Publishing Working Group telecon — Minutes

Date: 20 May 2019

See also the Agenda and the IRC Log

Attendees

Present: Luc Audrain, Nellie McKesson, Dave Cramer, Wendy Reid, Bill Kasdorf, Romain Deltour, Ben Schroeter, George Kerscher, Nick Ruffilo, Avneesh Singh, Garth Conboy, Mateus Teixeira, Franco Alvarado, Marisa DeMeglio, Tim Cole, Laurent Le Meur, Charles LaPierre

Regrets: Tzviya Siegman, Ivan Herman, Benjamin Young

Guests:

Chair: Wendy Reid

Scribe(s): Nick Ruffilo

Content:

Wendy Reid: https://www.w3.org/publishing/groups/publ-wg/Meetings/Minutes/2019/2019-04-29-pwg

Wendy Reid: https://www.w3.org/publishing/groups/publ-wg/Meetings/Minutes/2019/2019-05-06-pwg.html

Wendy Reid: https://www.w3.org/publishing/groups/publ-wg/Meetings/Minutes/2019/2019-05-07-pwg.html

Wendy Reid: first up - approval of minutes from the last meeting as well as the face-to-face meeting.

Wendy Reid: minutes approved

Resolution #1: Last telco and F2F meeting minutes approved

1. F2F meeting debrief

Wendy Reid: For those not at the face to face, we had a great discussion about where we are now and where we want to head. Much of the meeting time was spent talking about what we need to do to get web publication and audiobooks to CR
… an update to where audiobooks are. We decided to publish audiobooks as a first working draft. We had a presentation about archiving. We’re hoping to see some proposals from them about how web publications and archiving can come together.

Wendy Reid: https://github.com/w3c/publ-wg/labels/action

Wendy Reid: We talked about some future profiles for different web publications. We talked about what documents and when we would need them. Then we came out with some action items.
… Thanks to Ivan we now have action items as items in the github repo. Anyone who has an action item, you can check on it there. We do have 16 action items that we want to get covered. If you have one, please make sure you take a look at it.
… We reviewed technical feedback.

Luc Audrain: The publishing business group received a request about a summary of the minutes from the face to face. If you don’t mind, can the business group get the summary?

Wendy Reid: We did review the feedback from TAG about web publications and audiobooks. We are in the process of addressing those questions. Tzviya and I were about to talk to Dan Applequist … We wanted to make it more clear about what we were doing with audiobooks for the TAG
… Testing and implementation team. Before we go to CR we need a testing and implementation plan for our implementors to follow. I believe we had a few people volunteer to be part of the team. Tim, deborah and benjamin possibly? We need a lead… Please volunteer
… We need someone with good project management skills - not necessarily technical skills. We do need a lead so we can get through this. Someone who is really organized.

Tim Cole: One question that came up in the face to face is the knowledge of what testing means in W3C. So anyone with experience with W3C testing and could lead this it would be great.
… W3C testing is essential to get to recommendation and it’s a little nuanced.

Wendy Reid: We wanted to talk about the publication timeline review. We came up with some dates that we wanted to hold ourselves to. The first major date is getting WP and audiobooks to CR.
… We want to get to CR the end of September, so the plan is that shortly after TPAC we can move it. That means we need packaging and distribution spec done by the end of june. The implementation by the end of June…
… We think this is doable if we buckle down. Does anyone have comments or concerns?

Nick Ruffilo: (( crickets ))

Wendy Reid: I have it on the schedule that Laurent was going to share packaging items.
… but we’ll move to the next item and go back to Laurent in a moment.

2. Escape workshop

Wendy Reid: https://www.iab.org/activities/workshops/escape-workshop/

Wendy Reid: There is a workshop happening - the escape workshop. It is to address packaging on the web.
… we want to make sure people are aware of it and some attend on behalf of the working group

Dave Cramer: I’m going to make some attempt to attend. This is looking at things from a very high level. I want to make sure we have some representation there.

