Re: Thoughts on rechartering and the future of publications on the web

Dear all,

Times seem to be at expressing opinions: here is mine.

I’d like to remind us all that ‘P’ in PWG/PBG stands for Publication and that we are in the PUBLISHING@W3C context.
This is a vertical where we have to address an industry needs.

1.      Web Publication

Yes we have to build on existing Web technologies and contribute to make them evolve, but it is because we have to understand with the Web community what a Publication is, how it differs from a web site, how it comes to life at a precise moment in time with a specific set of metadata, lives in distribution channels, and makes money with several business models.

This perspective, IMHO should make us more pragmatic than theoretical, more use case than pure technology dependent.

From some of us, I hear that the progress we are making in the PWG has a smell of EPUB, but for others like me, it addresses a need than comes from the existing processes of the whole digital publishing supply chain, from authoring to distributing to user content consuming.

The latter is what the publishing industry needs for a future publishing standard.

Even more, pragmatic urgent needs around audiobooks have been identified. Then, as PUBLISHING@W3C, why not put all our energy to address them!
Well, the good news is: PWG Audio TF is already on track for that.


2.      EPUB 3.2

On the same plane, I don’t see EPUB3.2 REC track being pragmatic nor in phase with the urgent needs of today’s pub industry.

EPUB3 is an already existing standard, it is widely used internationally, it is built on existing pieces of technology that are themselves international standards, widely adopted by the whole digital document eco-system:
·         ZIP (ISO/IEC 21320-1) is inside MS Office, OpenOffice, etc…
·         XML (W3C standard) is used to encode the structure (OPF) and the documents (xHTML)
·         And more.
Ok not all of this is pure Web but it doesn’t matter for EPUB : it does the job !

What the pub industry needs today with EPUB is a stable and clear eco-system to reinforce the adoption and usage of EPUB3.
With the umbrella of W3C, we are at this very moment in progress to achieve that goal with EPUB3.2 CG Report and epubcheck revision with a EPUB3.2 validation in Q2 2019.

This momentum is a unique chance to make trad publishers stop producing EPUB2 and come  to a much better technological, accessible, user friendly environment.

In this global view, you will not be surprised that I believe making EPUB3.2 a REC is not a good idea. It will not only take energy and time from the WG, it will also put EPUB3 out of reach of the pub industry!
We all know that W3C full members fees are unaffordable for almost all publishing houses around the world, and not only the fees, but also the time consuming, expertise, and travel expenses.
Then as a REC, EPUB will not be maintained any more by publishers !

So I come back to the beginning: as PUBLISHING@W3C is a vertical for the publishing industry, please leave EPUB3 with its old fashion set of standards inside the Community Group who did in 6 month an extraordinary useful job to settle the spec back in compatibility order.

And the good news is:  EPUB3 CG is moving on to a better spec for the need of epubcheck revision.

Best regards,
Luc Audrain