See minutes online for a more detailed record of the discussions.

Pierre

The group started with a sad topic: Pierre Danet has passed away over the week-end. The group remembered him in a few words"

He was the involved in the IDPF, and the director of EDR labs, exec at Hachette. Many on this call knew him. It's sad. Best wishes out to family.
The reason we are here is that Pierre was extremely enthusiastic about W3C. […] we owe quite a bit to him as to what we are doing now.

(See also the obituary on the W3C Blog.)

Chartering

The Working Group Charter has been approved last Friday, and the Working Group is now operational. Membership for the Interest Group participants is not transferred automatically, everybody (including invited experts) must join that group explicitly. See

• Joining form
• Invited Expert request form

The biggest problem with the charter as we put it forward was that the scope section was considered too vague—a mix up of goals and very specific things that we are supposed to deliver. This became a problem for companies that have major patent portfolios. The way it was re-written, we did our best to keep the content the same but make the scope bar much tighter. We extended the charter from 2.5 years to 3 years which gives us more time. That gives us the testing and checking period, which was extended because it would take a lot of work.

F2F Meeting

The meeting is “on”, see the preliminary agenda.

Async working tools for the WG

There was a short discussion on how to ensure async work in the group, i.e., ensure discussion between calls. The group will consider other tools (Slack, discourse, IRC) although the habit of usage GitHub Issues may be the best practice. To be seen.

Note that the WG’s home page is actually served from a GitHub repository, meaning that the corresponding issues's mechanism can be used for generic discussions.

Note also that there is a discourse channel that is also alive for (digital) publishing.

See minutes online for a more detailed record of the discussions.

Charter status

Ivan gave a short overview. The AC review is over, there are 53 answers (which is a high number!). All of the reviews are in favor of starting this Working Group. However, there are three members who require some changes on the charter in view of the IPR issues, i.e., the W3C Patent Policy Commitments; the scope section of the charter has to be refined. This is being done by the W3C staff; plans are that all who voted will have the possibility to look at the renewed text before it is (hopefully) finally adopted. This will take 2-3 more weeks.

Work reports

ARIA related updates

All this means that DPUB ARIA and DPUB AAM may be in Proposed Rec sometimes before vacations, i.e., can be a Recommendation around September. A good way to close the IG…

Cognitive Understanding

There is a task force on personalization semantics in the APA Working Group. Though this work is primarily on vocabularies for cognitive issues, it may be of a more general interest. The approach is similar to the DPUB ARIA work (i.e., an extra ARIA vocabulary). A joint meeting will take place on Wednesday.

Extended Descriptions

The Accessibility task force worked on extended descriptions (e.g., on images). There is an active issue on github and a work by the DAISY Consortium. However, all issues are not yet solved on, e.g., the exact placement for the <details> element within the content without disturbing the visual experience. Eventually, the output will be added to the ARIA authoring practices.

See minutes online for a more detailed record of the discussions.

The meeting began by welcoming back Tzviya Siegman after her maternity leave. There was a unanimous agreement that her baby is adorable…

Charter status

F2F meeting

Personalization discussion

The Digital Publishing Interest Group has published two Interest Group Notes, documenting the outcomes of a long standing work exploring the possibilities of Publishing on the Web. The two notes are:

• Web Publications Use Cases and Requirements collects the use cases and the requirements users and publishers face when publishing documents like electronic books, scholarly journal articles, corporate memos and newsletter, or magazine articles in a digital, Web environment. The document includes 25 different requirements spread over a large number of use cases. The technical considerations related to these requirements are further analyzed in the companion document published also as an Interest Group Note.
• Web Publications for the Open Web Platform: Vision And Technical Challenges collects a number of technical issues and outlines a number of possible technical approaches to respond to the requirements listed in the companion UCR document. This document introduces Web Publications, a vision for the future of digital publishing based on a fully native representation of documents within the Open Web Platform. Web publications can be packaged and they can be portable. Web publications work online or offline. Web publications can be accessible, linkable, and annotatable.

See minutes online for a more detailed record of the discussions.

Charter status

As for the 20 votes, it is a nice number but we still miss some of the major players as well as more TPI members.

PWP document title change and publication

F2F meeting location

See minutes online for a more detailed record of the discussions.

