Re: "Completeness" as a feature of a POW (aka EPUB+Web)??

proposed concrete definition:

**portable** (in Web context) means:
*does not require active serverinfrastructure*.

or to state it another way, **portable** means that
*all programmatic elementsare part of and execute in the context of the
content* ("code-on-demand" in
Roy Fielding terms).

--Bill

On Thu, Aug 13, 2015 at 12:16 PM, Siegman, Tzviya - Hoboken <
tsiegman@wiley.com> wrote:

> As for the semantics, we should probably focus on what we mean by
> "portable," and not get quite so hung up on what we mean by "complete."
> That is verging very close to the argument about what "is"
>
> +100
>
> Tzviya Siegman
> Digital Book Standards & Capabilities Lead
> Wiley
> 201-748-6884
> tsiegman@wiley.com
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Bill Kasdorf [mailto:bkasdorf@apexcovantage.com]
> Sent: Thursday, August 13, 2015 3:00 PM
> To: Leonard Rosenthol; Ivan Herman
> Cc: W3C Digital Publishing IG; Bill McCoy
> Subject: RE: "Completeness" as a feature of a POW (aka EPUB+Web)??
>
> The example of the embedded quiz was not what I was considering "dynamic,"
> in the sense of something that is potentially different every time it's
> accessed (and perhaps whose whole point is that _only_ the
> current-when-accessed version is what is intended). For the example of the
> quiz, I would argue that the _quiz itself_ doesn't change, but the answers
> provided by the student obviously do (ditto any grading provided by a
> widget). So I would consider the quiz, in that case, legitimately part of
> the publication, but the answers not to be.
>
> Nevertheless, you have a good point, the portable publication may in fact
> go "fetch" the quiz, or something even simpler like a streaming video. So
> in those cases I would agree that the quiz or the video, though external
> resources, _should_ be considered part of the publication, and the
> publication not to be "complete" without it. I deliberately use quote marks
> because that appears to me to be the true edge case.
>
> If the portable version of the publication contains the widget that
> provides the quiz, or if the video is embedded, then there isn't really a
> question.
>
> What this is leading me to question is whether a publication needs to be
> "complete" in order to meet the EPUB+WEB vision in the sense of "identical
> in all three states (online, cached, portable)." This discussion is leading
> me to lean toward entertaining the notion that it's perfectly reasonable
> for "a publication" not to lose its identity just because some resources
> might need to be retrieved from the network. I realize that may strike
> folks as a major concession to the vision of EPUB+WEB, but I would point
> out that the alternative seems to make less intuitive sense. Particularly
> in education, there will be LOTS of cases where rich functionality is
> fetched from the network. (Ditto for magazines and news.) It does not seem
> reasonable to me not to still consider the portable version the same
> publication, as long as it has the appropriate links and fallbacks.
>
> And I guess that gets me at least most of the way back to where I started,
> which would be to consider the publication complete as long as it contains
> the links to external resources. But there is definitely a gray area, which
> then comes down to when the resources are intrinsic to the publication and
> when they are  not.
>
> It's going to be hard to draw a line here. . . . This is potentially one
> of those issues where we can get wrapped around the axle on the semantics
> without contributing anything very useful to the solution. I would not want
> to draw such a strict line on "completeness" that it would undermine the
> concept of a publication existing in online/cached/portable states, or that
> it would leave out huge classes of publications like rich textbooks,
> magazines, etc.
>
> As for the semantics, we should probably focus on what we mean by
> "portable," and not get quite so hung up on what we mean by "complete."
> That is verging very close to the argument about what "is" is. ;-)
>
> --Bill K
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Leonard Rosenthol [mailto:lrosenth@adobe.com]
> Sent: Thursday, August 13, 2015 2:30 PM
> To: Bill Kasdorf; Ivan Herman
> Cc: W3C Digital Publishing IG; Bill McCoy
> Subject: Re: "Completeness" as a feature of a POW (aka EPUB+Web)??
>
> I think the second case - dynamic content - is not as clear cut as you
> make it out to be, Bill.  It is very dependent on how that information is
> presented - or how much of the publication’s “content” is actually derived
> from that data.
>
> Sure, if we are only talking about a single value on a page (such as a
> stock price or the current weather), not having it probably wouldn’t impact
> the understanding of the material or the consumption experience of the
> publication.  BUT consider something such as an embedded quiz in a
> textbook, where the questions themselves are coming in live…if they aren’t
> available (either live or cached) then the student can’t continue.
>
> Leonard
>
>
>
> On 8/13/15, 11:38 AM, "Bill Kasdorf" <bkasdorf@apexcovantage.com> wrote:
>
