Re: [External] Re: My opinions about the future of EPUB 3.2

On this point, it would be helpful to understand the definition (and example use cases) for interoperability here.  There are two very different possibilities in my mind (and probably more!):

  1.  Interoperability before reaching the marketplace: A content creator can deliver a file to any reading system for their ingestion, and ‘interoperability’ will allow them to create just one file for distribution.
  2.  Interoperability within the marketplace: A reading system can open content being distributed in the marketplace from another reading system.

The first is a logical goal.  The second is never going to happen!

Are there other options?

-Rick

From: Ric Wright <rkwright@geofx.com>
Date: Monday, October 29, 2018 at 8:57 AM
To: Ivan Herman <ivan@w3.org>, Laurent Le Meur <laurent.lemeur@edrlab.org>
Cc: W3C Publishing Business Group <public-publishingbg@w3.org>
Subject: [External] Re: My opinions about the future of EPUB 3.2
Resent-From: <public-publishingbg@w3.org>
Resent-Date: Monday, October 29, 2018 at 8:56 AM

These are all good points, but I guess I wonder what is driving the desire for interoperability?  Or perhaps more accurately, IS there any desire for interoperability?  As some of you are aware, I led the effort at Adobe with ADE, ACS4 and RMSDK.  One of the huge takeaways was that the customers for RMSDK and ACS positively didn’t WANT interoperability.  They all wanted to be in separate silos.  We had to fight hard to make them support side-loading, for example.

This is a slightly different aspect of “interoperability” since Adobe ensured that the underlying reading system (RMSDK/ACS) was fully interoperable.  But even then the vendors all wanted to create walls around their silo.

My point is that achieving interoperability will require some impetus for reading systems and publishers to ensure their solutions are interoperable.   What is that impetus?  Why will reading systems and publishers spend non-trivial time, money and opportunity to achieve interoperability?  If we can’t answer that then it seems like we are dead in the water.

Ric

From: Ivan Herman <ivan@w3.org<mailto:ivan@w3.org>>
Date: Sunday, October 28, 2018 at 10:45 PM
To: Laurent Le Meur <laurent.lemeur@edrlab.org<mailto:laurent.lemeur@edrlab.org>>
Cc: W3C Publishing Business Group <public-publishingbg@w3.org<mailto:public-publishingbg@w3.org>>
Subject: Re: My opinions about the future of EPUB 3.2
Resent-From: <public-publishingbg@w3.org<mailto:public-publishingbg@w3.org>>
Resent-Date: Mon, 29 Oct 2018 05:45:39 +0000

Laurent,

I do not disagree with your analysis. Yes, the interoperability issue is the main challenge, regardless of where it is handled.

However, if the decision is that, at some point, the existence of a W3C Rec is required, there is no problem doing things in parallel, namely

1. the CG can work right now in defining the interoperability requirements, creating tests, etc
2. we (as a collective 'we' at this point) can start hammering out the details of what a Rec track work would mean, write a charter that provides the necessary and good arguments on why EPUB 3.2 should be a Rec track, how that would modify the direction of the current WG, etc. And, of course, the new charter should be accepted by the W3M management and the AC, which rarely goes without further discussion to find the right consensus.

Step (2) will require lots of time and energy. *If* we agree on the goal, there is no reason to wait for (1) to complete. Whatever the CG does in (1) can be input to a new WG for further work right away.

cheers

Ivan

P.S. Let me also add one more thing to your 2/ below. A Rec version of EPUB3.2 is not _only_ of interest in view of ISO. I think the Patent Policy protection attached to a Rec may be significant in future for implementors, as well as the guarantee to provide a public access to the specifications once and for all (which may be a hurdle for an ISO document).




On 24 Oct 2018, at 11:22, Laurent Le Meur <laurent.lemeur@edrlab.org<mailto:laurent.lemeur@edrlab.org>> wrote:

Hi,

To use the new WG motto: what is the problem we're trying to solve?

I see two problems to solve here:
1/ raise the level of interoperability of EPUB 3 reading systems
2/ get EPUB 3.2 standardized by ISO, in order to get Asian adhesion to this version of the standard.

Getting EPUB 3.2 standardized by the W3C is therefore not a solution to the problems; the fact is that resolving the first problem is required to get EPUB 3.2 as a rec, and getting EPUB 3.2 as a rec is a possible step in the resolution of the second one.

Therefore I propose to first tackle the first problem, the interoperability issue.

For this purpose we need IMO to
a/ define what interoperability really means in our case; this is not so obvious, as there is a large diversity of reading systems (especially those based on browser engines, those with custom rendering engines, those with no visual engine (audio or braille UAs); we may have to defines different classes of reading systems and different interoperability levels.
b/ list every feature defined in EPUB 3.2, with their testing requirements. Be careful about what we want to test: do we (still) want to replicate the html/css "can I use"? for custom rendering engines, which implement a subset of CSS (and maybe HTML5), this could be necessary ...
c/ modify the existing (create a new) EPUB test suite, a set of EPUB samples which will help testing each features individually
d/ update the epubtest.org<http://epubtest.org/> service to handle the new test suite.

The Publishing CG seems to me the proper place for this work, as it has released EPUB 3.2 (and therefore is now free), can get help from everybody in the industry (BISG ...), and it does not require rechartering the WG.

It would be of tremendous help for the industry to get it done.

In parallel, we should try to assert the difficulty to get EPUB 3.2 directly prepared for ISO standarization (in men/hours).

Then and only then, after the main reading systems on the market have been tested against the new test suite, we will be able to assert the difficulty to get EPUB 3.2 standardized by the W3C (in men/hours), i.e. if there are two conforming implementations for each feature of the standard. This work can be made by the WG.

With this data, we'll be able to decide if direct ISO standarization is harder or simpler than W3C rec + W3C to ISO standardization.

During this period, the WG will be able to focus on an urgency for the industry: "WP and EPUB for audiobooks", which could even be released in 2019 maybe (because the spec is simpler that "WP and EPUB for any type of ebook"). And we may find the time to start working on "WP and EPUB for comicbooks" also. Without rechartering...

Cordialement,

Laurent Le Meur
EDRLab


Le 24 oct. 2018 à 02:11, MURATA Makoto <eb2m-mrt@asahi-net.or.jp<mailto:eb2m-mrt@asahi-net.or.jp>> a écrit :

Folks,

I read the draft minutes of the joint F2F of the publishing working group
and the publishing business group with interest.  (Ivan, special thanks
to your timely draft minutes! )  Here are my opinions about the future of 3.2.
...



----
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: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0782-2704<https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0782-2704>