magazines and OWP (was Re: Prioritisation)

Dianne is certainly correct that  magazine workflows are largely Adobe
CS-centric, and (per other email) that print-first orientation will likely
linger longer in this segment of publishing, at least for major consumer
magazines.

But I think it would nevertheless be a big mistake for this group to make
working on digital magazine requirements anything other than in-scope and
high-priority (at least in the big-picture sense).

The "jazzed-up print-replica" nature of digital magazines as per most
solutions to date (including the original Adobe DPS) haven't led to
large-scale customer traction, and it seems that Adobe is with its newly
announced "DPS 2015" moving towards more OWP-centric experiences, for
example by integrating Apache Cordova (aka PhoneGap). I believe there is
still a proprietary format for content and that the browser engine may not
yet be used to render all content but I'm not sure and the situation seems
to be a bit fluid (perhaps Leonard could give us some information about the
evolving DPS technical architecture).

More generally it seems clear that the major consumer print magazines are
being substantially disrupted by the Web and mobile apps and that both
established properties and new media firms will continue to arise that are
digital-first and in many cases digital-only. It is clear that these folks
will be directly benefited both by improving OWP base capabilities for
publishers and by working towards the EPUB-WEB vision.

And I think that magazines are an especially interesting and important use
case for EPUB-WEB because they are advertising-centric, and ads in digital
content  (in many cases) need to be dynamic not static, come from multiple
sources, have robust analytics, and be actionable by the user. These things
are of course easy to do with websites but not so straightforwardly with
packaged EPUB publications. OTOH digital magazines also (in many cases)
need to be distributed through channels, supported via custom applications,
and  usable offline, all things that are easy to do with for example EPUB
but not so straightforward with websites. Last but not least, magazines are
perhaps the pickiest segment about design/layout/typography: if we can make
OWP good enough for a consumer magazine art director, it is pretty much
guaranteed to be good enough for everyone else in publishing.

Strategically, I see digital magazines in the broadest sense as pushing the
need for convergence of publications/websites, online/offline,
real-time/dynamic and static/canonical content and improving high-design
layout/typography capabilities of OWP... all of which is precisely where we
should be looking for high-priority work items to fully realize the
EPUB-WEB vision.

Tactically, by this group explicitly working this this area we will be
setting a direction that OWP is the right platform for digital magazines...
 this would also encourage vendors such as Adobe to move further towards
OWP (and in the process help to improve OWP for all publishers).

--Bill


On Wed, Aug 5, 2015 at 7:43 AM, Dianne Kennedy <dkennedy@idealliance.org>
wrote:

> For magazines the shift to digital-first will be a slow one as workflows
> are currently highly invested and a near monopoly held by Adobe Creative
> suite.  In our case digital-first will be some combination of PRISM
> metadata for the issue and articles within the issue + HTML5.  In fact,
> PRISM is working on an authoring schema for authors to use as a front end
> to their CS workflows.  While new magazines may leapfrog, majors are doomed
> to a slow evolution toward the ideal.
>
>
>
> I'm just trying to convey the reality of our situation (magazine industry)
> and figure out if that is out of scope for this discussion.  If out of
> scope, I will place any of those thoughts and put any input I have that
> considers the current reality aside so I can contribute from the proper
> point-of-view.
>
>
>
> *Dianne Kennedy *| Vice President Digital & Emerging Technologies
>
> O: 630.941.8197 | M: 630.908.0770 | dkennedy@idealliance.org
> <sbonoff@idealliance.org> | www.idealliance.org
>
> [image: idealliance_logo_web]
>
>
>
> *From:* Jacob Friedman [mailto:jacob@subsumo.com]
> *Sent:* Wednesday, August 5, 2015 9:25 AM
> *To:* Dianne Kennedy
> *Cc:* Ivan Herman; Leonard Rosenthol; Johannes Wilm; Bill Kasdorf; Kaveh
> Bazargan; Dave Cramer; W3C Digital Publishing Discussion list; Matthew Hardy
> *Subject:* Re: Prioritisation
>
>
>
> Publishing is definitely moving toward the web - I can imagine that all
> printed materials *should and will* be authored in such a system which
> respects HTML markup. Essentially, this solves cross-platform publishing...
>
>
>
> On 2015-08-05, at 10:20 AM, Dianne Kennedy <dkennedy@idealliance.org>
> wrote:
>
>
>
> Question, does this only apply when the WEPUB is the sole point of
> reference?  In other words, are publications that were originally published
> in print out of scope for this discussion?
>
> For magazines whose origin is a print rendition, print will remain the
> publication of reference and we will want to mark where pages were broken
> in that original source, despite where an individual rendition might break
> "pages".  The reason for this is that pages are often copyedited to
> engineer page breaks at important content markers.  Its also important to
> being able syncronize the point in content that a user returns to as they
> move between Web to mobile from print throughout their reading day...
>
> Dianne Kennedy | Vice President Digital & Emerging Technologies
> O: 630.941.8197 | M: 630.908.0770 | dkennedy@idealliance.org |
> www.idealliance.org
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ivan Herman [mailto:ivan@w3.org]
> Sent: Wednesday, August 5, 2015 4:37 AM
> To: Leonard Rosenthol
> Cc: Johannes Wilm; Bill Kasdorf; Kaveh Bazargan; Dave Cramer; W3C Digital
> Publishing Discussion list; Matthew Hardy
> Subject: Re: Prioritisation
>
> Leonard,
>
>
> On 04 Aug 2015, at 21:38 , Leonard Rosenthol <lrosenth@adobe.com> wrote:
>
> With the focus here on terminology, I think that we also need to be
> careful about what the definition of a “page” is in this context.
>
> In reading over the various messages here, I see (at least) three
> different definitions.
>
> 1 – The content that fits on the device’s screen/output without requiring
> any scrolling.
> 2 – The content that maps to a semantic concept in the publication (eg.
> Index, chapter, article, etc.) and may require scrolling
> 3 – The content that maps to the printed or fixed layout representation.
>
>
> I like this differentiation, and I would think that #2 is indeed very
> important but we may want to, eventually, completely dissociate it from the
> concept of paging.
>
> My understanding is that publishers, these days, put some sort of a page
> mark into the digital output (in the form of an invisible element, of a
> metadata, etc.). The purpose of this is to be able to *link* (either
> conceptually or through real hyperlinks) into the document. It is obviously
> important for various use cases that came up in this thread already (and
> others) like academic reference or classroom usage. But, just as you say,
> handling these may require scrolling and that because the concept of these
> anchors are, actually, orthogonal to display, ie, pages in terms of #1 and
> #3.
>
> I think there is an interesting discussion to have on where anchors should
> be put, what is the granularity of those, can (in future) some sort of a
> robust anchoring approach take over the need for these anchors, etc. It is
> largely a usability issue, but I think it is better if we separate it from
> the concept of pagination…
>
> Cheers
>
> Ivan
>
>
>
>
> Each of these is a completely valid definition of a “page” of content that
> one may wish to present to a user in a paginated fashion, where they
> navigate between other instances of the same.   And, like Johannes, I
> believe they are all valid use cases for varying types of content – and
> that (a) authors need to be able to control which they want (perhaps more
> than one in the same publication) and (b) any UA/RS needs to be able to
> support what the author has specified.
>
> Leonard
>
> From: Johannes Wilm
> Date: Tuesday, August 4, 2015 at 3:21 PM
> To: Bill Kasdorf
> Cc: Kaveh Bazargan, Dave Cramer, "public-digipub@w3.org"
> Subject: Re: Prioritisation
> Resent-From: <public-digipub@w3.org>
> Resent-Date: Tuesday, August 4, 2015 at 3:21 PM
>
>
> Hey,
>
> On Tue, Aug 4, 2015 at 7:50 PM, Bill Kasdorf <bkasdorf@apexcovantage.com>
> wrote:
>
> A quick clarification. I am quite sure that in her e-mail Deborah is using
> the term "pagination" to mean "maintaining a record in the digital file of
> where the page breaks occur in the paginated version of record." That's
> essential to accessibility and other useful things as well (citations,
> cross references, indexes, etc. in a world in which print is still
> considered the version of record and references to its page breaks are
> common.) That's not the same as making the _rendered pages_ in the digital
> file replicate those in the print.—Bill K
>
>
> I think it should be possible to offer both things (dynamically paged
> pages AND making sure that page 32 contains the same content on different
> devices), possibly with a few tiny changes to rendering engines [1]. Then
> the insertion of manual page breaks are only needed if there is a specific
> reason to end a page before it is entirely filled.
>
> Of course this means that:
>
> A) Pages will always need to contain the same amount of text/content on
> all devices. That may not make sense for some tiny mobile screens for which
> it may make sense to use a lot more pages.