Charter

At the time of the meeting, there were no open issues on the charter. (Note that since the meeting, but before writing this summary, three new issues appeared.) The plan is to get the approval of the W3M management soon (maybe this week) and then the charter may go for an official vote. The timeline is such that the working group can then start at the end of May or early June.

Latinreq

The continuation of latinreq is now part of the charter. The goal is to document the typesetting & typography traditions and rules as they evolved over 2000 years for documents using latin characters. This community things that there is lots of value in this for the Web, too; many aspects of the CSS work reuse (and should reuse in the future) these experiences.

There are lots of work, but it cannot be dependent on one person only, so the Working Group will have to begin by planning and recruiting volunteers to continue and complete this work.

See minutes online for a more detailed record of the discussions.

EPUB Summit, PBG F2F

Garth reported on the EPUB Summit 2017, which was a very successful event, with more participants than last year. Lots of presentations on the usage of EPUB, on Readium LCP. Laurent Le Meurs posted a summary.

This was followed by a Publishing BG F2F in London (the minutes of the meeting are also available); that meeting took care of most of the issues in the WG charter. (See full issue list). B.t.w., the WG’s name has been changed to “Publishing WG”.

There was also a discussion on the future of this Interest Group. The feeling is that it will wind down when its charter expires (October 2017), and the work will migrate to the Working Group. The only work in this IG that must continue and has not yet been decided upon is the work on Latinreq; it has been agreed to add this as a possible WG Note output of the Working Group.

Timeline

The group also discussed the timeline of deliverables that must be added to the charter. There has been a proposal before the IG call and that seemed to be reasonable; it is what is in the charter draft now.

Planned WG F2F Dates and place

With the shift in chartering the original schedule for a F2F early June is not possible. The current target dates are June 22-23, either in NYC or Paris. A poll will be set up to see what the preferences are in the group.

See minutes online for a more detailed record of the discussions.

A11y text in the charter

The text on accessibility in the draft charter was discussed. Avneesh Singh and Deborah Kaplan presented the proposal of the accessibility task force. After some discussion it was agreed that the new text will be added to a separate branch in the charter text, and the decision on whether that change is fine or not will be taken during the week on email.

(Right after the meeting the changes were done, see the separate mail on the details.)

How to handle the ARIA work

The charter draft includes some activities on the development of a DPUB ARAI 2.0, and the question is whether this would be a joined deliverable with the ARIA WG or whether the DPUB WG would do it alone. After some discussion the agreement is the latter.

Document Publishing

The decision is to publish the PWP and the UCR drafts at W3C. This should happen on Thursday, 9th of March.

Possible WG F2F

The discussion about the F2F is still ongoing: there has to be an 8 weeks' notice in the charter and this would require that the charter is officially on the AC's desk for voting before the 10th of April. It is unclear whether this is possible; the agreement is that in two weeks the IG takes a final decision whether the meeting dates in NYC should be held, or whether the F2F should be postponed to the end of June.

See minutes online for a more detailed record of the discussions.

The meeting began by the welcoming of new members of the group: Nick Brown (Ingram/VitalSource) and Jonathan Hevenstone (Wiley/Atypon)

Publishing BG

Bill McCoy gave some updates of the Publishing Business Group. The group is official, people are gathering. There will be a F2F meeting in London on March 13th. The BG has now chosen its three co-chairs: Paul Belfanti, Rick Johnson, and Cristina Mussinelli

The BG should take a leading role in the formulation of the charter.

Remaining technical issues in the charter

• The online/offline formulation: it has been agreed to go with the text currently in the charter document.
• Manifest issue: the fear was that the current text could be understood as if all constituent resources were to be listed as part of ordering (which isn't true). A text was proposed to amend that, and this will be put into the charter text.
• API-s in the charter: the current charter includes references to two API-s that should be developed. There is a fear that this could dilute the Working Group and the ideas need incubation. The decision was to remove this from the charter

Practicalities

It has been decided to produce a new version of the charter; the only thing remaining to be discussed on the IG level is the changes related to accessibility (t.b.d. next week). The PWP draft and the UCR documents should also be brought to a publication ready level. This has to be done the coming week.

Possible WG F2F

The current consensus continues to be to hold a F2F meeting in New York, on the 5th and 6th of June. This will be after BEA.

See minutes online for a more detailed record of the discussions.

Accessibility Task Force

Based on last week's agreement, the A11Y TF has started to draft a text that may end up in the charter. There are two different issues:

1. Text in the charter related to the overall deliverables
2. Whether there should be a separate deliverable on some sort of a WCAG adjunct or addition.

