EPUB 3.3 is a W3C Recommendation

Hi all,

As some of you might have already seen, EPUB 3.3 was published as a W3C Recommendation today!!

Look at our shiny new URL: https://www.w3.org/TR/epub/

A press release also went out today from the W3C announcing the publication of EPUB 3.3: https://www.w3.org/2023/05/pressrelease-epub33-rec.html.en

The press release is also available in French<https://www.w3.org/2023/05/pressrelease-epub33-rec.html.fr>, Japanese<https://www.w3.org/2023/05/pressrelease-epub33-rec.html.ja>, and Chinese<https://www.w3.org/2023/05/pressrelease-epub33-rec.html.zh>.

This concludes the work of the EPUB 3 Working Group, and we hope we will see you as we continue working in the Publishing Maintenance Working Group (whose charter is still up for vote, so please vote<https://www.w3.org/2002/09/wbs/33280/pmwg/> if you have not yet). We will be meeting at TPAC this year, and we hope to see some of you in person so we can celebrate properly.

Developing a specification almost entirely in the midst of a global pandemic and nearly completely remotely is not a challenge I would wish on anyone, but we did it, and did it well. This entire group undertook this revision with care, kindness, and a great deal of effort. We could not have done this without you.

The publication of EPUB 3.3 is a huge deal, and we should be proud of ourselves. In addition to publishing three specifications, we took on projects the publishing industry has been requesting for years: an entire EPUB test suite! Our efforts will be reflected in many places, especially as we see more and more publishers producing born accessible ebooks.

I want to give special attention to the efforts of several people in this group who went above and beyond to make this happen:

  *   Matt Garrish – the world’s greatest, most patient, and detail-oriented editor a standards group could ask for. He takes our never-ending github comments, meeting minutes, and general ramblings and turns them into specifications, he is magic.
  *   Ivan Herman – “Team Contact” is a poor descriptor for the role Ivan plays in our group, without him none of this would have gotten done. He edits, he configures, he writes scripts, and he handles W3C process tickets, is there anything he cannot do?
  *   Dan Lazin – for his enthusiasm and kindly management of our test suite and testing efforts.

I also want to thank my co-chairs, Dave and Shinya, chairing is a lot of work but it’s made significantly easier when you have excellent people to do it with.

Lastly, I want to acknowledge those that we lost during this time. Garth Conboy and Ben Schroeter were both valued members of this group and should be here to celebrate this milestone with us, as I am sure they are in spirit. Garth was one of the people that helped create EPUB as we know it, and we were all lucky to have his experience, knowledge, and endless supply of “happy pills” in the time he was with us. Ben will always be remembered for his insight and the good nature he brought to every meeting. We miss them both very dearly.

I wish we could all be together to celebrate this huge accomplishment, so please make sure you find a chance today to treat yourself to something nice, you all deserve it!

Many thanks,
Wendy