Wendy Reid: That would be amazing

Luc Audrain: +1 to Dave

3. AB elections

Wendy Reid: The next items is: the AB election - the last day for voting is the 30th of may. If you are an AC rep, make sure you vote, if not, tell your preference to your rep.

George Kerscher: I want to promote Avneesh. Ask your AC rep to consider him. I’d love to see people put him their #1 choice.

Dave Cramer: If you do that, put Elika Etemad as your #2

Laurent Le Meur: ok

4. issues

4.1. Should the packaging spec explicitly disallow file name characters?

Laurent Le Meur: https://github.com/w3c/pwpub/issues/35

Laurent Le Meur: Lets start with #35. The issue is about file and characters to disallow explicitly (or not) in a specification. There were few comments and I put in the draft a sentence that’s in the last comment of the thread. I feel it is sufficient.
… if there are no unhappy comments, we can close the issue. The resolution would be to just quote the zip specifications - which has only a few constraints on the file and directory names - no use of explicit characters.

Nick Ruffilo: +1

Garth Conboy: That looks fine to me, and I presume that ‘must’ probably should be a should in what you wrote. It’s not a normative statement either way.

Proposed resolution: The [ZIP] specification has few constraints on the characters allowed for file and directory names. When crafting such names, authors should be careful to use characters which allow a broad interoperability among operating systems and are compatible with relative URLs. (Laurent Le Meur)

Nick Ruffilo: +1

Luc Audrain: +1

Wendy Reid: +1

Garth Conboy: +1

Geoff Jukes: +1

Tim Cole: +1

Marisa DeMeglio: +1

Resolution #2: The [ZIP] specification has few constraints on the characters allowed for file and directory names. When crafting such names, authors should be careful to use characters which allow a broad interoperability among operating systems and are compatible with relative URLs.

Laurent Le Meur: I will modify the draft then close.

4.2. Should the packaging spec include processor conformance requirements?

Laurent Le Meur: https://github.com/w3c/pwpub/issues/36

Laurent Le Meur: https://w3c.github.io/publ-epub-revision/epub32/spec/epub-ocf.html#ocf-conformance-rs

Laurent Le Meur: next is issue #36 a little more complex. There were high-level requirements that are there…

A compliant User Agent MUST meet at least one of the following criteria:

  • It is able to import the Package and fulfill the requirements of an audiobook player as defined in [[wpub-ucr]] ;
  • It is able to expose the Package as a W3C Web Publication, as defined in [[wpub]];
  • It is able to convert a Package to an alternative audiobook format suitable for electronic distribution.

Laurent Le Meur: We want to keep something about conformance of reading systems/user agents but we don’t want the words that are in the OCF document. I tried to express compliance with what is pasted in IRC now…

Dave Cramer: These kinds of - we have lots of statements of these kinds across the specs. With the eye of writing tests, it makes it really hard to write a test for these sort of things. If I was building an implementation, what would I have to do. I don’t have answers but I have a general concern that we need testable assertions

Laurent Le Meur: I agree

Laurent Le Meur: a rule about missing resources (indicated in the manifest but missing in the zip) and another about extra resources (present in the zip but missing in the manifest). In the first case, the safe side is to consider the Package invalid -> stop its processing. In the second case, it is to consider that the extra resources are not harmful and consider the Package valid.

Laurent Le Meur: This sort of definitions of packaging - it’s not a conformance. There is an alternative proposal that I’m writing now. (pasted in IRC)
… we could consider an UA as a parsers - and if it see missing items, it should raise an error and consider the package damaged.
… not damaged - invalid
… For me it’s better for it to be boolean - it is either good or bad.

Dave Cramer: Once again we’re faced with the collision of two worlds. The Web tries to route around any damage from network to HTML to CSS. If there is something missing, it tries to keep going the best it can. In the XML world, if a file isn’t well formed, the parser must refuse…
… epub has formal validation - but we’re relatively silent as to how reading systems should conform to this. I would lean towards not requiring user agents to give up if they see an error.