The first item is in the making and under discussion; the second will also be a subject of discussion with the relevant WG

PWP Issues

Some pending discussion issues were settled, relevant to the PWP draft. These are:

• Online/offline: the exact formulation on how offline vs. online is described. Although everyone agreed that offline capabilities are “very very SHOULD”, there was some reticence of saying MUST. It was agreed that the PWP draft (as well as the charter) may be a bit more verbose in describing the wishes, the exact “spec-talk” wording will have to be discussed in the Working Group
• Manifest details: the wording in the current text has been deemed to be to restrictive insofar as it suggested that a manifest must provide, eg, ordering for all resources (which is not the case). A different wording has been agreed.

The editorial changes will be proposed in the repo during the week.

Misc

Future publications

It has been agreed that, once the aforementioned changes will happen in the PWP draft, publishing a new version will be timely for both the UCR and the PWP drafts.

Possible WG F2F

The current consensus is to hold a F2F meeting in New York, on the 5th and 6th of June. This will be after BEA, i.e., many people may be in NYC anyway.

Adobe is considering hosting the meeting.

See minutes online for a more detailed record of the discussions.

Pub Groups’ chartering

There were an overall satisfaction on the IDPF/W3C merge. The group discussed the chartering process of the various groups that will be formed (BT, WG, CG). It is urgent to set up a Business Group to contribute that WG chartering process (this IG has already a rough consensus on the direction to take). There will be a BG kickoff meeting in London mid March.

The question on whether the IG will stay after the WG is formed came up; at this moment, this is undecided. On the one hand, there may be some topics (a11y related, CSS relationships) that may make sense in an IG but, on the other hand, the realities on manpower availability may make it difficult to maintain two separate groups. It has been agreed that this issue can be decided later. In general, the goal of the WG is to concentrate on Recommendation track work (e.g., DPUB ARIA).

Accessibility and the WG

A particular issue is: what Accessibility related work should be done in the Working Group. At the moment, publishing requirements are in scope of the WCAG work at the WCAG Working Group, but it is not clear what the priority of this work it. On the other hand, the publishing community has two major input documents that hint at further recommendation track work: the “Digital Publishing and Accessibility in W3C Documents” and the “EPUB Accessibility 1.0”, and the goal is to find a “home” for this work to continue.

Two actions have been accepted:

1. a proposal will be developed by the accessibility experts on what should become part of a charter in terms of accessibility work
2. (once that proposal is available) a meeting should be set up with the WCAG WG representatives to decide how that work should be done and, possibly, divided among the groups.

See minutes online for a more detailed record of the discussions.

Call for testimonials on the IDPF/W3C combination

The two organizations are close to sign the deal, which will be accompanies by a Press Release. Testimonials are welcome, see testimonial guidelines for further information.

PWP Issues — Definition of a PWP

One discussion point that came up is what terminology to be used for the definition of a PWP. The the current text says “A Web Publication (WP) is a bounded collection of resources, envisioned and created as a whole, that can be presented using Open Web Platform technologies.” However, some issues came up around this definition; see the mailing list thread on this. After discussion, the agreement on the call was to reuse, instead, the terminology section, with a slight modification on its relation of presentation. A change proposal on the draft will be made on GitHub soon.

PWP Issues — Relationship to Accessibility

The current text (in the same section) also makes the statement “A Web Publication must be accessible to the broadest possible range of readers.”. Although there was a general agreement on the general goal, the text sounded too restrictive insofar as using a “must” under all circumstances (see again the aforementioned thread). The discussion lead to an agreement, whereby the approach is that all technologies used for WP must allow for accessibility features, but we cannot make a statement whereby each publication MUST be accessible. Again, a change proposal on the draft will made on GitHub in the coming days.

See minutes online for a more detailed record of the discussions.

DPUB WG Charter discussion

There has been some changes on the charter:

• The Goals and Scope sections have been added; these are consistent with what is currently in the PWP document. However, some discussions have started on the mailing list which affects those sections; until that is resolved, the charter's sections should be frozen (and updated when the time comes)
• Some text have been added to make clear that the WG would work with the WCAG Working Group to make sure that publishing's needs are taken into account (this is now in scope for WCAG)
• The section on ARIA deliverables has been changed slightly (see Issue #10)

PWP Draft on locators

Leonard described his proposed changes on the draft (merged by now): removed the locators where it was not necessary, keeping things at a high level. No separate section on locators only a general definition. He also did some other editorial changes (more consistent usage of WP, for example).

