The UX associated with non-linear resources in EPUB and items from the resources collection in Web Publications is under specified. This issue is currently a matter of discussion in the Readium community. Such topic joins authoring and reading system issues about presentation / navigation.

May I suggest that this community models in a Note what a non-linear fiction is, and specifies its practical EPUB / WP characteristics (FXL/reflow resources, pagination/no, mandatory navigation links inside resources vs automatic navigation via path history, memory of the last position ...)?

Description

EPUB Reading Systems provide some rudimentary mechanism for bookmarks and remembering where you left off reading. In an educational context, it is essential to provide more sophisticated tools for these functions.

In the EPUB Reading System accessibility testing, we have several tests for this, but the functions are not clearly defined. Also, it is rare to have a Reading System export the highlights and notes to a file. This is often a request from students.

We suggest that the Publishing Community group develop best practices for Reading Systems for these features. Furthermore, we suggest that the CG test the Reading Systems for conformance.

There are issues in the Publishing CG issue tracker

As a user I want to store and manipulate my annotations independently of a Reading System
[Highlights, Notes, Comments, and Annotations#32 ] (#32)

Introduction

As a use case writer, I would like to know how to write down use case.

Explanation:

As a use case writer, I needed information to help me write down use case that everyone else could help discussing and providing ideas, suggestions for the use case.
I needed a format to summerize use case so it will be eaier to catch the point of use case.

The pain point is I might write down long description but no one can pick up the problem correctly so the discussion might spread. Hence I needed certain format to help people catch the point of use case.

Detail

• audience

People who read and write use case.

Description

When using the ReadAloud function in a Reading System, or when a screen reader is being used, text citations in the text can be disruptive to reading comprehension. The same disruption occurs if a footnote is read where it occurs. The concept of skipability and escapeability has been discussed using SMIL and media overlays, but when using ReadAloud or with a screen reader has not yet been addressed.

This feature request originated in the EPUB Reading Systems accessibility testing, but it is not accessibility specific. We are requesting that the Publishing Community Group take up this issue. It relates to best practices for markup and having the feature in Reading Systems and with screen readers.

Whether side by side (as in an opera libretto), or first language line coupled with second language line in many scholarly texts, it is common to provide content in multiple languages. We have not done much to address the resulting accessibility issues that arise. For example the screen reader user would likely need to switch back and forth between both languages segment by segment. Likely the TTS (and braille) in such a user agent will need some kind of reasonable segmentation to keep content synchronized. Likely the less familiar language may need separate settings, almost certainly slower in the more unfamiliar language. On the other hand, designing adequate support is likely to benefit anyone studying a libretto or a scholarly text whether (or not) a disability is involved. Learning foreign languages tends to be difficult for most people, yet so necessary in many academic disciplines. We have a "curb cut" opportunity here together with the accessibility support requirement. APA proposes to discuss the inherent problems and opportunities during TPAC 2023 with Publishing, but also with I18N and WHAT-WG (for HTML implications). What needs normative specification? What's left for user agents--likely not common browsers!## Introduction

Brief introduction to the "use case template".

This template might serve as an approach to document use cases in a more systematic and coherent way.

Recommended format:


As a <Reader | who will benefit from the use case> I would like to <what is the use case> so that <how I will benefit from the use case>

Explanation:

The expressions in angle brackets are meant to be placeholders for the specific content of a use case. The description should be technology-agnostic as it serves to define the users' needs and will not be a guide for a specific implementation.

1. <Reader | who will benefit from the use case>:
   
   Here you should try to define the role of the user as precisely as possible. For example, instead of "as a publisher" you might say "as a publisher of scientifc textbooks" etc. Please keep in mind that a Reading System could also be a kind of user.
   
   

2. <what is the use case>:
   
   Try to describe your user's need as precisely as possible on a micro-level that could be implemented later on. Instead of a general statement such as "achieve a more user-friendly layout", you should prefer to speak of "achieve a more flexible table layout for huge and complex tables".
   
   

3. <how I will benefit from the use case>:
   
   Describe the ultimate goal of the user's requirement. For example, if you requested "a more flexible table layout for huge and complex tables", you might want to adapt for mobile use - "so that you may consume them on a mobile".
   
   

Detail

• What is the current problem.

More specific is better to help people understand.

• If the use case has a specific audience or circumstance, then who, when and how will people benefit from solving this problem.

