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Digital Publishing Summit Europe 2018

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W3C Publishing Update

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Garth Conboy, Google

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IDPF + W3C

Proprietary + Confidential

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W3C Mission: “Leading the Web to its full Potential”

  • Founded 1994, now 450+ organization members (corporate, government, other consortia and associations, etc.)
  • W3C standards include: HTML, CSS, SVG, XML, MathML, XSL-FO, XSLT, ...
  • 70+ staff in US (MIT), China (Beihang), France ERCIM) and Japan (Keio)
  • Focus on advancing the overall Open Web Platform, as well as meeting specific industry requirements

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Tim Berners-Lee

Web Inventor & W3C Director

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IDPF Merged into W3C

  • May 2016
    • IDPF announces plans to explore combination with W3C
  • February 2017
    • Official combination commences
    • Four Digital Publishing entities formed within the W3C
      • Publishing Business Group, steering committee
      • Publishing Business Group
      • Publishing Working Group
      • EPUB 3 Community Group

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How the W3C Publishing Activity is Organized

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Publishing Strategic Roadmap

  • Continue to develop and promote EPUB 3 as the packaged accessible delivery and interchange format for digital publications
  • Pursue longer-term vision to realize fully Web-native Web Publications: online/offline, packaged/distributed, browser/app
  • Advance the overall Web platform to meet Publishing industry needs across segments (trade, educational, academic, …)
  • Publications are first-class citizens of the Web

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Publishing Business Group

Proprietary + Confidential

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PBG Provides Strategic Direction & Business Focus

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Business Group Charter

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PBG Organization & Mission

  • Co-chairs:
    • Liisa McCloy-Kelly, Penguin Random House
    • Luc Audrain, Hachette
    • Rick Johnson, VitalSource | Ingram Content
  • W3C Staff: Bill McCoy & Ivan Herman
  • Steering Committee
  • Meets bi-weekly; Tuesday’s @ 12:00p Eastern
  • Focus: Roadmap & Task Force development
  • In parallel: Program development & epubcheck plan
  • Participation fee for W3C BG participation

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PBG Task Forces

  • EPUB Roadmap
  • Epubcheck development & fundraising
  • Accessibility
  • Best practices
  • Internal coordination; liaison with other W3C groups
  • External coordination; liaison with organizations such as BISG, DAISY, EDItEUR
  • ISO Standardization
  • Accessibility

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PBG & Epubcheck

  • Validation tool for entire current ecosystem – publishers, aggregators, retailers, Reading System purveyors, etc.
  • Developers are volunteers
  • Future work needs funding
    • Maintenance release
    • EPUB 3.2 support
    • Bug triage
    • Restructure test suite for easier contribution
  • Contact bmccoy@w3.org to contribute!

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EPUB 3 Community Group

Proprietary + Confidential

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EPUB3CG: Technical Work to Advance EPUB 3

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Community Group Charter

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EPUB3CG Organization & Mission

  • Co-chairs:
    • Rachel Comerford, Macmillan Learning
    • Dave Cramer, Hachette Book Group
  • EPUB 3.2 specification development
  • Best practices
  • Work done in GitHub
  • Calls as needed (weekly now)
  • Free – everyone can participate

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EPUB3CG EPUB 3

  • EPUB 2.1 and EPUB 3.0.1
  • EPUB 3.1
  • According to Vital Source data for 2017, of the top 100 most used titles in digital textbooks, 77 percent were EPUB 3, while the top 25 were all EPUB 3
  • EPUB: Flowing, re-sizable, accessible

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EPUB3CG EPUB 3.2 Design Criteria

  • EPUB 3.2 is envisioned to recast EPUB 3.1 as a wholly backward compatible update to EPUB 3.0.1 while still incorporating most features and changes found in EPUB 3.1
    • Guarantee that any EPUB 3.0.1 publication conforms to EPUB 3.2
    • EPUB 3.0.1 Reading systems would accept and render any EPUB 3.2 publication although graceful fallback may sometimes be required
    • Introduce those features of EPUB 3.1 which are required for proper handling of encrypted content, e.g. via Readium LCP
  • EPUB 3.1 would be withdrawn/superseded after the publication of EPUB 3.2

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EPUB3CG EPUB 3.2 Rationale

  • No commercial EPUB 3.1 publications have been sold, since epubcheck does not support EPUB 3.1.
  • EPUB 3.1 requires non-negligible adoption costs largely due to the change in version number in the package file
  • The business advantages provided by 3.1 (e.g., WOFF 2.0, SFNT, commitment to future HTML and SVG versions, recommendation that publications and Reading Systems confirm with EPUB Accessibility 1.0) are retained in 3.2.
  • The latest specifications from Publishing@W3C should have high prospects for use in the market; all the more important as 3.2 will be the first specification for EPUB generated after the merger with the W3C.