The major thing to discuss is on the introduction section, that covers the basic definition on WP; this is now a mailing list discussion (that should yield explicit issues).

Miscellaneous

• The Web Annotation WG has issued a Proposed Recommendation now, W3C members are encouraged to vote
• Garth Conboy gave a brief overview of the IDPF/W3C merger status (briefly: things may be completed very soon now)
• Some discussion on the upcoming DPUB BG and CG status
• Planning for a DPUB WG F2F (hoping that WG to happen); currently the first F2F would be set to the week of the 5th of June, in NYC (hosted by Adobe), the second as part of the W3C TPAC week (week of the 6th of November) in the Silicon Valley.

See minutes online for a more detailed record of the discussions.

Locator section in the PWP doc

This section is one of the sections to be thoroughly rewritten, but it has not been entirely clear how. There are lots of good technical content there, but the text is nevertheless to specific, not in balance with the rest of the document. It contains references to manifests, canonical, etc, and it is not clear whether it should stay as is.

It has been said that the goal of the document is to provide a good input to the possible W3C DPUB WG, that would then do a more thorough technical specification. After some discussion it was agreed that the core text should be revised to make it shorter and higher level, and push the technical content into an appendix, making it clear that that is really just jotting down ideas for the future.

It was noted that similar discussions are happening in the Readium consortium; it is therefore a good idea to use the experiences in that community to record them in this document, too.

Additional todo-s in the PWP document

There was a short discussion on what else should be done (beyond an editorial reconciliation of the various parts), these included cross references to the use case document. It would also be a good idea to publish this document and the use case as official drafts.

Chartering

There was a short discussion on the various charters (Business Group, Community Group, Working Group) and their status and timeline. These are all related to the possible IDPF/W3C merger process (which may be completed by the end of the month). There will also be a W3C Member Submission to W3C for EPUB 3.1; the goal is to settle the IPR differences between IDPF and W3C with regard to that document (to make it reusable for further work at W3C without any licensing and IPR issues).

The main role of this IG is to provide technical comments to the WG charter. That may include adding Readium documents, as well as documents coming from the IDPF EPUB WG, to the list of input document to the WG charter as technical input.

Admin

Due to Martin Luther King day in the US the next meeting is cancelled.

See minutes online for a more detailed record of the discussions.

Locators

The current text in the editor's copy is grossly outdated. It originates in the discussion last spring, before the major reorganization of the IG's thoughts in September. It needs change.

Although the alternative of removing it altogether came up, it was finally agreed that this section should stay, albeit renewed. The discussion thread that happened on the mailing list (e.g., thread on locators) contains a lot of valuable thoughts that should be incorporated into the document. Furthermore, Dave Cramer also jotted down a set of more general thoughts that are related to the subject, and that should not be lost either.

It was therefore decided to redo that section summarizing those discussions. First results should be expected next week.

The term "WP Processor"

As a side track of the discussion the usage of a "(P)WP Processor" came up and it was questioned whether that term was really necessary as opposed to simply use "User Agent". After a brief discussion it was agreed to remove that term from the document.

Packaging

There has been a renewed interest on Web Packaging lately (see the "explainer" in GitHub). The question is whether it fundamentally affects the work around WP. The (temporary) consensus it that the exact packaging format is not really of importance for a possible specification; profiles can fix one or the other. However, the work on Web Packaging highlighted the issue about package signing which may be of importance for a WP-related security model in the future. (Although it is probable that the same approach could be used with ZIP-based packaging formats, too, i.e., this is not dependent on the Web Packaging format.)

DPUB Category on Discourse

A separate dpub category has been set up. The downside, however, is that in the current discourse set-up it may not be possible to set a submission into several categories. That may be a problem insofar as it would isolate the dpub related discussions. To be explored further...

See minutes online for a more detailed record of the discussions.