> B) One needs to define the size of a single page on beforehand.
> C) Fonts used for rendering need to be the exact same.
>
> For issue A I could think of some solutions that should work for most
> cases: For example, one may use the same pagination size on 80% of screens
> by adding extra margins or zooming further in, and in the 20% remaining
> cases of really tiny or really huge screens, one uses two types of pages:
>
> * One system used for flipping through pages on the system in question
> where page size equals screen size.
> * A second system of pagination that uses the standard page size as
> reference that is used to assign page numbers, etc. . The device with the
> small/huge screen that displays small pages should not have problems
> figuring out what content would have gone on what page if the page size had
> been the standard size.
>
> How that all would be presented graphically to the user would come down to
> the preferences of those doing the book design and designing the JS needed
> to set this up.
>
>
>
> [1] At the Frankfurt Bookfair in 2012, we tried to show the first version
> of the browser-based book-page design that I have been working on quite a
> bit, but we had a browser on the server create PDFs. Even though everything
> should have been the same, we found that the browsers on server and demo
> machine cut the page contents slightly differently. Our investigations went
> as far as that the dpi of the screen where the browser was running had some
> influence, even when it shouldn't, but we never quite found out what the
> reason was. At any rate, the differences were miniscule, but it did lead to
> some words/letters being moved on to the next page some times. I haven't
> investigated whether that would still happen in 2015.
>
>
>
>
>
> From: Kaveh Bazargan [mailto:kaveh@rivervalleytechnologies.com]
> Sent: Tuesday, August 04, 2015 1:37 PM
> To: Bill Kasdorf
> Cc: Dave Cramer; public-digipub@w3.org
> Subject: Re: Prioritisation
>
> Thank you Dave and Bill
>
> Dave I totally take your point about that horrendously long web page. So I
> agree that we need some kind of paginated layout so you finish one chunk
> and go to the next. Therefore I also like reading paginated text – at least
> for long prose. (In fact, I prefer beautifully typeset pages printed on
> good quality paper!)
>
> My issue is that paginating for an interactive reader like an iPad is
> totally different to paginating for paper. On paper there is no
> interactivity, no accessibility (apart from having readable fonts), and no
> reflow. It is quite natural to flip a page to look at a figure floated onto
> the next page and very quickly flip back and forth. And quite natural to
> have footnotes. But on an electronic device it is hard to do that, yet
> easier to hover the mouse and have a note pop up.
>
> So while I fully support pagination for on screen reading, done by the
> browser, but I cannot see the advantage of floating figures and tables,
> footnotes, or traditional indexes for that matter, in an electronic reading
> environment.
>
> As I write this I see Deborah's mail about electronic and paper versions
> having the same pagination. That is a constraint that prevents good print
> as well as good online pagination. My solution would be to do away with
> page numbers and refer to paragraphs, which would then apply to any
> reflowing version too!
>
> I feel that for straightforward text it is great that we can have one
> engine producing the same pages for online and for print. But for complex
> documents, say critical editions, or STM content, we can take the XML
> document (or very strict HTML) and pass it to a dedicated pagination engine
> to do the one thing it is good at.
>
> Kaveh
>
>
>
> On 4 August 2015 at 18:11, Bill Kasdorf <bkasdorf@apexcovantage.com>
> wrote:
> Also, it's important not to confuse "pagination" with "fixed layout." Most
> eReaders provide a paginated view that is still reflowable. And most
> readers (that is, the human kind) prefer that for reading long form
> content. Even reading the New York Times on my iPad, I have it set to
> paginated rather than scrolling view. Way easier (especially on a treadmill
> in the morning).
>
> Of course an important underlying issue here is the EPUB+WEB vision:
> ideally, we'd like the same file (or collection of resources, whether
> packaged or not, that constitutes a publication) to be able to behave the
> same online and offline. Best to have the same standard, non-proprietary,
> ubiquitous infrastructure native to browsers able to deliver that without
> requiring separate software.
>
> --Bill Kasdorf
>
> From: Dave Cramer [mailto:dauwhe@gmail.com]
> Sent: Tuesday, August 04, 2015 12:32 PM
> To: public-digipub@w3.org
> Cc: public-digipub@w3.org
> Subject: Re: Prioritisation
>
> On Tue, Aug 4, 2015 at 11:55 AM, Kaveh Bazargan <
> kaveh@rivervalleytechnologies.com> wrote:
> Forgive me for a very basic question, but it is a devil's advocate type of
> question. And if this is not the place to ask this perhaps you can direct
> me to any relevant discussions.
>
> My very basic question is, why do we need to "paginate" in the browser in
> the first place? Why not keep the browser for reflowing and interactive
> text, which is what it is good at, and use a standard mark-up pagination
> system (TeX/LaTeX would be my choice) to do what that is good at. If
> another system has already solved problems like footnotes and floating
> figures, what exactly is the drive to reinvent that in the browser?
>
> Again, apologies if the answer is really obvious!!
>
> Regards
> Kaveh
>
>
>
> I find that reading long-form content is easier if that content is
> paginated [1]. Much of the reading we do is now on screens, and HTML+CSS is
> a very nice way of rendering content that can adapt to a variety of screen
> sizes and types, not to mention the personal needs of the reader. So I
> think it would be tremendously valuable to have the ability to paginate in
> the browser, thus combining some of the design capabilities of print with
> the flexibility and ubiquity of the web. This would make it easier to
> develop ebook reading systems and give browser users more choice in how
> they read, while preserving the accessibility advantages of the web.
>
> Regards,
>
> Dave
>
> [1]
> http://www.clickhole.com/blogpost/time-i-spent-commercial-whaling-ship-totally-chang-768
>
>
>
> --
> Kaveh Bazargan
> Director
> River Valley Technologies
> @kaveh1000
> +44 7771 824 111
> www.rivervalleytechnologies.com
> www.bazargan.org
>
>
>
>
>
> ----
> 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
>
>
>
>
>