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EPUB3CG EPUB 3.2 Rationale 2

  • EPUB 4 will come out of the efforts the W3C Publishing working group, it will almost certainly not be directly backward compatible with EPUB 3.x; EPUB 3.2 will remove one non-compatible version (3.1) on the path from EPUB 3 to EPUB 4.
  • Difficulties in ISO/IEC: In ISO/IEC, the latest version supersedes all previous versions. Standardizing EPUB 3.1 in ISO/IEC will thus invalidate ISO/IEC EPUB 3 thereby making all EPUB 3 publications non-conformant to ISO/IEC specifications.

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EPUB3CG EPUB 3.2 A Few Example Details

  • Changes from EPUB 3.1 to EPUB 3.2
    • The “version” attribute on the <package> element is “3.0” rather than “3.1”
    • Allow EPUB 3.2 Reading Systems to fail if they encounter Foreign Resources without Fallbacks
    • Allow EPUB 3.2 Reading Systems to refuse Remotely-Hosted Resources. But recommend they do not do so.
    • Use of the <meta> “refines” is reintroduced; replacement opf:alt-rep, opf:authority, opf:file-as, opf:role, opf:scheme and opf:term attributes removed

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EPUB3CG EPUB 3.2 A Few Example Details

  • Changes from EPUB 3.1 to EPUB 3.2
    • The NCX is re-"deprecated" in EPUB 3.2
    • Reintroduce the <guide> and <bindings> element of <package>, but note they are obsolete and deprecated
    • Reintroduce but strongly discourage the <switch> and <trigger> elements; allow EPUB 3.2 Reading Systems to not support them

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EPUB3CG EPUB 3.2 A Few Example Details

  • EPUB 3.2 Changes Retained in EPUB 3.1
    • Preserve the new specification organization from EPUB 3.1 for EPUB 3.2
    • Preserve the vocabularies (such as manifest properties vocabulary) introduced/updated by EPUB 3.1
    • Retain EPUB 3.1 Accessibility Support language roughly as is for EPUB 3.2
    • Retain WOFF 2.0 and SFNT as new core media types in EPUB 3.2
    • Remove support for EPUBCFI’s for hyperlinking

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EPUB3CG EPUB 3.2 A Few Example Details

  • EPUB 3.2 Changes Retained in EPUB 3.1
    • Retain the priority of linked metadata records over directly included records in EPUB 3.2
    • Retain in EPUB 3.2 the updated references to HTML and SVG
    • Retain EPUB 3.1’s replacement of EPUB Stylesheets with CSS references
    • Retain EPUB 3.1’s prioritization of Author and User Stylesheets
    • Retain the OCF/encryption changes from EPUB 3.1 (as well as the introduction of the <Compression> element), as these are used by LCP.

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EPUB3CG EPUB 3.2 Draft Specifications

  • Drafts
  • Process
    • Continued quick development, then public review
    • Community Group Note, with Business Group approval
    • Rec track?
  • Schedule: Real Soon Now!

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Publishing Working Group

Proprietary + Confidential

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PWG Mission

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Publications – with all their specificities and traditions – should become first-class entities on the Web.

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PWG Organization

  • Co-chairs:
    • Tzviya Siegman, Willey
    • Garth Conboy, Google
  • W3C Staff: Ivan Herman
  • Charter: https://www.w3.org/2017/04/publ-wg-charter/
  • Website: https://www.w3.org/publishing/groups/publ-wg/
  • Weekly WG calls; work done on GitHub
  • Next F2F meeting May 30th & 31st in Toronto
  • W3C membership required (full W3C or IDPF transitional)

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PWG Web Publication Requirements

  • Addressability: one URL to access the publications, the collection of documents
  • Components: what resources are part of the publication?
  • Sequence: what is the default reading of the primary resources?
  • Metadata: how to describe the whole rather than the parts
  • Personalization: adjusting presentation to address personal needs; affordances
  • Annotations: allow highlighting, comments, and bookmarks
  • Online/offline: the state of the network should not impact the availability or user experience of the publication

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PWG Packaged Web Publications

  • All of the previous, in a box
  • Actual packaging format to be determined
    • We are considering relying on the W3C/IETF work on Web Packaging
  • Is EPUB 4 different? Zip?

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PWG Come Play!

  • Come join us
  • Anyone can follow our public mailing list: public-publ-wg@w3.org
  • To participate your organization must be a W3C Member
  • New task forces
    • Accessibility
    • Affordances
    • Manifest
  • Come join the fun!

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Q & A

Proprietary + Confidential