WCAG 2.1 and Digital Publishing

The WCAG WG is working on WCAG 2.1. There are a few items that are relevant to digital publishing that have been proposed as additions or revisions. DPUB members have been working with WCAG to to include this material in the WCAG 2.1 First Public Working Draft. Our next steps are to:

• Propose an example of a publication in the section about set of web pages. Matt Garrish has proposed "Example: A publication is split across multiple Web pages, where each page contains one chapter or other significant section of the work. The publication is logically a single contiguous unit, and contains navigation features that enable access to the full set of pages." This language is intentionally broad so that it can encompass any existing and future specs.
• Discuss whether accessibility metadata in schema.org will be included as a best practice, AAA Success Criteria, or some combination.
• Revise the existing Appendix on Metadata as appropriate

See minutes online for a more detailed record of the discussions.

First review of new DPUB-PWP version

The grossly outdated DPUB-PWP document has to undergo changes as a result of the changes in the UCR document. A first draft of the changes is the editor's draft: at this moment, it is hardly more than a reshuffle of the old version with a new order of the sections, a new organizations. Discussions have begun on what to do in the document. The meeting addressed some details.

• Title of the document: there is an agreement to use simply "Web Publications"
• EPUB, EPUB4, Profiles: the relationships with EPUB and, in a more general sense, reference to Profiles has to be re-considered. Profiles of WP-s may become an essential feature, and EPUB (eg, a future version) may become a profile of WP, alongside other possible profiles. This section has to be thoroughly rewritten
• API-s: there are two, currently empty sections in the documents on API-s, as a result of the discussions that took place mainly at TPAC. It was agreed that these sections should probably remain in the document, although it is not clear which group would pick those up
• Locators: the whole issue of locators should probably be re-considered. The old version (that is also in the text) was influenced by a much more rigid view on online/offline and packaged states, and maybe that should be re-thought. Work for the future...

To be continued…

Miscellaneous

The group reviewed the pending actions that were defined at the joined meeting with the CSS WG at the TPAC: Media queries for MathML (currently pending, because it is not clear that this is the right solution after all), character based alignments in tables (collecting use cases), and hanging punctuation.

The usage of W3C's Discourse as an 'incubating' tool came to the fore, with an item on list heading and captions recently raised on that list by Tzviya. The evolution of that item shows the value of using that tool, which may be used more extensively in the future.

See minutes online for a more detailed record of the discussions.

Service Workers in action 2.

(Followup of last minute’s meeting on the usage of service workers.)

Hadrien Gardeur made a presentation of the proof-of-concept work he has done.

First of all, Hadrien has defined a version of manifest using JSON-LD; this work was done, originally, as part of the EPUB3.1 Working Group at IDPF, under the heading of “browser friendly manifestation”, together with Dave Cramer. It contains the various data that EPUB3.1 has in the OPF file (spine; further resources; “links”, i.e., various type of metadata). The manifest file can also refer to a separate Web App Manifest. A manifest can be discovered through direct access, through an HTML link element, or via an HTTP header. The various prototypes he has built make use of this manifest format.

One prototype is a “Web Publication JS” (or “Progressive Enhancement”, see a specific book) is some sort of a Web Publication that carries a specific JS code using Service Workers, and also links to the manifest files. The code injects some navigation signs into the content and displays it in the browser.

The other prototype is a “Web Publication Viewer” (a live demo is also available) which is more kind of a “reading system” that uses its own Service Worker based JS code and displays the content of a book in an iFrame.

Subsequent discussions included:

• The mutual relationships of the Publication and the Web App Manifests. Hadrien's approach separates these two, whereas the presentation last week essentially built “on top of” a Web App Manifest via extensions. It is not clear at this moment which approach is better, but it was agreed that a feedback on the current problems should be provided to the Web App Manifest spec developers.
• Problems around the usage of Service Worker in the second, “Web Publication Viewer” case. The problem is the strict separation of the iFrame context, which makes it difficult to properly implement the situation when one chapter has a direct link to another chapter; that operation happens within the iFrame, i.e., the cache control on the top level browser has no information about it. (Note that Daniel Weck referred to a separate discussion thread that shows that this is an active issue for developers). Again, feedback to the Service Worker spec developers would be a good idea.

See minutes online for a more detailed record of the discussions.

