My personal feedback on the proposal by the chairs of the Publishing Working Group (PWG) and the EPUB 3 Community Group

Dear colleagues,

I read the proposal by the chairs of the Publishing Working
Group (PWG) and the EPUB 3 Community Group.

People probably remember that I have been skeptical since
the beginning of EPUB 3.1 in New York.  Now, EPUB 3.1 failed
and WP is dead on arrival.  (Fortunately, EPUB 3.2 is up and
running, and there is hope about audiobooks.)

> Some of the ambitious proposals made for EPUB 3.1 could form the
> foundation of the EPUB 4 of the future, including the
> browser-friendly format, the HTML serialization, and more progress
> on scripting in EPUB.

As you can easily imagine, I continue to doubt these
proposals.

At this difficult stage, I believe that maintenance should
be our top priority.  Maintenance of EPUB 3 is obviously
useful.  I also think that EUB Accessibility Techniques
should be actively maintained based on international
feedbacks.

Side note: I guess that most people do not know "The
Emperor’s Old Clothes", Tony Hoare’s ACM Turing Award
lecture from 1980.  Whenever I am in a difficult committee,
I think of this article.

http://zoo.cs.yale.edu/classes/cs422/2014/bib/hoare81emperor.pdf

Regards,
Makoto