[PBG] Agenda for 20181106 call : EPUB3.2 REC Track important discussion

Hello W3C Publishing Business Group Members,

Below is the agenda for our call this coming Tuesday, November 6th  to be held at [0].
We hope you will be able to join us!

Please join with EDRLab GoToMeeting [1]  (IRC channel #pbg).

Agenda:

  1.  Back from TPAC Lyon 2018
  2.  EPUB3 Roadmap: plan to promote EPUB3.2 as W3C REC
     *   See my report below
     *   Questions, comments, objections ?
     *   PBG has to give a position before the end of November
  3.  EPUBcheck - Update on Development and Fundraising – please socialize and commit funds! @ [2]

Back from W3C TPAC 2018 in Lyon

Main proposition:

  *   PUBLISHING@W3C envisions EPUB3.2 a W3C recommendation !

Details:

On the Publishing side, Publishing Working Group F2F Monday and Tuesday


  1.  Concerns on EPUB3.2

Now that EPUB 3.2 has been written as a note from the community group (thanks to Dave), questions arise about its promotion and deployment.

  *   EPUB 3.2 promotion clashes with EPUB4 with a time target of Q2 2020, being developed in the Working Group as a profile of Web Publication. EPUB 3.2 is of great help to push publishers to switch to EPUB3 with epubcheck ready in Q2 2019, but this is disturbed by EPUB4 coming 1 year or so after…
  *   On the side of Reading Systems, EPUB3.2 deployment still suffer from issues of interoperability, bugs. There is an urgent need of testing for all features and bug fixing.


  1.  BG priorities for the WG

On Tuesday morning, the Working Group F2F had a session with the Business Group (Liisa and I, co-chairs) asking for priorities.
This moment was rich and disruptive. It did generate a lot of discussions during the following days with the active presence of W3C management, Ralf Swick (COO) and Jeff Jaffé (CEO).
Our Japanese friend Makoto did participate by mail (he read the minutes), and Laurent Le Meur from EDRLab brought also serious propositions. On Wednesday evening, we ended up in a VIP meeting room with Ralph, Liisa, Dave and I to try to wrap up.

In the discussions, 2 important items for the publishing industry were brought up on the table:

  *   The industry desperately need a real standard for audiobooks and EPUB3 isn’t able to do the job
  *   The Asian publishers need absolutely an EPUB3 ISO standard and EPUB3.2 is not recognized as a community group note


  1.  Propositions

To summarize: we envision to make EPUB3.2 a W3C recommendation !


  *   The Working Group will still work on WP with an emphasis on an application to audiobooks as soon as possible
     *   EPUB4 will be postponed and its name less pronounced
  *   The Working Group will also work in parallel to make EPUB 3.2 a W3C REC
     *   There will be no technical change in the EPUB3.2 note from the CG
     *   The charter of the PWG has to be changed to enable EPUB3.2 REC track in parallel to WP
        *   This will take some time and may fail if formal objections are not resolved (need anticipation)
        *   Testing is key : each feature of EPUB has to be implemented in at least 2 Reading System
  *   The Community Group will work already on interoperability (testing, gathering of bugs, etc)
     *   This work will fulfill the need of testing for the REC track
  *   The Business Group will explain to the Publishing industry the global reasons
     *   Technical: improve interoperability and bug fixing
     *   Political: a W3C REC has more power on Reading System developers
     *   Internationalization:  the ISO standard for Asian people will be adopted from W3C REC
        *   it will not be a rewriting by ISO (with a risk of differences)



On behalf of PBG co-chairs,
Luc Audrain

[0] https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?msg=W3C+PBG+Meeting+&iso=20181106T12&p1=179&ah=1


[1] https://www.w3.org/publishing/groups/publ-wg/Meetings/gotomeetings


[2] https://www.w3.org/publishing/epubcheck_fundraising