Service Workers in action

Dave Cramer made a short presentation of a proof-of-concept work he has done: a “reader” page that:

• had a number of references to books; each book:
  • is a collection of HTML/CSS etc files
  • has a manifest: a small extension to the Web App Manifest, also containing a list of resources and a “spine”
  • can be displayed via a javascript application bound to the reader page (as opposed to be part of a book) in an iFrame
  • may have book-wide user preferences (eg, night mode)
  • can be stored offline using a Service Worker based functionality
  • can be dumped into a zip file
• the reader page has interaction buttons for ‘next’ and ‘previous’, using the “spine” in the book’s manifest, as well as buttons for the offline storage and dump to zip

The discussion following the presentation concentrated on issues like how one would store, on long term, data like user’s preferences, annotations, etc. The value of having the reader javascript application attached to the reader page, ie, the fact that the “book” itself does not (necessarily) carry javascript was also emphasized.

One specific issue that came up (for future discussion) is whether the fact that that Service Workers rely on HTTPS (as opposed to HTTP) is, for publication, limiting or future looking?

Obviously, this is (at this moment) only a proof-of-concept; the goal is to see if a Service Worker based approach is feasible in the first place. There are other, similar experiments around the same subject, with different design decisions; these should be looked at in the future, too.

See minutes online for a more detailed record of the discussions.

UCR document review

There was a new version of the UCR submitted last week, some issues remained to be discussed:

• issue on manifests and links: the various issues got mixed up after all; it was agreed to separate an issue on addressing constituent resources and the other on mapping.
• the term "versioning" means different things for different communities; we will use the term "iteration" (which is neutral enough)
• the first section on security (4.2) will be removed and, instead, the use cases will be added to the relevant use cases in the document (just like what happened with the accessibility use cases)
• 4.3 is really related to the security model for packaging, and that should move to section 3
• the order of subsections in section 2 may have to be removed
• there were some discussions on the use case of 2.2.6 (on Buffy) whether that is the right place for it; agreed to keep it there but reformulate it so that it is not creating a new WP, but filtering it

There were also some mostly editorial issues sent to the mailing list.

Next step

Leonard, Tzviya, and Ivan have the pen, in that order; the document can then go for wider review (hopefully by the end of the week).

DPUB ARIA Review

The current document is ready to go for CR soon, and a wide review is in order. Implementations are needed, see the "Exit Criteria" section in that document.

Task force reviews

A quick roundup on the current task forces:

• The a11y task force concentrated on the use cases; now that this is essentially done, the other issues are related to additions to WCAG
• The CSS task force was pending but more volunteers may come to the fore to improve the relationships
• The Archive task force is a bit pending, may have to be closed down
• The STEM task force is probably out of steam, to be closed down
• The Structural Semantics Task Force is behind the DPUB-ARIA work, something that may continue later, albeit the exact form is not yet clear

See minutes online for a more detailed record of the discussions.

UCR document review

Most of the discussion concentrated on the second review of the newly organized UCR document. The discussions were based on some earlier comments by emails. The main issues discussed were

• The accessibility related use cases should be, mainly, spread over the various use cases and requirements, rather than standing on their own. However, it is worth and important to have a separate appendix calling out those to emphasize the importance of accessibility.
• There were a number of entries related to Packaged Web Publications that, in fact, are generic and not packaged dependent. Those should be moved around in the document.
• The security related use cases should be collected in one place as a top level section. There was a separate discussion on two use cases to be added under that section (on the integrity of the content and the origin of the document).

There were also a number of minor issues.

Next steps

The next steps will take these comments into account in coming up with a new version as soon as possible.

See minutes online for a more detailed record of the discussions.

UCR document review

Most of the discussion concentrated on the firs “dedup” (for de-duplication) pass on the UCR document that Leonard did in the past few days. That version was in a separate branch (though merged into the main branch since).

The document has undergone major reductions, and was, in general, well accepted by the group. Only some issues were left open, discussed on the call.

Notion of versioning

The notion of "version" turns out to mean very different things for the two communities. Its meaning is fairly loose, and publisher dependent, in the publishing world, in contrast to the software world where its meaning is more strict. After discussion it was agreed that what is needed is to be able to track (in some way or other) any change of a Web Publication; everything else is very implementation dependent.

Referencing the schema.org vocabulary on accessibility

It was agreed that a reference should be made to that work, to reinforce the importance of metadata on accessibility

Definition of a WP

As part of the cleanup the introductory part, that includes the definition, has to be cleaned up. It was decided to use, essentially, the definition put forward at the TPAC meeting in a separate wiki page

Collection of publication

There was a separate use case section about publications that are themselves a collection of other publications. After some discussions it was agreed that this section should be removed; it is largely an implementation aspect that should not impose new requirements on Web Publications.

