Meeting minutes
<tzviya> Date: 2020-10-30
EPUBCheck fundraising
George: there's about $10k we still need to raise to meet the financial commitments for next year
… some companies may have money left in their budget before the year end
… can we take advantage of that?
Tzviya: what this can accomplish ...
… we mapped this out in the EPUBcheck roadmap
… the part that will make it easier for others to contribute to EPUBcheck
… EPUBcheck is in a good state but currently only the developers are able to contribute
… the $10k will make it easier for others to contribute in the future
Garth: where can I find something written up?
Tzviya: I'll dig up the old documentation
<tzviya> https://
George: maybe we could write something that could be sent to the list also
Tzviya: good idea; I'll add that to my to-do list
… happy for someone else to help with that
TPAC debrief
Dave: I feel a disconnect between what happes in teleconferences and what happens in GitHub
… I feel we're not truly able to make technical decisions in conference calls because important voices are not on the calls
… this particularly impacted the recent EPUB 3 WG calls
… in GitHub it's the same voices who have been commenting for decades
… I'm not sure what to do about this
… how to get things to move forward
… I'm not sure what to do, but it's an issue
Garth: one thing that falls into that category is external entities
… the GitHub discussion does seem to be coalescibng around what was said in the calls
Dave: I see that as a symptom; a particularly clear example, but it's not the only one
… in a broader sense, I'm wondering about the goals of the WG
… it feels like some of what's happening is that we're focusing on the spec in a very technical way
… which to me feels a little removed from the needs of end users and the community
… this maybe boils down to a question of participation
… and where we're getting input and feedback
… if an outsider were observing the WG right now, they'd be wondering how it affects them as an author or publisher
… deep details of XML processing models
George: that thread was painful
… I doubt there's many people who could actually follow and digest it
… for something like this if we could get a short summary and the decision we made, that would help people
… it was a very detailed thread and hard to follow
Dave: there's a user-facing question here
… Ivan identified it early
… if a tool puts a DTD in an EPUB and EPUBcheck rejects it
… that's not friendly
… why should we care what the DTD says?
<Zakim> tzviya, you wanted to talk about growing pains
Tzviya: it's an important question how to sync the WG telecons with GitHub
… summarizing the issue as George suggests is a tremendous amount of work and doesn't have enough benefit
… at some point we'll have to say that the conversation needs to happen in a different way
… maybe we can help manage the conversation a bit better
… in terms of how that coordinates with meetings, maybe the chairs can help by using what the charter says the WG should be doing
… set some milestones
Ivan: the problem is that it's sometimes difficult to avoid getting into these kinds of discussions
… the issue I hit did get into a complicated technical issue
… it is converging, so I hope we'll be able to close it
… when these situations arise we don't know how to avoid it
… if we were able to shut in a room the 5 people who want to discuss this, maybe they could solve it separately
… perhaps ad-hoc teleconferences are something we should do systematically
<Bill_Kasdorf> +1 to Ivan--that's what I was on the queue to suggest
Ivan: the WG charter is to clean up the document; make it more readable, create tests
… last week I read through the whole spec and raised many issues; some trivial, some less trivial
… I don't know how to solve the difference between GitHub discussions and WG calls
… most of the detailed work happens in GitHub
Avneesh: I feel there's a deeper issue
… W3C's organizational needs vs. the community's needs
… we can encourage technical discussion in the CG
<tzviya> +1 Avneesh
George: it's great that we have Ivan and Matt to work on the document in such detail
… there was an ask for a document that laid out the importance of reading; I had to roll my eyes and wonder how often we have to redo the same thing
… I wonder if there's a connection with the affordances document that we've written
… so the functionality and affordances that a RS brings can connect the CG with the WG
… so the WG has to make sure all the plumbing is there to allow these systems to work together
Zheng: the spec needs to be precise and not have conflicts
… we need a deep discussion about expertise
… the WG needs to be more specific about the spec
… many people use Java but how many really read the Java spec? not many -- only those who implement the language
… how to present the spec to end users?
… some people who use the spec to define -- the EPUBcheck community
… if the spec has conflicts, it's difficult for the community to resolve
… it's important to have a good deep discussion on the spec itself
… in the meetings it's important, even if we can't solve the specific problem, it's useful to use the time to figure out the approach to resolve it
… as an example, last week during TPAC, the discussion about EPUB tests was good
… we can build ideas about how we'll approach that
<Zakim> Ralph, you wanted to ask about triage
Ralph: it's all about triage -- the WG can own the responsibility to triage the issues
Tzviya: action items from TPAC
… I wasn't able to attend either BG session but I heard they were good and interesting
Liisa: we learned that doing this kind of quick-paced talking about topics that are a bit on the fringe but business-based and wide was super-helpful to people
… it got people engaged
… we had bigger audiences that we'd had in previous meetings
… 90 minutes worked well
… we've been considering maybe once a quarter having focused single-topic sessions
… and digging into those in the regular meetings
… e.g. fonts in Asia
… we've received some nice notes from people who attended and felt it was helpful
… we've gotten some good energy
Tzviya: any actions from WoT?
