[wbs] response to 'Call for Review: Publishing Working Group Charter'

The following answers have been successfully submitted to 'Call for Review:
Publishing Working Group Charter' (Advisory Committee) for Disruptive
Innovations by Daniel Glazman.


The reviewer's organization suggests changes to this Charter, and only
supports the proposal if the changes are adopted [Formal Objection].

Additional comments about the proposal:
   Disruptive Innovations spent years advocating for a merger between W3C
and IDPF, saying that EPUB is one of the most important customer of the
Web, does not differ from the Web itself and should therefore be done
inside a W3C WG. We are then totally in favor of a WG handling the future
of Publications.

If changes were applied to the most important prose in this document (the
description of the EPUB 4 deliverable in section 3.1) after comments from
us, the proposed Charter remains a confusing proposal for several important
reasons:

1. its Scope (section 2) is too long and too detailed. This is not a
"scope", it's a list of technical and functional requirements that should
be decided by the WG itself and absolutely not imposed by the Charter.

2. Web Publications (the DPUB IG document) is only a W3C Working Draft. Its
requirements' document is also only a W3C Working Draft. There are in no
way normative and should not be referenced that way as source for WG work.
Furthermore, we have always found rather surprising these documents are on
the REC track. They should probably be Notes.

3. as a result, we think the last sentence of Section 2 before Section 2.1
that reads « EPUB 4 must not be in conflict with Web Publications; it must
be a type of Web Publication that provides the predictability and
interoperability that this ecosystem has come to rely on » should be
entirely dropped. It's the WG Membership's role to define precisely through
consensus what EPUB 4 will be and if the outcome is in conflict with WP, so
be it.

4. the Input Documents section 2.1 does not even list html or CSS as input
documents... EPUB 4 will have to make major choices there and they should
be listed.

5. the whole Charter is extremely oriented in one direction, a solution
based on PWP. We have already expressed strong disagreements with that
bias, and that led to the changes in section 3.1 detailed at the top of
this review. What Digital Publications will be should be a decision
entirely in the hands of the future WG. WP and PWP are Input Documents the
future WG may or may not consider, period. As an example, WPs have a
manifest, and we are far from sure at this time all digital publications
need a manifest.

6. if Packaging becomes a regular citizen of the Web, there is no need for
a Packaged Web Publications deliverable. Referencing Web Platform WG's work
on packaging should be enough.

7. we have no idea what the Web Publications deliverable represents. That
document (excerpt from its Status section) « outlines a general vision and
should not be considered a technical specification ». Its usefulness on
the REC track is far from obvious to us.

8. EPUB 2 was released in 2007. EPUB 3 was released in 2014. Both were
released without a Test Suite or Implementation Reports. We are therefore
considering a release of EPUB 4 in Q4 2019 as quite severely
overoptimistic, especially in the case of a WG Membership that is not
necessarily used to W3C common practices and tools.

9. the Liaison with the Publishing BG is too formal; the prose reading «
The two groups will formally cooperate to ensure that such issues are duly
handled by the Publishing Working Group », it implies that requests from
the Publishing BG *must* be handled, with a high priority, by the WG. We
very strongly disagree with that hand of the Publishing BG over the
Publishing WG; the W3C and the IDPF have merged, and our goal is not to
recreate a IDPF hierarchy inside W3C over the head of legacy W3C
Membership.

Disruptive Innovations is therefore requesting a rather large revamp of
this Charter:

A. its only goals should be EPUB 4 and DPUB-ARIA 2. WP and PWP are in our
opinion not - and never were - eligible to the REC track.

B. its scope Section should be entirely rewritten, the current one goes far
beyond a "scope".

C. what will be EPUB 4 should be in the hands, without ANY KIND OF
RESTRICTION, of the WG's Membership.

D. WP and PWP should be only (non-normative) Input Documents that « may be
considered (or not...) by the Working Group »

E. Section 2.1 should make a difference between normative and non-normative
documents (for instance WP and PWP)

F. the Publishing BG should be a Liaison like others; the too formal
relationship between the WG and this WG should be dropped.

G. the REC ETAs should be reviewed, we're not sure they are realistic

We plan to join the WG, review the deliverables, and implement them in our
BlueGriffon editor.


The reviewer's organization intends to participate in these groups:
   - Publishing Working Group

The reviewer's organization:
   - intends to review drafts as they are published and send comments.
   - intends to develop experimental implementations and send experience
reports.
   - intends to develop products based on this work.


Comments about the deliverables:
   BlueGriffon wysiwyg editor


Answers to this questionnaire can be set and changed at
https://www.w3.org/2002/09/wbs/33280/publwg/ until 2017-05-14.

 Regards,

 The Automatic WBS Mailer

Received on Tuesday, 18 April 2017 10:27:08 UTC