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

On 10/29/2018 2:39 PM, Johnson, Rick wrote:
>
> To slightly modify your comment, if we cannot define interoperability 
> in such a way as to achieve our goals of delivering a standard, then 
> yes….I agree with your conclusion.  I do not, however, believe that is 
> unachievable! I think we can create a well-crafted interoperability 
> metric that will enable us to energize the marketplace with EPUB 3.2.
>

I like the idea of energizing the marketplace!

At TPAC we talked about the possibility of putting EPUB 3.2 on the REC 
track; discussed what it would take to do so, whether we have the 
resources, whether it is worth the effort.

But we didn't talk sufficiently about the value of the work.

If the Publishing Business Group could give thought to a full plan: 
including technical (specification, testing, resources) and business 
(how to use such an initiative to energize EPUB, go-to-market, 
accessibility, (maybe a bit of discussion on interop with Amazon)) that 
would make the entire exercise much more motivating for all.

> -Rick
>
> *From: *Brian O'Leary <brian@bisg.org>
> *Date: *Monday, October 29, 2018 at 9:12 AM
> *To: *"Johnson, Rick" <Rick.Johnson@vitalsource.com>
> *Cc: *Ric Wright <rkwright@geofx.com>, Ivan Herman <ivan@w3.org>, 
> "laurent.lemeur@edrlab.org" <laurent.lemeur@edrlab.org>, W3C 
> Publishing Business Group <public-publishingbg@w3.org>
> *Subject: *Re: [External] Re: My opinions about the future of EPUB 3.2
>
> If interoperability within the marketplace is never going to happen, I 
> guess we can close up shop now.
>
> On Mon, Oct 29, 2018 at 12:07 PM Johnson, Rick 
> <Rick.Johnson@vitalsource.com <mailto:Rick.Johnson@vitalsource.com>> 
> wrote:
>
>     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 <mailto:rkwright@geofx.com>>
>     *Date: *Monday, October 29, 2018 at 8:57 AM
>     *To: *Ivan Herman <ivan@w3.org <mailto:ivan@w3.org>>, 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: *[External] Re: My opinions about the future of EPUB 3.2
>     *Resent-From: *<public-publishingbg@w3.org
>     <mailto: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
>
>
> -- 
>
> Brian F. O'Leary
>
> Executive Director, Book Industry Study Group
>
> 232 Madison Avenue, Suite 1400
>
> New York, NY 10016
>
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>
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