Re: [Glossary] Definition of a portable document (and other things...)

And I am looking for a completely different definition where the same document may differ in content, as well as other possible things.

It’s also unclear to me why a “web resources” to have to online.  To me, that’s a resource that is in one of the many OWP formats – regardless of its state. If you want to talk about it being online, then use the term online.  But  the same image online and offline is still the same “web resource” - to me.

So it looks like you are trying to use WEB to refer to the online state – where I am using it to refer to the content type(s) used.   That’s a BIG gap…

Leonard

From: Bill McCoy
Date: Thursday, September 10, 2015 at 3:50 PM
To: Leonard Rosenthol
Cc: Olaf Drümmer, Ivan Herman, W3C Digital Publishing IG, Deborah Kaplan, Liam Quin, Ralph Swick
Subject: Re: [Glossary] Definition of a portable document (and other things...)

Leonard, I think you may have a point, but yet a "Portable Web Document" by definition is comprised of Web Resources, and I think its offline state can have two manifestations, a "Portable Document" (omitting "Web", so this might be e.g. a .epub file) or a cache of its Web Resources. By definition (at least the one I'm seeking) these states would be equivalent in content but they might not be equivalent in other ways. For example in the online state, access may require authenticated https access, in the offline cached state its resources may not be directly accessible at all, in the .epub state clearly all the resources are directly accessible. This can have implications re: copyright protection.

For a "Web Document" that is not a "Portable Web Document" then offline must necessarily imply a representation only of  a particular state of the Web Document. That again could be either a cache or else a "Portable Document" (most likely not a "Portable Web Document" since offline).

--Bill


On Thu, Sep 10, 2015 at 12:39 PM, Leonard Rosenthol <lrosenth@adobe.com<mailto:lrosenth@adobe.com>> wrote:
Then if this is the case – then why do we need the states of “online, offline and cached” for a portable web document?   Maybe we only need those then for a web document, where offline == portable?

From: Bill McCoy
Date: Thursday, September 10, 2015 at 3:35 PM
To: Leonard Rosenthol
Cc: Olaf Drümmer, Ivan Herman, W3C Digital Publishing IG, Deborah Kaplan, Liam Quin, Ralph Swick

Subject: Re: [Glossary] Definition of a portable document (and other things...)

Leonard, of course dynamic updating of information when online is a desirable feature... the banking app on my mobile phone, among others, already works this way and I suspect you use apps that do likewise. I think we all agree on pushing for OWP to enable doing more of this without resorting to native apps.

But to me, content that changes on the fly based on new data is not what I would call a portable document, since it depends on a server process to realize the true current state of the content, and that server process cannot be archived etc.

This group may certainly want to taking on helping to facilitate this feature in Web Documents but I don't think we should conflate "portable documents" with "offline-usable Web applications", even if a cached state of the Web application may be portable.  Maybe we just need additional terms rather than trying to load everything on to "portable".

--Bill

On Thu, Sep 10, 2015 at 12:15 PM, Leonard Rosenthol <lrosenth@adobe.com<mailto:lrosenth@adobe.com>> wrote:
I would agree that your example from amazon is one that you probably wouldn’t want portable…

But consider what you see when you log into a place like eTrade, with all the charts and graphs about your stock portfolio.
Or consider the reports from Adobe or Google Analytics.

Those are all examples of things that users currently take away with them but they are static snapshots.   What if they could be interactive versions (using the same web technologies) of that snapshot  BUT could also be updated with the latest data simply by reconnecting?

We’ve talked to MANY corporate users who want something like this…

Now you could argue semantics and terminology all you want – but at the end of the day, there is a customer demand for a portable document that can be updated…(and this isn’t new, we’ve been hearing this request around PDF for close to 20 years now)

Leonard

From: Bill McCoy
Date: Thursday, September 10, 2015 at 2:07 PM
To: Olaf Drümmer
Cc: Leonard Rosenthol, Ivan Herman, W3C Digital Publishing IG, Deborah Kaplan, Liam Quin, Ralph Swick
Subject: Re: [Glossary] Definition of a portable document (and other things...)

Yes, and let me piggyback on this to try to make my point (to Ivan) more clear.

I think that the ability to reliably capture a snapshot and use it offline is a righteous feature for a Web Document to offer. And, the results of that snapshot might be itself a (new instance of a) "Portable [Web] Document".

But to me that does not make the original Web Document itself a "Portable Web Document" because what is captured with the snapshot is not a true representation of the original document.

Leonard's dashboard example is a perfect illustration. Take a dashboard like http://status.aws.amazon.com/ .  I can't imagine calling that a "Portable Web Document".

I think we are here confusing offline features of Web Documents with what is a Portable [Web] Document. I don't believe they are at all the same thing. And I am still convinced we can come up with a definition for the latter that is neither anthropocentric nor fundamentally subjective.

--Bill



On Thu, Sep 10, 2015 at 10:58 AM, Olaf Drümmer <olaf@druemmer.com<mailto:olaf@druemmer.com>> wrote:
But we may want to keep in mind that being able to capture a snapshot (kind of a 'frozen state') could be a valid feature, as much as being able to update when (after having been offline) being online again. Not sure whether a 'deep freeze' switch would be a metadata item in the portable document (== do not update me), or whether the document would have to be written into a portable document such that it simply doesn't update it itself anymore.

Olaf


On 10 Sep 2015, at 18:16, Leonard Rosenthol <lrosenth@ADOBE.COM<mailto:lrosenth@ADOBE.COM>> wrote:

One of the best examples/use cases that we have in this area is a “Dashboard”, as you might get to visualize any sort of data.

You would like this dashboard to be portable – so that it can be used both online and offline.  But in the online case, the document should be able to get the latest set of data and then store that away for offline use (aka caching, but explicit instead of implicit).

So yes – I think we are now getting into the “state” of the document.  It is portable but can be in different states.





--

Bill McCoy
Executive Director
International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF)
email: bmccoy@idpf.org<mailto:bmccoy@idpf.org>
mobile: +1 206 353 0233<tel:%2B1%20206%20353%200233>




--

Bill McCoy
Executive Director
International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF)
email: bmccoy@idpf.org<mailto:bmccoy@idpf.org>
mobile: +1 206 353 0233<tel:%2B1%20206%20353%200233>




--

Bill McCoy
Executive Director
International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF)
email: bmccoy@idpf.org<mailto:bmccoy@idpf.org>
mobile: +1 206 353 0233