Next steps

See minutes online for a more detailed record of the discussions.

Preparation for TPAC F2F

These are the important pointers:

• TPAC F2F Agenda, logistics, details
• Detailed Agenda

The meeting concentrated on some of the details on what should be on the agenda, like

• WCAG connections
• CSS Houdini status and work
• CSS Media queries
• XSL-FO vs. CSS
• Changes to be done on the PWP draft
• Preparation for the meeting on the future of the work at W3C

UCR Document

The FPWD of the UCR document is ready to be published (to be done tomorrow, 13 September). Heather gave some overview on the recent changes (too numerous to list here). Sections have been cut, the section headers are no longer the Requirement descriptions, etc. A number of editorial issues came up and will be added to the github issues' list for further discussion. There will be a separate session at TPAC on the UCR document.

See minutes online for a more detailed record of the discussions.

Note that, for holiday/vacation reasons the next two meetings will be cancelled.

Use Case Documents update

Section on horizontals

That section is almost ready. The agreement is that the various use cases should get an extra label on which horizontal area(s) they refer to. A simple security related use case will also be added, though a separate top level section on security will also be created.

Distribution and sharing section

The old content underwent a radical edit to align it with the rest of the document. More about on email (the editor of that section was not able to join the call).

Locators

The old section 6 was merged and only one section created. Few use cases were moved into the 'fundamentals' (2.1.5, 2.1.6, and also 2.1.13). It was agreed that a more thorough definition of "states" should be added to the section as an introduction, and maybe an explicit reference to the fundamental use cases that are relevant to this area. Also, because this is a fairly technical stuff, it is better if this section moves to a later position in the overall document.

Accessibility

There are now five different areas in the section. The question is really whether there is a need (or not) on a use case on Braille; is it really different on PWP than on the Web in general? This led to a more general discussion: what are the reason that accessibility gets more emphasis in the publication world than elsewhere, and could that be succinctly described in this document? That is still left open for now.

Collections

A few annotation related issues/use cases have been added. Otherwise there was no real progress the past week.

Editing timeline, schedule

The goal is to have a FPWD published for the document before TPAC. The following schedule has been agreed on:

1. There is a (temporary) feature freeze on the document on the 31st of August. It is important to have the security section and the updated introduction "in" (and anything else that can improve things)
2. Nick Ruffilo goes through the document on the 1st and 2nd as an overall editorial round in unifying style, terms, etc
3. Heather takes hold of the document on the 5th of September to finalize an overall editorial round again on style, terms, etc.
4. Ivan takes hold of the document on the 12th and gets it through the W3C publishing process.

A final version of the document would then be published after TPAC, probably beginning of October.

See minutes online for a more detailed record of the discussions.

Frankfurt

Karen Myers reported that a group of colleagues are active in a new EU project (FREME) that has relevance to Digital Publishing; that group will have a booth at the Frankfurt Book Fair (October 19-23). They offered the IG to join them on that booth at some point to talk about the work the IG is doing, talk to people, etc. We will have to find out who in the group will be in Frankfurt. To be followed up

Use Case Documents update

Lots happened in the past week on the UCR, the meeting went through and reviewed some of the changes. The important points:

• There is now an introduction. There were some concerned on the call that it may be a little bit too book centric (as opposed to general publication centric) although the concept of a book as a good introduction to the concepts. Also, a somewhat more "formal" definition of a PWP is needed to make the rest of the work more palatable. These changes will be done by Boris Anthony.
• Deborah Kaplan reported on some review of the fundamental use cases and, mainly, on the fact that it would be important to have a use case and explicitly mention the "horizontal" dependencies and the importance they have (internationalization, accessibility, security, etc.). At the moment the relevant section is just a start, but it has been agreed that the terms should be made more precise, make it clear that publications, often, have an even more stringent (and possibly context specific) requirement. Ivan Herman accepted to propose some changes.
• Charles LaPierre reported on the changes he made on the accessibility section. The issue is to avoid repeating issues and use cases that are already listed elsewhere; the group decided to make back links whenever possible instead of repeating things unnecessarily. Charles will take care of that

There are still a number of areas that are not yet in the document but it is known to be worked on by people (who could not be on the call): locators and states, archiving, etc. To be reviewed in a week. It was also agreed that Heather Flanagan and Nick Ruffilo will make a general stylistic review of the text towards the end. The ideal would be to get this published before TPAC...