Summary: Revise group description?

The initial proposal to revise our group description [1] generated
quite a bit of discussion [2] that is still going on in related
threads [4].

Along the way, we've had discussion of:

 - Layout/styling technologies that people have used [4]

 - Readability or otherwise of EPUB standards [5]

 - S100D IETP [20]

 - Advantages of learning German [21]

 - Silos versus outreach [22]

 - Crystal goblets and window types [6]


And threads that were started but not taken up included:

 - Listing people/companies with software that matches our definition
   [7]

 - Making a common glossary [8]

 - Whether "0" valid for all XSL-FO lengths [9]

 - Commenting on other people's specs [10]


The first two suggestions for revising the group description were for
keeping the focus on XSL-FO [11] and dropping the XSL-FO mentions
[12], respectively.

We also heard about:

 - Needs of developers and that "Our major end user community here is
   not professional publishing experts." [13]

 - "any additional participation in the PPL group will be
   representative of the professional publishing expert community."
   [14]

 - "I know quite a few people in the Digital Publishing Interest Group
   who would be happy to join the conversation over here" [15]

 - "I manually modified the FO file to get the results they
   wanted. That was a rather painful process - and it would have been
   impossible, if they had to do it by themselves, as none of them
   seems to be willing to invest time in learning XSL-FO." [16]

 - "I want 'decent' (easy to read) print. I generally use docbook
   stylesheets or tweak my own generic.  Key point. No layout
   requirements which might be seen as verging on paranoia and harking
   back to manual typesetting." [17]

 - "Programmatic approaches to creating PDF and Postscript are nothing
   new to me, nor to many programmers tasked with publishing." [18]

 - "While it might not be hard to create a PDF file, creating a PDF
   file that is suitable for today's publishing needs is." [19]

 - "The difficulty I have with saying that we will produce XSL-FO 2.0
   or even a 1.2 is that we have no reasonable expectation that it
   will be implemented." [24]

 - "it's closer to the whole shooting match that needs a review,
   putting it perhaps too strongly, it simply doesn't match with what
   CSS offers, a dumb syntax that (nearly) does what FO does?" [25]

 - "CSS syntax is being cleaned up, but I think some of the simplicity
   is deceptive, because it doesn't do as much as FO." [26]

 - "CSS has shown a longevity and a capability to grow that I
   certainly didn't expect back in 1994-1998, even though I designed
   it to be extensible. On the other hand, the increased size already
   means that it isn't easy for people to learn CSS anymore and we
   should ask ourselves if it isn't better to leave CSS alone and
   create a new style sheet standard that, from the start, is meant to
   be good enough for complex publications." [27]

 - "XSL-FO is not suffering low rates of adoption because it's more
   difficult to use than other technologies, it's suffering because it
   hasn't been sold that well." [28]

 - 'Dave Cramer's "Requirements for Latin Text Layout and Pagination"
   [1] is to cover "requirements for pagination and layout of books in
   latin languages", and the XSL-FO spec and various CSS modules are
   about how to instantiate pagination and layout, but there is a
   middle ground for material about how to do a good job at pagination
   and layout.' [28]

 - "So I do think there's a lot of mileage to be had in FO tutorials
   and examples - when Tony mentioned SWIG I thought at first he was
   referring to the success of the semantic web interest group in
   doing that sort of outreach :)" [29]


Feel free to add any salient points that I've missed.

So if you're still reading this (or if you've skipped past the quotes
to get to here), what we've had has been good, robust discussion.
We've also had a few instances of people looking at the same
information and coming to opposite conclusions, but isn't life ever
thus?

My proposed next action is to capture the main points in a survey or
poll and open that to everybody -- the voices we've heard so far, the
lurkers, and other possibly interested mailing lists -- to do a better
job of quantifying what people want.  From that, I'll draft a revised
description, give people time to point out where I've gone wrong, and
then submit the description to the W3C people running the
infrastructure to get it changed on the CG page.

Regards,


Tony.

[1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-ppl/2013Dec/0002.html
[2] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-ppl/2013Dec/thread.html
[3] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-ppl/2014Jan/thread.html
[4] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-ppl/2013Dec/0063.html
[5] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-ppl/2013Dec/0049.html
[6] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-ppl/2014Jan/0002.html
[7] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-ppl/2013Dec/0045.html
[8] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-ppl/2013Dec/0072.html
[9] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-ppl/2014Jan/0001.html
[10] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-ppl/2014Jan/0003.html
[11] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-ppl/2013Dec/0003.html
[12] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-ppl/2013Dec/0004.html
[13] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-ppl/2013Dec/0034.html
[14] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-ppl/2013Dec/0036.html
[15] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-ppl/2013Dec/0039.html
[16] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-ppl/2013Dec/0047.html
[17] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-ppl/2013Dec/0044.html
[18] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-ppl/2013Dec/0053.html
[19] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-ppl/2013Dec/0055.html
[20] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-ppl/2014Jan/0006.html
[21] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-ppl/2014Jan/0044.html
[22] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-ppl/2014Jan/0059.html
[23] There is no number 23
[24] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-ppl/2014Jan/0012.html
[25] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-ppl/2014Jan/0019.html
[26] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-ppl/2014Jan/0026.html
[27] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-ppl/2014Jan/0029.html
     quoting http://www.w3.org/Talks/2013/0604-CSS-Tokyo/
[28] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-ppl/2014Jan/0011.html
[29] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-ppl/2014Jan/0026.html

Received on Wednesday, 8 January 2014 21:04:39 UTC