EPUB Survey on HTML in EPUB 3.4

Hi all, 

The Publishing Maintenance WG is releasing a survey on adding HTML serialization to EPUB 3.4 as part of our ongoing efforts to maintain and improve the EPUB specification: https://www.w3.org/wbs/1/epubhtml/ 

We encourage you all to respond to this survey, but also to share it within your companies and networks so that we can get a broad range of responses to help us make the most informed decision possible. 

We have prepared a communication guide here with email and social media templates for you to use when reaching out to people: https://docs.google.com/document/d/129DUU-rBf0sMi3BX00tIRkHPL3JkFsq72HedJNO5zMY/edit?usp=sharing

The goal of this survey is for us to understand what we need to do to ensure that EPUB creators, distributors, and reading systems have the information and guidance they need to move towards supporting HTML in addition to the existing XML syntax in EPUB, and for us to understand any potential risks or challenges faced by these stakeholders. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact the chairs at group-pm-wg-chairs@w3.org <mailto:group-pm-wg-chairs@w3.org>. 

We have also prepared some talking points in case you or your contacts have any questions: 
No older EPUBs will need to change
The use of the XML syntax of HTML (XHTML) outside of publishing is declining
New features in HTML are not automatically available in the XML serialization
There will be no new features added to the XML syntax
Tools, reusable software packages, etc., may not work anymore with the XML syntax
The new generation of technical experts will no longer be familiar with the XML syntax, which will be seen as an extra hurdle
With an eye to the future of EPUB, HTML assets will be allowed in the EPUB Package 
XML syntax for HTML (XHTML) files will still be allowed in EPUBs, i.e, current XML based publishing tool chains can remain operational 
While this is a small change, it could impact reading systems and tools
We would like to hear from the EPUB community about how this might affect their workflow

The WG will be sharing this information and links to the survey to industry organizations in the coming days, while it never hurts to remind people, please check in with us about contacting any major organizations before doing so, so we can avoid spamming people! Please do feel free to share this within your organizations, peers, and so on. 

Thank you for helping us with this initiative! 

Shinya, Susan, and Wendy
PMWG Chairs