Re: On Spreadsheets, Birthday Cards, and the Nature of Publications

Hi all,

Dave, that's a nice point. Thanks for raising it.

The one nit I have at the moment is that spreadsheets are a bad example.
The existing ones on the Web now consist of many resources.

Regards,
Dave

On 15 August 2017 at 05:57, Bill Kasdorf <bkasdorf@apexcovantage.com> wrote:

> The distinction I’d make is that while we can publish many types of
> documents, just because they’re published doesn’t make them publications in
> the sense we are using the term for WP. While I suppose nothing should
> prevent somebody from publishing a single document as a WP, the act of
> publishing doesn’t make it a WP; conforming to our yet-to-be-defined WP
> spec is what makes it a WP. And I agree with Dave, just packaging alone is
> not sufficient. I get documents, and bunches of documents, all the time as
> .zip packages; those are not “publications” in the WP sense.
>
>
>
> Bill Kasdorf
>
> VP and Principal Consultant | *Apex CoVantage*
>
> p:
>
> 734-904-6252 <(734)%20904-6252>  m:   734-904-6252 <(734)%20904-6252>
>
> ISNI: http://isni.org/isni/0000000116490786
>
> ORCiD: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7002-4786
> <https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7002-4786?lang=en>
>
>
>
>
>
> *From:* Dave Cramer [mailto:dauwhe@gmail.com]
> *Sent:* Monday, August 14, 2017 9:27 AM
> *To:* W3C Publishing Working Group
> *Subject:* On Spreadsheets, Birthday Cards, and the Nature of Publications
>
>
>
> As we've discussed various issues on GitHub, our esteemed colleague from
> Adobe has provided examples of potential web publications which seem, to my
> dinosaur dead-tree publisher eyes, to be rather far removed from what I
> think of as publications.
>
>
>
> Leonard has often spoken of "ad-hoc publications," such as memos, reports,
> letters—the output of tools that are categorized with words like "office"
> and "document" and "productivity". And of course we can can make such
> documents using HTML/CSS/JS, and we should, ’cause HTML is cool and CSS is
> awe-
>
> some.
>
>
>
> But how would a birthday card or a spreadsheet benefit from being a web
> publication? They are unlikely to consist of more than one primary
> resource, and the existing web platform seems entirely capable of providing
> a good user experience, except for one thing. Such "ad-hoc publications"
> would benefit from being packaged and portable.
>
>
>
> But do we need to design web publications around these types of documents,
> when packaging is likely the only feature they require? Can we usefully
> separate the concept of packaging from other aspects of web publications?
>
>
>
> Dave
>