Overarching scope of the DPUB; Was re: Pagination ED, 28 October 2013

Tony has surfaced an idea that we might want to consider further (I place the blame for this solely at the feet of his S1000D reference).

Dave’s initial pagination document covers most books and core concerns that may apply to a variety of vertical publishing concerns. The following publishing communities have some very different pagination concerns, however. Which begs the question: how many of the following communities might be considered “in scope” of the Digital Publishing Interest Group without necessitating a change in the group’s charter? Because we’re missing a whole bunch of contributors if we are trying to cover the following publishing communities:

 *   Academic/Scientific Journals (there is some representation already in the group. I don’t think we have a comprehensive list of people who truly represent the whole of academic and scientific journal publishing, though)
 *   Military (S1000D and other standards go here)
 *   Product Service information - which may include military, or not – think durable (e.g., oil well rig equipment, home appliances, etc.) and non-durable goods (e.g., baby products, camping gear, etc.)
 *   Automotive (which could be lumped into product service information under durable goods)
 *   Technical communications publishing, in general (which could be corporate and could make use of DITA)
 *   Regulatory submissions publishing (Pharma, Medical devices, Financial products, and anything else that requires government regulation – some of this could be lumped in with tech comm in general, other stuff is very specific to the government institutions to which the submitters are submitting)

For what it’s worth, if you think putting 6 different things in the footer is complicated, you should see the algorithms that make up each of the four unique pieces of information besides the revision and page number in that 6 item footer… This is before you start talking about the requirements for what goes into the footers for change pages. Yes. I said change pages. I’ve certainly never considered how one might accomplish the concept of creating a change page package for an EPUB (and there are specific reasons that S1000D publishers do this over rev’ing the entire publication).

DITA[1] alone aims to serve a number of these different publishing communities through the specialization mechanism built into the standard. There are current active specialization committees for Learning and Training content (not to be confused with K-12 or higher ed textbook content, but you could shoe horn a text book into this specialization if you were really determined), Semiconductor Information Design, and general Tech Comm.

All of these groups consider themselves to be “in the digital publishing” domain. Luckily, the S1000D consortium has not seen fit to add EPUB 3 to their list of required outputs (they seem to be happy with their IETM’s), but that does not mean these other groups aren’t interested in getting their content out there on devices through massively available reading systems other the PDF, too. I know that most of the companies that produce DITA publishing solutions, for example, are busily figuring out how to get EPUB out of their DITA publishing workflows. Same goes for banks and other institutions that produce financial analysis and market reports.

Looking back at the DPUB charter [2], I see references to books, journals, magazines, on-line advertising, online education, textbooks, online test, illustrations, etc. but nothing about tech docs or any of the other specific publishing communities I mention above. The IDPF has always said that EPUB was intended to be for more publication types than books, but the current charter for the DPUB is very publishing-as-an-industry-centric. Does this mean that the publishing communities I’ve listed above are considered “out of scope” for the DPUB, or just that the DPUB hasn’t gotten there yet? Better question… _Should_ the DPUB go there eventually, considering each of parallel publishing groups above as a sub group? Or should these parallel publishing groups have a DPUB unto themselves?

Clearly, there becomes a point where a groups scope has to be managed in order for the group to get anything done. I’m not proposing to add any of the groups I’ve mentioned above because I think this would create an unmanageable scope of the DPUB as it currently sits. But those other publishing interests aren’t going away, either, and they’ve made it pretty clear that they want to publish their stuff on the web, too.

It would be very helpful for the DPUB charter group management team to provide some clarity regarding my questions here. (Basically so I know whether I have to type “S1000D" and/or “DITA" in this forum again anytime soon.)

Thanks for considering.

Jean Kaplansky
Solutions Architect
Aptara, Inc.
Email: jean.kaplansky@aptaracorp.com<mailto:jean.kaplansky@aptaracorp.com>
Skype: JeanKaplansky
Mobile: 518 487 9670

[cid:43269179-6E74-42C9-A929-AD87EDBD579B]


[1] https://www.oasis-open.org/committees/tc_home.php?wg_abbrev=dita
[2] http://www.w3.org/2013/02/digpubig.html

From: Tony Graham <tgraham@mentea.net<mailto:tgraham@mentea.net>>
Date: Sunday, November 10, 2013 at 1:05 PM
To: "public-digipub-ig-comment@w3.org<mailto:public-digipub-ig-comment@w3.org>" <public-digipub-ig-comment@w3.org<mailto:public-digipub-ig-comment@w3.org>>
Subject: Pagination ED, 28 October 2013
Resent-From: <public-digipub-ig-comment@w3.org<mailto:public-digipub-ig-comment@w3.org>>
Resent-Date: Sunday, November 10, 2013 at 1:05 PM

Status
------

Comments are directed to public-digipub-ig@w3.org<mailto:public-digipub-ig@w3.org>, but the dpub
page at http://www.w3.org/dpub/IG/wiki/Main_Page states that
public comments are welcome on public-digipub-ig-comment@w3.org<mailto:public-digipub-ig-comment@w3.org>
and provides no indication that non-members can post to
public-digipub-ig@w3.org<mailto:public-digipub-ig@w3.org>.  Which is correct?


5. Running headers and footers
------------------------------

There truly is more to running headers and footers than is dreamt
of in the open web platform.  For example (though few outside
aircraft/military applications would aspire to it), the S1000D
specification [1] describes six items and their prescribed
positions in the page footer:

- Document identifier

- Issue date

- Page number

- Applicability

- Security marking

- End of data module indication

The S1000D specification itself [2] manages to also put the
filename of what appears to be its original Word file in the
footer as well, though I can't find anywhere in the specification
for doing that.


8. Tables
---------

A common requirement for paginated documents is to repeat the
table caption or a variation of the table caption when a table
breaks across a page.  The variations on the table caption can
include repeating the table number and table caption plus text,
such as "(continued)", to indicate it is a continuation or just
the table number plus "(continued)" (or similar) since the
caption (which may be long) has already been seen.

A similar requirement is to place some text, such
as "(continues)", at the foot of a table part when the table
breaks across a page.


Lists
-----

The current document has sections on figures and tables but lacks
a section on lists.  There is nothing to indicate whether or not
this is a deliberate omission.

Regards,


Tony Graham                                   tgraham@mentea.net<mailto:tgraham@mentea.net>
Consultant                                 http://www.mentea.net
Mentea       13 Kelly's Bay Beach, Skerries, Co. Dublin, Ireland
--  --  --  --  --  --  --  --  --  --  --  --  --  --  --  --
    XML, XSL-FO and XSLT consulting, training and programming
       Chair, Print and Page Layout Community Group @ W3C

[1] http://public.s1000d.org/Downloads/Pages/S1000DDownloads.aspx
[2] Under "/S1000D Issue 4.1/Specification/" in the S1000D Issue 4.1
    download