Re: Increasing the gap between web and publishing or unifying them?

> On Jun 8, 2017, at 23:01, Siegman, Tzviya - Hoboken <tsiegman@wiley.com> wrote:
> 
> I would think that the CSSWG would value a submission from a WG over a submission from just one member, but I don’t know.

&

> On Jun 9, 2017, at 00:36, Ivan Herman <ivan@w3.org> wrote:
> 
> The important point is that any such submission should clearly be marked as representing a large portion of the publishing industry to back it up. That is more the role of the BG I believe.

I don't think the CSS WG gives much importance to whether input comes from a WG, a member company, or an individual. Whether proposals are practical and solve real needs is important, and yes, if it comes from a WG, it is likely to represent the opinion of many people and to serve real needs. If it comes from an individual that remains to be confirmed. But if the individual can show evidence that there's indeed demand for the feature being discussed, I don't think the origin of the proposal will matter much.

On the other hand, I am pretty sure that what the CSSWG does care about is not to get submissions or input, but to get participation. Only ongoing participation will get specificationss to make progress. The list of things that CSSWG members agree ought to be tackled eventually is already long, and publication / pagination / print oriented meeds are already on the radar.

Whether or not that's fair, the reality is that to get something on the agenda, what you need to do is to review specifications, file issues, respond to github comments, argue on conf calls, make pull requests, become an editor, write tests, review tests, file bugs against non complying User Agents, send patches to open source User Agents…

If the people actively working on these topics face questions they do not have answers to, then yes, turing back to the publishing community in search of answers will be useful. Some questions will be best answered one by one, and some may be best served by JLREQ-like documents. But unless someone is driving from inside the CSSWG, requirements documents will not do much.

Our intent with the Vivliostyle submission was to highlight to the people who are interested in publishing topics which areas need more work, to encourage participation.

Here is, off the top of my head, a list of CSS specs highly relevant to publishing (alphabetic order):

https://drafts.csswg.org/css-break/
https://drafts.csswg.org/css-color-4/
https://drafts.csswg.org/css-content/
https://drafts.csswg.org/css-exclusions/
https://drafts.csswg.org/css-gcpm-3/
https://drafts.csswg.org/css-gcpm-4/
https://drafts.csswg.org/css-inline-3/
https://drafts.csswg.org/css-line-grid/
https://drafts.csswg.org/css-multicol-1/
https://drafts.csswg.org/css-multicol-2/
https://drafts.csswg.org/css-overflow-4/
https://drafts.csswg.org/css-page-floats/
https://drafts.csswg.org/css-page-template-1/
https://drafts.csswg.org/css-page/
https://drafts.csswg.org/css-regions/
https://drafts.csswg.org/css-rhythm/
https://drafts.csswg.org/css-shapes-1/
https://drafts.csswg.org/css-shapes-2/
https://drafts.csswg.org/css-text-3/
https://drafts.csswg.org/css-text-4/
https://drafts.csswg.org/mediaqueries-4/
https://drafts.csswg.org/mediaqueries-5/

Everything in this list is understaffed.

Participating in the CSS WG will make a difference.

If an organization is short on available people but can afford to invest on the topic, sponsoring people to work in the CSS WG will also make a difference.

If people want to get involved but do not know how to get started, get in touch with me, I'm happy to help.

Best regards,
—Florian

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