Re: advancing EPUB 3

> On 24 Mar 2017, at 15:11, Bill McCoy <bmccoy@w3.org <mailto:bmccoy@w3.org>> wrote:
> 
> I received some feedback from folks who participated in the PBG kickoff meeting on March 13 that they were concerned that EPUB 3 received short shrift, with almost all the agenda time going to discussing the prospective Publishing WG charter to work on new Web Publication specifications including an EPUB 4.
> 
> EPUB 3 priorities are on the agenda for this coming Tuesday’s call but I wanted to address up front some issues raised by this feedback.
> 
> W3C is pursuing a three-pronged strategy for Publishing@W3C: continue to develop and promote EPUB 3, continue to advance the Open Web Platform to address publishing requirements, and pursue the vision to fully integrate online/offline, packaged/distributed content models, the vision originally called “EPUB+Web” then “Portable Web Publications (PWP)”.  See slide 4 of attached presentation (from an a11y session last week at London Book Fair).
> 
> The new Publishing WG is where the continuation of the PWP work, which has been incubated in the W3C Digital Publishing Interest Group (IG), would logically happen. And based on the W3C process for chartering new Working Groups we are on a short fuse to have a draft charter moving forward for W3C team and then W3C membership review and approval – if all goes perfectly, we could have a kick-off meeting of the new WG in late June. And to keep the momentum from the work to date in the DPUB IG  - and eventually deliver something that has a positive impact for the community -  it’s important that we get rolling on this.  So the PBG co-chairs explicitly allocated the majority of the time in our kick-off meeting to discussing this.
> 
> But make no mistake about it, the new Web Publications work, while it has promise to create a radical improvement in the usefulness of the Open Web Platform for publishing, is not poised to deliver production-ready specifications.

is not poised to deliver -> is not poised to deliver soon

> A Recommendation Track activity in W3C usually takes at least 3 years and often longer.

The proposed WG charter now includes a planned timeline. That timeline plans to issue a recommendation on the WG documents at the last quarter of 2019.

Ivan

> We need to get moving to help realize this ambitious vision, yes, and as we kick off the activity we will need to promote its importance and create excitement about it in order to foster engagement. We will have (already have, in some respects) flashy prototypes based on proposals. But none of this means that a dependable, interoperable content format, ready to replace current and future uses of EPUB 3,  is around the corner. It’s not. A new WG is like a new baby – exciting and promising, but not immediately useful. I was going to say “like a new puppy”… but that could give a misleading impression about how soon usefulness is likely to arrive.
> 
> Meanwhile W3C has taken on responsibility for EPUB and EPUB 3 is in the market and increasingly widely adopted. We are for example about to have the world’s most widely adopted operating system, Microsoft Windows, ship with native EPUB support seamlessly integrated into its Edge browser. Accessibility initiatives are increasingly mandating  EPUB 3 support in education and other areas. So it’s critically important that we continue to promote, not undermine, EPUB 3 adoption. That EPUB 3.1 is not a W3C “Recommendation” and thus its ongoing development is taking place in a Community Group is not an indication that is has a second-class status – and in any case EPUB is an ISO Technical Specification so it already has a de jure status that most W3C Recommendations do not.  We also need to continue to work on the second prong of the strategy and push for improvements in CSS and other OWP specs. All this while also working on (eventually) realizing the EPUB+Web vision.
> 
> Clearly it won’t be easy to juggle all this work and so W3C needs to rely on the Publishing Business Group to help guide and prioritize and to help foster engagement. Again, EPUB 3 development is on the agenda for Tuesday’s call so I hope you will contribute to the discussion about priorities at that level as well as continuing to make your opinions known about big-picture issues.
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> --Bill
> 
> Bill McCoy
> W3C Publishing Champion
> bmccoy@w3.org <mailto:bmccoy@w3.org>
> http://w3.org/publishing <http://w3.org/publishing>
> +1 206 353 0233
> 
> <McCoy_A11Y_LBF_March_16_2017.pdf>


----
Ivan Herman, W3C
Publishing@W3C Technical Lead
Home: http://www.w3.org/People/Ivan/ <http://www.w3.org/People/Ivan/>
mobile: +31-641044153
ORCID ID: http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0782-2704 <http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0782-2704>