Liisa: we'll be helping with some use cases
… this may pull more people in; e.g. on audio stuff
… we'll definitely be doing some followup with WoT
Tzviya: we have a lot of a11y experts in this group but there's a lot of work happening in Web Accessibility
… we could have other speakers from that work talk in BG meetings
… Wendy and I did two History of EPUB sessions
… from that we have an offer to help with a CSS crash course
… in our survey we see a lot of desire for pixel-perfect layout
… Jen Simmons was one of the people who created CSS Grid; she did a lot of training to explain that pixel-perfect isn't really what people want on different screen sizes
… she has offered to do some training to help people understand what modern CSS does
… since a lot of our users read on phones this should not require huge changes to RS
Zheng: the CG launch kickoff meeting was last week
… we've started the A11Y TF; Avneesh has sent that email
… we're looking forward to finding more TF leaders and starting more TFs
… we'll send email next week
… we're preparing updates to the web site
… I'm contacting folks in Asia to see if we can schedule an Asia-friendly kickoff meeting too
… I have in mind a Japan TF
… the content guidelines really need to be updated
Ivan: we should be very proactive in setting up the EPUB TF; don't just wait for people to come
… we have to be careful not to put more expectations on the WG; the WG has to do the detailed job of getting the spec right
… the work on testing is also very detailed
… we need to build the mechanism for a TF to develop things that the spec should do
… find 2-3 persons who will drive that community
… the WG cannot be the place [to develop new things]; it has a lot of detailed work to do
… the MathML session this week gave me some optimism that maybe we'll have a decent level of MathML implementation in the web core and then eventually in RS
… what's important for this group is that there is a charter in development for a MathML WG
<tzviya> https://
Ivan: this relies on a level of MathML that is close to having implementations in the three browser engines
… it is important to Publishing for that WG to be chartered and be successful
<George> +1000 to the importance of MathML
Tzviya: yes; that was an excellent session; it gave me a lot of hope
Wendy: +1 to optimism
… it was exciting to see so many people excited about math
… we should give that charter our full support
… the virtual breakout sessions were great; I felt I was able to attend more of them
… there's a lot of energy out there for getting publications closer to the web
… that made me feel good
… format-wise, a 3-week long TPAC is exhausting
… I hope we can be in-person next year
Tzviya: +1; if we have to do this virtually again, we have to find a less exhausting way
… I have some ideas
… what other sessions did people attend?
Wendy: Long-form reading, Living Standards
… .talking about Process is dry but it was interesting to get a better idea of the process for Audiobooks in the next iteration
… we declared that we will be a "routinely updated standard"
… it was nice to get an explanation of what that will really be
… I think the Process change will be exciting for many WGs
Ivan: including EPUB
… Process 2020 will affect the future of EPUB a lot
Tzviya: once you publish something as a REC there can be incremental updates
Ivan: there was a session about the industry around advertisement and how that related to journal publishing
… there's a bit of a mess in terminology; the term "publishing" is used in many places
<Bill_Kasdorf> Robin Berjon's session, "Media Publishers of the Web, Unite" is a good example of what Ivan is talking about.
Ivan: the European Publishing Council session had a discussion about who represents whom
<Bill_Kasdorf> In fact that's exactly the one he's talking about.
Avneesh: as Ivan said; the "Media Publishers" session
… the terminology is confusing
… how this connects to various distribution mechanisms
… what ways can we collaborate?
… there are similarites in the distribution systems; the supply chains
… I feel EPUB 3 is OK in W3C now but to justify Publishing@W3C we need representation from all parts of the publishing industry
Tzviya: Robin's session was about the business models of news publishing
… it's really not that different from trade publishing
<Bill_Kasdorf> +1 to Tzviya
<tzviya> https://
Tzviya: trade doesn't depend on advertising but we do rely on third parties for distribution
… CAT can apply to EPUB
… the privacy issues Robin was talking about are very relevant to EPUB
… David Wood focused a lot on this in the Publishing WG; the trust relationship between the consumer and the publisher
… this issue occurs in both news publishing and trade publishing
Dave: the NYT relationship with content aggregation is very different from Hachette's relationship with content aggregation
… NYT has a lot of native traffic to their web site and they have subscribers
… trade publishers are pretty much completely dependent on content aggregators
… Hachette doesn't sell books on their web site
<liisamk> (that is not true of all publishers)
Dave: a lot of the issues Robin raised were about what the world would look like if we do have books online
… how will we evaluate the health of any particular aggregation system?
… what new web features would be required that something like AMP provides but aren't in a standards?
… can these be created in a less-centralized way?
… Robin is proposing some ways to evaluate these technologies
… but slow publishing is still very different from fast publishing, even if there is common ground
<Zakim> tzviya, you wanted to mention CAT
<dauwhe> https://
Wendy: let's invite Robin to visit!
… it would be good to liaise with others in the slack #publishing channel
<Bill_Kasdorf> +1000 to inviting Robin, Aram to come to talk with us
Wendy: it would be good to understand where we align and can support them
<jyoshii> Please mention the Japanese situation,Trade publishing company also publish magazines, even news paper.
[adjourned]
<Bill_Kasdorf> sorry that I have to leave for another meeting
<jyoshii> My time is almost up. Bye.
<dauwhe> https://