Nick Ruffilo: What if we think in terms of the opposite, if an error is found, we focus on the resource being available and playable. If a valid audio file is provided, it has to be played in the reading order.
… we provide the files in order, can they be played ,that is a test case

Garth Conboy: I think what Nick may make sense at the audiobook layer, but for the lightweight packaging format, i’m not sure that it fits in the packaging spec. Listening to both dave and Laurent’s comments on different sides of requirements./
… for packaging, I can see being stricter - maybe lean more towards Dave take at the audiobook level being more permissive…

Bill Kasdorf: Since the audiobooks is basically a profile of the master WP constellation of specs - my concern is having a profile that undoes something that it is a profile of. I think of a profile that adds something not that makes the master invalid.

Wendy Reid: The packaging spec isn’t a profile of the main spec, it’s a companion

Bill Kasdorf: I wanted to make sure we weren’t creating a conflict there.

Wendy Reid: in this case, the packaging spec is a companion, but it may be replaced if web packaging becomes a thing for example.

Laurent Le Meur: I agree with Nick to think positively about the user agent where it has to do something if resources exist. My only worry is that we have to address user agent conformance.
… We could end up with a user agent processing model. That it has to open the manifest and process the reading order. Do we want to go there?
… especially since we already have a processing model in the WP spec.

Wendy Reid: Should the packaging model not differ to the WP spec? Wouldn’t need to be in the packaging spec…

Laurent Le Meur: What is the processing model in the main spec. I’m not sure we have spec’d anything about that yet.

Wendy Reid: It would fall into the web publications.
… I think the packaging spec should just reference the processing model of web publications and use that. It seems the clearest way to proceed

Laurent Le Meur: I can try - it’ll be two lines.

Wendy Reid: There are lots of items in the audiobook spec that feel the same

4.3. Mime Type

Laurent Le Meur: https://github.com/w3c/pwpub/issues/32

Laurent Le Meur: Moving on to another one we should solve today and close #32 about mimetype. Should we have a mimetype file in the package. It seems that the consensus was to have no mimetype in the package. If there was a mimetype it should be first in the package…
… it would be good for processors who didn’t want to open the zip to know what it is. When it comes to helping studios - the consensus seemed to be avoid having any sort of mimetype file.
… Maybe it’ll write a proposal for resolution and we’ll discuss it

George Kerscher: Would everything rely on file extension?

Laurent Le Meur: in the file extension or if it is downloaded, it can rely on a mimetype exposed from the web. If you have it in a filesystem it is about the file extension

Dave Cramer: programs in general may read the first few bytes of the file… Programs will do a bit of investigating and don’t necessarily trust the file extension…

Proposed resolution: there will be no mimetype file in the package file. (Wendy Reid)

Nick Ruffilo: +1

Laurent Le Meur: +1

Garth Conboy: +0

Luc Audrain: +1

Tim Cole: +1

Geoff Jukes: +1

Wendy Reid: +1

George Kerscher: +1

Garth Conboy: My comment - I do see some positive nature - clearly you’ll look at the first few bytes - but it’s not that big an issue

Resolution #3: There will be no mimetype file in the package file.

4.4. Choose a media-type and file extension for Web Publications packaged in “OCF lite”

Laurent Le Meur: https://github.com/w3c/pwpub/issues/29

Laurent Le Meur: In the discussion about mimetypes, #29 what will we choose for file extension and media-type

Laurent Le Meur: application/lpf+zip

Laurent Le Meur: in the draft the extension is .lpf (lightweight package format) mimetype is application/lfp+zip

Nick Ruffilo: #29 on the 29th RESOLVED!

Wendy Reid: No meeting next week. It’s a holiday in the US (memorial day)
… the next meeting is the following week. June 3rd. We’ll cover remaining packaging issues and anything else - please reach out if you can help with the testing and implementation team. If you’ve done testing for W3C please let us know.

: CharlesL left (~Adium@public.cloak):

Dave Cramer: rrsagent: draft minutes

5. Resolutions