EPUB 3 Working Group Telco — Minutes

Date: 2022-03-03

See also the Agenda and the IRC Log

Attendees

Present: Dave Cramer, Toshiaki Koike, Masakazu Kitahara, Brady Duga, Wendy Reid, Shinya Takami (高見真也), Matt Garrish, Dan Lazin, Zheng Xu (徐征)

Regrets: Matthew Chan, BenShroeter

Guests:

Chair: Dave Cramer

Scribe(s): Brady Duga, Wendy Reid

Content:

1. ‘duration’ value in MO and TTS (issue epub-specs#2007)

See github issue epub-specs#2007.

Dave Cramer: Duration values in TTS.

See github pull request epub-specs#2027.

Dave Cramer: see issue and pull request.
… historically we required a duration value for MO, but there is a question about what happens when there is no accompanying audio.
… which means TTS will render the paragraph.
… We are acknowledging it isn’t common, but we need to cover it in the spec.
… Matt, summary?.

Matt Garrish: Not much to say, but the spec is a little wordy/redundant.
… I suggest shortening, but overall am happy.

Dave Cramer: Some comment about making the duration a ‘should’, but I am against that.

Matt Garrish: agreed. I am not even sure how common TTS is.

Dave Cramer: And you won’t have MO if you are relying on TTS anyway.

Wendy Reid: Using MO for TTS is pretty much overkill.
… European A11y act requires TTS in RSes, so TTS will be more common.

Matt Garrish: We did TTS previously, but not as MO. Seems like this is more theoretical than anything. Happy to leave as is.

Murata Makoto: DAISY in Japan has MO always, but it is pre-recorded.

Dave Cramer: We will clean up the PR and close the issue.

Proposed resolution: Merge PR 2027 after wording is confirmed, and close issue 2007. (Wendy Reid)

Matt Garrish: +1.

Dave Cramer: +1.

Toshiaki Koike: +1.

Wendy Reid: +1.

Shinya Takami (高見真也): +1.

Masakazu Kitahara: +1.

Zheng Xu (徐征): +1.

Brady Duga: +1.

Dan Lazin: +1.

Murata Makoto: +1.

Resolution #1: Merge PR 2027 after wording is confirmed, and close issue 2007.

2. Adding a note to the section on OCF URL resolutions (issue epub-specs#2023)

See github issue epub-specs#2023.

Dave Cramer: Major rewrite of OCF to clarify URLs.
… Partly to help clarify where relative URLs could reach (that is, not out of the package).
… First issue is to clarify in simple language what is legal now.
… I am in favor of clarifying.

Dan Lazin: Not sure what Ivan wants.
… Is he asking for an example? Or something else?.

Dave Cramer: I think an example of two explaining why these things are bad makes sense.

Matt Garrish: I think Ivan wants some plain English explaining what all this means without having to understand the processing model.

Dave Cramer: Maybe just “you can’t use URLs like this and that”, etc.

Murata Makoto: I am concerned between discrepancies our spec and whatwg.
… Which could change any time.

Dave Cramer: This is a non-normative section.

Murata Makoto: I am concerned with the entire section. Maybe a new issue is needed?.

Matt Garrish: This is epub specific to handle the case of the virtual container.

Brady Duga: I think when we were looking at this, I don’t think we’re changing anything the URL spec says.
… we’re putting some constraints on behaviours of types of URLs you can use as base.
… it is still worth you going through it.

Dave Cramer: It looks messy because it is a hard problem and it very tricky to fully explain (using formal language).
… This is our best attempt to use the URL spec language and concepts to define what we want.
… But please do review and file issues.

Murata Makoto: And this issue would and non-normative language?.

Dave Cramer: Yes.

Wendy Reid: Yes.

Dave Cramer: Not really ready to have a resolution - someone needs to add language.

Murata Makoto: This is not the first time I have encountered this problem, and specifying it is very difficult.

3. Clarify that resources must be present for relative paths (issue epub-specs#2024)

See github issue epub-specs#2024.

Dave Cramer: Our other issue is similar. When we did this we lost a requirement that there be a resource at the end of the path.
… originally we had 1. not leak and 2. must exist.

See github pull request epub-specs#2028.

Dave Cramer: We lost part 2. We should put it back. There is already a PR.

Matt Garrish: We just need to put the existence text back.

Dave Cramer: Yes, and it sounds like the PR does just that.
… I am in favor of merging.

Dan Lazin: I don’t know if it follows that there must always be a thing that is referenced.
… For instance a book on how to write epub that shows errors (eg this is what it looks like when a resource is missing).
… The cases are rare, but I can imagine some.
… and there are plenty of ways to create bad content.

Wendy Reid: Going with must on this, because nothing stops people from ignoring epubcheck.
… In general epubcheck is heavily relied on by publishers to tell them of problems.
… and this will more often than not help those publishers find problems.

Matt Garrish: I basically agree with wendyreid.
… epubcheck does look for this now.
… There are other things epubcheck will flag.
… This seems like a can of worms to change, and error has worked really well to date.

Dan Lazin: Those are persuasive arguments.
… I thought epubcheck gave warnings on shoulds, isn’t that good enough?.

Wendy Reid: Errors scare them more.

Dan Lazin: I am ok with must, but odd that epubcheck is preflight and a conformance checker.

Proposed resolution: Merge PR 2028, close issue 2024. (Wendy Reid)

Dave Cramer: Propose merging 2028.

Dave Cramer: +1.

Matt Garrish: +1.

Dan Lazin: +1.

Shinya Takami (高見真也): +1.

Brady Duga: +1.

Wendy Reid: +1.

Zheng Xu (徐征): +1.

Toshiaki Koike: +1.

Resolution #2: Merge PR 2028, close issue 2024.

Dave Cramer: AOB?.

4. Accessibility of image-dominated FXL publications (issue epub-specs#2012)

See github issue epub-specs#2012.

Shinya Takami (高見真也): FL a11y issue was raised (see issue).
… MURATA, what do you think?.

Murata Makoto: I do not understand the practical implications.

Shinya Takami (高見真也): (Japanese).

Murata Makoto: Informational document (Japanese).
… DAISY (Japanese).

Shinya Takami (高見真也): (Japanese).

Murata Makoto: Yes.
… Will this have any impact on 3.3?.

Wendy Reid: No.
… These are not published, and would only be WG notes, neither on REC track.
… We can add something about image dominated publications (or add more).
… We have been trying to avoid discussing a single content type, but we can attempt to differentiate between mainly image FL and text based FL.

Murata Makoto: I would like to make this more obvious - Image based FL content is not accessible. Period..

Wendy Reid: We wouldn’t really put this into core anyway, it would be part of a11y if we did add it.
… There are a lot of problems, and we really can’t standardize yet.

Dave Cramer: Looks like we have a path forward.
… AOB.

Dan Lazin: I heard back from MDN today, they have approved our proposals to add publishing related content at MDN.
… Now we just have to write the docs.

Dan Lazin: See “Web-related technologies” on MDN.

Dan Lazin: We have an outline for minimum viable, but not time to actually do it now.

Dan Lazin: See first outline.

Dan Lazin: but we do have an outline if anyone wants to help.

Zheng Xu (徐征): In the CG we have a taskforce for MDN, can we assign it to you?.

Dan Lazin: Yes, I knew it existed and the TF connected me to the MDN people.

Zheng Xu (徐征): I will add you to the CG issue.

Dan Lazin: I do have the previous drafts.

Zheng Xu (徐征): here is the CG issue.

See github issue publishingcg#10.

Dave Cramer: The MDN format is weird.

5. Resolutions