a deliverable
… I’d like to get the TAG on board
… we’re making a fundamental decision as to how something should work on the web
… this is a necessary step to getting buy in

Tzviya Siegman: +1 dauwhe

Romain Deltour: +100 dauwhe

Benjamin Young: there was talk about using CGs for some of this
… how much of this should we consider proving the things in web publications and then go to the TAG with implementations rather than going to the TAG with the idea before the implementation

Juan Corona: +1 bigbluehat

Benjamin Young: is this a good idea? Or do we need the buy in first?

Tzviya Siegman: we did get feedback from the TAG last year. They have a template for explainers that we should use to ask for more.
… I do talk to the TAG somewhat regularly
… they want to help us — we should use they’re template to start outreach

Dave Cramer: we should do a manifest explainer and an audio explainer next
… instead of diving into spec text

Romain Deltour: TAG’s “what is an explainer?” page: https://w3ctag.github.io/explainers

3. Use Cases

Tzviya Siegman: use cases: https://w3c.github.io/dpub-pwp-ucr/

Franco Alvarado: I added some uses cases and queries within the pull requests
… most recently I added cross references referring to different MUST cases in the WP spec
… 5 requirements had no associated MUST statements
… that’s a broad overview
… there’s a requirement for uniquely identifying a WP
… this says that the URL must be the same within the web publication but it’s unclear as to whether you should be able to navigate to other HTML pages
… this is requirement 8

Bill Kasdorf: I would assume that multiple HTML pages could all be part of a given WP–that’s what needs to be identified

Tzviya Siegman: req 7 has no correlation to the WP spec? (req 7 says that a WP may include any kind of data, not only HTML & Co.)

Ivan Herman: I am surprised there are only 5. We have to be careful in stating the MUSTs. If you read the text, it’s clear that the resources we have, there can be anything.
… so we need to be more flexible. There may not be a must, but it is adequately represented.

Ivan Herman: our biggest problem is that the affordances document is very vague. The question we have to answer is how we combine and categorize use cases and affordances
… this also goes to the question of tiering. What is the minimum tier etc?

Bill Kasdorf: what I’m hearing is that every MUST should have a use case but not every use case needs a specific MUST

Tzviya Siegman: we could create a needs map - like an audio books needs map - that allows us to identify how we’re addressing needs within specific business areas
… this also goes for trade fiction, comic books, etc

Bill Kasdorf: I like the needs maps idea

Luc Audrain: +1

Jeff Buehler: +1

Bill Kasdorf: +1

Wolfgang Schindler: +1

Tzviya Siegman: Can anyone help Josh and Franco put this together?

Joshua Pyle: I don’t care how we organize these. I’m ambivalent. Some of the use cases need requirements added.
… there are some absent requirements like navigating to the TOC
… first and foremost is the recharter
… I was dispirited by the Lyon conversation

Tzviya Siegman: please don’t stop! the recharter will take months

Ivan Herman: the WP work will continue
… it just becomes more focused on certain communities
… what I am looking for based on the use cases is to give a clear set of things that we expect UAs to do
… I haven’t seen a needs map before
… I need to be convinced this is the best way to do that
… these are the things we need to come back to the web community with
… I am a little bit concerned that the needs maps will not make it clear what needs to be done

Tzviya Siegman: it’s the end of the hour, we’re going over time

Joshua Pyle: tying it back to what Benjamin said focusing on implementations
… this list of what people need to do is easier to create if we have implementations

Tzviya Siegman: but we don’t have that right now
… let’s focus on refining the concepts

Ivan Herman: it’s a tricky issue
… we have a discussion for next week

Tzviya Siegman: thanks everyone

4. Resolutions