> >Just a quick observation wrt Ivan's example of citations to external
> publications (my deliberate wording). The papers cited in a journal article
> (often scores and sometimes hundreds of them) are NOT part of "the
> publication," they are referenced by the publication. The citations are
> part of the publication; the cited resources are not.
> >
> >We need to be careful, in considering the concept of completeness, to
> distinguish between whether we are talking about "the publication itself"
> vs. "the publication and everything else it references."
> >
> >This also applies to dynamic content, e.g., a link that fetches
> up-to-date information (a stock price, the weather in Sydney, comments from
> other students in my class on what we're studying, etc.).
> >
> >In both of those cases, imo, it is reasonable to consider the
> >publication complete (and, put the other way around, inappropriate to
> >consider it incomplete) if those links/citations are present, even if
> >they are not actionable at a given time (e.g., when the portable
> >version of the publication is consumed offline), and whether or not the
> >external content has been cached. This is _very_ important for
> >publications like magazines and news publications. (Be careful to avoid
> >reflexively thinking "books.")
> >
> >--Bill K
> >
> >-----Original Message-----
> >From: Ivan Herman [mailto:ivan@w3.org]
> >Sent: Thursday, August 13, 2015 12:55 AM
> >To: Leonard Rosenthol
> >Cc: W3C Digital Publishing IG; Bill McCoy
> >Subject: Re: "Completeness" as a feature of a POW (aka EPUB+Web)??
> >
> >Leonard,
> >
> >good catch, the formulation is indeed not clear. Obviously, there is a
> need for external link to various things; to take the area of academic
> publication as an example, such a publication may include references to
> other papers, it may include references to research data (that may be too
> large to be included in the document), etc, and it is essential to keep the
> hyperlink nature of those references. In this sense, "completeness" is not
> meant to be "fully self-contained".
> >
> >I think that Bill's answer[1]:
> >
> >"portable documents "promise" a reliable consumption experience without
> respect of any particular server infrastructure and, especially, without
> such server infrastructure providing interactivity."
> >
> >what I believe we all mean. I am not sure "idempotence"[2], proposed by
> >Bill, is really the right term, but I do not have a better one at this
> >point either:-(
> >
> >Thanks
> >
> >Ivan
> >
> >[1]
> >https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-digipub-ig/2015Aug/0056.htm
> >l [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idempotence
> >
> >
> >> On 13 Aug 2015, at 02:31 , Leonard Rosenthol <lrosenth@adobe.com>
> wrote:
> >>
> >> In rewriting the document about Portable Documents for the web (thanks
> for the suggestion & link, Tzviya), I can across the following paragraph:
> >>
> >>> EPUB can be viewed as simply defining a specialization of Web content
> that assures that a collection of content items has the needed properties
> of completeness and logical structure, and does so in a standard way that
> other processing tools and services can reliably create, manipulate, and
> present such collections. This completeness constraint is key for bridging
> the current gap between an online and offline/portable view of the same
> content (see <a href="#whynow">section on usage patterns</a> below).
> >>>
> >> While not spelled out here or in the “section on usage patterns”, I am
> going to take the terminology of “completeness” to mean “fully
> self-contained” (aka no external references).  If it means something else,
> feel free to ignore what follows (but only after you correct me :).
> >>
> >> In the current use cases for EPUB (books, magazines, etc.), the desire
> by the publisher to have everything contained inside the package is clearly
> key – just as that same property has been a tenant of the various PDF
> subset standards (PDF/A, PDF/X, etc.)  However, there also exists for PDF
> use cases where external references are a key aspect to the workflow – for
> example, external content or color profiles in a variable or transactional
> workflow (eg. PDF/VT).   As such, I would like to suggest that as a
> portable document for OWP, that there also needs to be a provision for
> external references in this POW (Portable Open Web) format.
> >>
> >> I know that there have been discussions about this around EPUB in the
> past for large assets (eg. Video and audio), but I would put forth that the
> same principles could also be applied for other types of content as well.
> Be it advertisements in a publication, current data sets in a STEM
> publication or even just a reference to the latest version of a common JS
> library used by the publication.
> >>
> >> What do others think about this?   Is completeness/self-contained a
> requirement in a POW?
> >>
> >> Thanks,
> >> Leonard
> >>
> >
> >
> >----
> >Ivan Herman, W3C
> >Digital Publishing Activity Lead
> >Home: http://www.w3.org/People/Ivan/
> >mobile: +31-641044153
> >ORCID ID: http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0782-2704
> >
> >
> >
> >
>