Re: agenda topic for June 4 call: formality of EPUB 3.2 approval steps

Tzviya's interpretation reflects my understanding of what we discussed as
well... apologies if my minuting was misleading?

Rachel Comerford | Senior Director of Content Standards and Accessibility |
T 212.576.9433

*Macmillan Learning*

On Thu, Apr 26, 2018 at 11:14 AM, Siegman, Tzviya - Hoboken <
tsiegman@wiley.com> wrote:

> Hi Bill,
>
>
>
> I think there may have been a misunderstanding. My take away from the
> meeting was that Dave was all for having a formal approval period for EPUB
> 3.2 and that the BG should definitely be a part of that approval. I don’t
> think anyone is in disagreement about that. There is not a lot of precedent
> in the W3C for this sort of structure, so I believe that Dave was saying
> that we need to make up the process to some extent.
>
> I think a good agenda for the SC is to propose a process for BG approval.
> I believe that is exactly what Dave was suggesting. Dave, will of course
> correct me if I am misunderstanding.
>
>
>
> Tzviya
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>
>
>
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> *Tzviya Siegman*
>
> Information Standards Lead
>
> Wiley
>
> 201-748-6884
>
> tsiegman@wiley.com
>
>
>
> *From:* Bill McCoy [mailto:bmccoy@w3.org]
> *Sent:* Thursday, April 26, 2018 10:26 AM
> *To:* 'W3C Publishing Steering Committee' <public-publishing-sc@w3.org>
> *Subject:* agenda topic for June 4 call: formality of EPUB 3.2 approval
> steps
>
>
>
> Hi,
>
>
>
> Dave Cramer in last BG call said that he thought we should not have any
> particular formality around the interim approval steps for EPUB 3.2 (such
> as IDPF’s Proposed Specification) to avoid folks getting confused between
> W3C CG work product and WG work product.
>
>
>
> I would like to revisit this and ask the SC to agree where the
> responsibility should be for deciding this and related questions about the
> formality of EPUB 3.2, so I would request we add this to our agenda for
> June 4 (unless it’s clear from email that there is an obvious consensus and
> no discussion is needed).
>
>
>
> To me, this question belongs primarily to the BG not the CG since the BG
> has the responsibility to address business-level ecosystem needs as well as
> oversight and approval responsibility for the work product of the CG. Of
> course the BG shouldn’t be allowed to burden the CG excessively but it
> seems to me the BG should have the main voice in deciding how we need to
> promote and market EPUB. And approval of specifications is a key part of
> that promotion and marketing. Dave you may in fact have intended to provide
> a BG perspective representing Hachette Book Group, since it was during the
> BG meeting, but this wasn’t clear (at least to me) given your co-chair-ship
> of the CG. But since it wasn’t an explicit agenda topic I didn’t want to
> chime in on it in our limited time.
>
>
>
> If we agree that this is a BG decision then I would propose to add a topic
> for approval steps for EPUB 3.2 for the next BG call and perhaps have some
> email about that en route.
>
>
>
> Because, I believe Dave’s plan to avoid any formality is contrary to the
> business needs for a stable and reliable EPUB specification, both in
> general and based on the current need to crisply move past the EPUB 3.1
> snafu. I agree with Dave and others that EPUB 3.2 is inherently not that
> important in the sense that what we need to be promoting is EPUB 3, but the
> fact that the latest extant version of EPUB 3 is problematic and that the
> organization that developed it no longer exists or supports it is a weak
> point. That work has started on what may be an EPUB 4 further confuses
> things. I’m told there were people at last Frankfurt saying “EPUB 3 is
> dead” and that’s troubling. So I think it’s critical that EPUB 3.2 be seen
> as a real thing not an ad hoc product of an ad hoc group. And the
> arrangement between IDPF and W3C was explicitly designed to facilitate
> this. The BG oversight and approval of the CG work on EPUB 3 revisions was
> intended to function in a directly analogous manner to the AC approval of
> W3C specifications produced by WGs, and the membership approval of IDPF
> specifications. Both approval processes include approval of interim
> versions not just a blessing of the final work product. So I think that we
> should do likewise and have at least one interim approval gate by the BG en
> route to finalizing EPUB 3.2, and do some PR around the hopefully positive
> result.
>
>
>
> Yes we should avoid confusion about the CG work product being the same as
> a W3C Recommendation but this seems like a minor concern especially since
> we will be using the CG document template a la [1], something we’ve already
> agreed on and that I don’t propose to revisit.
>
>
>
> Dave’s overall approach seems to be based on an argument that since CG’s
> don’t have any particular process requirements that therefore we should not
> impose any. But this is both contrary to the IDPF-W3C understanding as well
> as a logical fallacy. That some (maybe most) CGs are very ad hoc about
> their processes doesn’t imply that we must be also.  That there are no
> particular process requirements for CGs doesn’t imply that we can’t have
> any, it only means that we are free to do whatever makes sense to meet the
> overall goals.
>
>
>
> And while I’m not suggesting that we invent a new report template I do
> think we can and should get creative in maximizing EPUB 3.2 being seen as a
> “real specification” equally if not more vetted and valid than anything
> previously produced by IDPF. If we don’t do this, we risk further muddying
> the waters which again with 3.1 being problematic would be extra bad. And
> as I’ve said, we need to show that EPUB 3 is alive and well and being well
> maintained within W3C.
>
>
>
> If we quickly do an ISO standard based on 3.2 and/or a W3C Recommendation
> a la JSON-LD, then that will of course help. But in either of these paths
> we will not want to create forking. We don’t want a 3.2 from the CG that is
> merely viewed as fodder for an ISO standard or W3C Recommendation, we would
> want these outputs to be completely compatible. So that still argues for
> focus on EPUB 3.2 being dependable, not the result of an ad hoc process. So
> to me the more “window dressing” we can put around this to maximize the
> perception of dependability, the better. Of course I don’t propose that we
> overly burden the CG, but I don’t think that for example bringing at least
> one interim draft to the BG for approval would do so (and again doing so is
> arguably an implication of having the approval responsibility per the
> IDPF-W3C deal as embodied in the respective charters).
>
>
> Re: naming, I don’t necessarily have a great answer but I also think this
> deserves more discussion. We are in agreement to use the CG Report template
> which makes it very clear in the preface that the results are not a W3C
> Recommendation but JSON LD 1.1 [1] very clearly calls itself a
> “Recommendation”: “This document is one of three JSON-LD 1.1
> Recommendations produced by the JSON for Linking Data W3C Community Group
> <https://www.w3.org/community/json-ld/>:”
>
> So I think it’s fair game for us to do likewise, adopt IDPF naming, or
> whatever the BG thinks will best serve the goal. So if we called the final
> result a “Recommendation”, then we could call the interim milestone
> something accordingly. We should perhaps investigate what JSON-LD 1.1 did.
>
>
>
> Again while I have a personal perspective here on what’s best for the
> ecosystem and W3C, my main goal in sending this email is to clarify whether
> this group feels that this should be a BG decision and if so to get it in
> the stream to be an explicit agenda topic there which I think deserves a
> bit more than just Dave saying in passing what he wants to do as CG
> co-chair.
>
>
>
> Thanks,
>
>
>
> --Bill
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> [1] https://json-ld.org/spec/ED/json-ld/20180215/
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