Publishing Working Group telecon — Minutes

Date: 2020-03-23

See also the Agenda and the IRC Log

Attendees

Present: Dave Cramer, Wendy Reid, Ivan Herman, Tzviya Siegman, Benjamin Young, Laurent Le Meur, George Kerscher, Marisa DeMeglio, Deborah Kaplan, Avneesh Singh, David Stroup, Franco Alvarado, Kenneth Dougherty, Ben Schroeter, Bill Kasdorf, Brady Duga, Garth Conboy

Regrets: Teenya Franklin, Luc Audrain, Ric Wright, Geoff Jukes

Guests:

Chair: Wendy Reid

Scribe(s): Dave Cramer

Content:

Wendy Reid: hi everyone
… welcome to our bimonthly call

Wendy Reid: https://www.w3.org/publishing/groups/publ-wg/Meetings/Minutes/2020/2020-02-03-pwg

Wendy Reid: I hope y’all are healthy and are social distancing

1. Testing & Implementations

Wendy Reid: https://github.com/w3c/publ-tests

Wendy Reid: we are still waiting on test implementations
… I’ve spoken to a few people about getting them in
… we have some incoming
… if anyone wants to run the tests but is having trouble reach out to me, ivan, or Matt
… we are approaching the end of the month and our deadline
… but we do have some leeway
… we should probably extend for a month

Marisa DeMeglio: I started looking at the tests
… and ran them on my thing
… I sent a PR

Marisa DeMeglio: https://marisademeglio.github.io/pubmanifest-parse/official-tests/results/audiobooks.html

Marisa DeMeglio: https://marisademeglio.github.io/pubmanifest-parse/official-tests/results/pubmanifest.html

Marisa DeMeglio: and can contribute some results
… I wrote a page to step through the process
… and runs the library on the tests
… which made it easy to run
… and I opened an issue about inconsistent test naming
… which makes it harder to run the toc tests

Ivan Herman: that’s great
… I made a mistake and didn’t watch the test repo
… I will look at the PR tomorrow

Wendy Reid: and there’s another PR

Ivan Herman: that is just an automatic github PR, I took care of it manually (closing the PR)
… there’s no a deadline for testing; it’s more the dates from which we can decide we can go to PR
… even if were ready and had 15 implementations, we couldn’t move to PR before the end of the month
… so we don’t have to do anything
… we can just wait until we have enough implementations to move forward

Wendy Reid: even better :)

Ivan Herman: that being said, we did the same calculation in another WG
… if we want to publish the REC before charter runs out, we should start next step at beginning of May at the latest

Wendy Reid: that was the mental deadline I was setting for myself
… pub manifest and audiobooks have been updated based on feedback from testing

2. Blog Post and future plans for Publishing@W3C

Wendy Reid: https://www.w3.org/blog/2020/03/listen-to-the-people-the-future-of-epub-and-new-directions-for-publishing-w3c/

Wendy Reid: the PBGSC plus W3M met in late February to discuss the future of the pub activity
… nothing changes for the WG
… we’re still working towards our deadline and publish our specs and our work will be done
… we’re gonna move EPUB to rec track, if all goes well with the charter

Ivan Herman: proposed epub 3 wg charter

Wendy Reid: you can post issues and questions on the charter
… and the PCG is going to become our incubation arm
… that’s the major update

Garth Conboy: I wanted to re-interpret the previous agenda item as testing + implementation

Wendy Reid: any questions about blog post?

Bill Kasdorf: Ralph sent a message
… since there’s a lot of people in EPUB 3 CG, that group is getting renamed
… and there are few people in the PCG who aren’t in EPUB 3 CG; they will get instructions on how to switch

Wendy Reid: please join the CGs if you haven’t already

3. Testing & Implementations (redux)

Garth Conboy: I joined late so perhaps we talked about implementation
… Google has failed to implement by now, and Kobo is probably not done
… and Blackstone
… I haven’t given up hope for a Google implementation
… but I wanted ivan to talk about… the implementation requirements to move the spec
… can we count matt and ivan’s implementation? Or do we need these other implementations?

Ivan Herman: I want to keep the fire going to get those implementations done
… the CR requirements are based on the assumptions
… that implementations prove that the spec is implementable and correct
… and so Matt and my implementations may fulfill the requirements
… but they are not part of any reading systems, it does not satisfy the spirit of the rules
… implementations are on the way
… but what is relevant for the tests can already be documented
… the director would look at whether the implementations give confidence that the spec will be used in real products
… UI stuff doesn’t matter, but if these implementations can pass the core tests that would be good
… there is one area where we are weak
… the tests on user agent behaviour
… those are not tested at all
… that part of the report is empty
… are those normative or informative features?

Wendy Reid: informative
… not required for passing

Garth Conboy: that’s helpful
… l
… this type of spec is a chicken/egg thing
… if our ingest pipeline is functional
… and I could demonstrate things
… that would be helpful, even if publishers aren’t delivering books in that format?

Ivan Herman: it’s helpful
… I don’t know if the director would be happy
… but would be way better than now

Wendy Reid: that’s how our implementation will be too

Ivan Herman: I can judge the reaction on these things
… if we feel that by extending the WG by two or three months to have a more mature implementation would make it look better, we could ask for that
… they would probably say OK
… to extend the charter into autumn
… if that would give us a more impressive set of implementation
… I cannot guarantee such an extension
… I would wait until May to make such a decision

Wendy Reid: we can wait
… anything else?

George Kerscher: it’s a tool, an authoring tool for audiobook publishers was made available where they could order their list of files,
… and the tool would generate the manifest files
… would that be an implementation? It’s an authoring tool

Wendy Reid: yes

Ivan Herman: absolutely

Wendy Reid: Lars has convinced a company to implement a tool
… if there’s anything we can do to help let me know
… it doesn’t have to be ready to ship
… any other comments?

Avneesh Singh: George was talking about Obi (???)
… I may not be able to implement in one month, but let’s see how it goes. I’m catching up with a lot of tasks.

George Kerscher: Obi is so close to what is needed already
… and it’s a great tool and fully accessible

4. EPUB 3 WG timeline

Ivan Herman: https://w3c.github.io/epub-3-wg-charter/

Ivan Herman: as information, the charter proposal for EPUB 3 WG is on github
… we notified the AC members that this work is happening
… it’s up to W3M etc when we think this charter is ready for a formal AC vote (six weeks); at the end of those six weeks it will be May
… we can set up group if the AC approves
… so people in this group should look at the charter
… give us input
… PRs, comments, etc
… if you are AC rep or know your AC rep, get them to vote
… there is a hope that we would start the group on 1 July
… but then world events intervened

Wendy Reid: thanks ivan
… we will talk again in two weeks.
… take care and be safe and healthy.