Proposal (if any)

A use case does not need to come with a proposal or a recommendation. But if there is any, we can have it documented.

I'd like to explore & document a not-very-complex but robust solution for referencing/addressing down to the content level.

Here's a deep link to a dpub of what I'm referencing:
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/11KjkTzyuOeDLlCiAccQYSJ5J-vNHJ_s2U3r4ws1FPLA/edit#slide=id.g81a3222d69_0_13
(very meta here: this link works by a script picking up the custom fragment and processing via JS)

I'll be thinking about well formed use cases (will update here on that), but in the meantime I'd like to set the stage up for discussion.
Any use cases that you have in mind?

There's text fragments which we could discuss too:
https://web.dev/text-fragments/

FXL-A11Y working group has drafted a state of the art documentation on EPUB Fixed Layout Accessibility.

Still one accessibility issue remains witch is the one related to ability to change font family, size, spacing as well as background and text colors. This is a critical issue for persons with low vision or cognitive disabilities.

Different solutions have been proposed to allow a way to adapt text and layout within a fixed layout EPUB but from a Reading System perspective it will not be possible to implement all solutions.

This issue tries to list different proposals to allow reflowable text into fixed layout and estimate which ones are the most susceptible to be used in an industrial context.

• Fallbacks
• Multiple Rendition
• Hybrid
• Guided navigation
• Visual to textual
• Region based navigation
• JS in files
• SVG
• A Reading System could present a textual reflowable view based on TTS practices. See #69

edited to add the reference to issue 69

Hello. I would like to broach creating standard means of embedding highlights, notes, comments, and annotations inside of EPUB resources' OCF containers.

Software tools exist which can perform some or all of these functionalities and, with a standard means of embedding these data (highlights, notes, comments, and annotations) in EPUB resources, these data would be interoperable across devices and software tools.

In 2012, David Wood and Luke Roth discussed utilizing RDFa for these purposes.

I would like to broach, here, approaches where these data (highlights, notes, comments, and annotations) would be stored in EPUB container files separately from document content (XHTML resources) instead of approaches which require document modification. EPUB content, then, could be digitally signed while simultaneously being capable of being annotated in the ways under discussion.

EPUB resources could, e.g., using metadata, indicate whether end-users were permitted to make embedded highlights, notes, comments, or annotations.

We can consider multi-user scenarios where users would be collaborating with and sharing EPUB resources while making use of these features. For these scenarios, there would be a need for maintaining provenance data for these data (highlights, notes, comments, and annotations).

Thank you. Is there any interest in these features and in providing standard means for multiple end-users to highlight, note, comment, and annotate EPUB resources?

Introduction

I would like to define a way to let reading system synchronize script with audio/video if publisher could provide one.

This could be very useful for a11y or using video to learn languages.
Sometimes temporarily I could not listen to video (noisy or some reasons) but I would still like to continue reading (script).
Also for language learning books with audio/video it could be very helpful to synchronize with script.

Text-to-speech (TTS) is among the most popular features in reading apps and slowly creeping up as a must-have feature in Web browsers as well.

But despite the popularity and usefulness of TTS, there is no best practice document providing guidance for developers on how they should implement this feature.
The group working on accessibility for FXL publications has also identified that in addition to TTS, extracting text from an FXL resource could be used to provide a "reader mode" of the current page/spread, enabling users to adjust the text and layout to their needs.

For both TTS and a reader mode, reading systems need guidance about the way they should extract data from XHTML to build these alternate renderings:

• using accessibility metadata to infer what might be possible (accessModeSufficient, readingOrder, alternativeText, longDescription)
• walking the DOM to create an alternate tree-like structure
• rules to extract context (language for example) and semantics (HTML and ARIA) that will be relevant for these alternate renderings
• recommendations for either breaking down longer text into multiple utterances (a paragraph broken down into sentences) or merging multiple text nodes to re-create a full utterance (a single sentence but divided into multiple strings in an FXL resource) that will be passed to the TTS engine
• skippability and escapability rules
• building a reader mode view from that tree-like structure

Introduction

There are quite a lot web digital reading material already has toc combined as part of book. W3C specification is a good example.

As converting system when I convert these web pages to epub I have two problems:

1. since the web pages does not have a separate toc so when I convert them to epub without toc in opf it will cause error.
2. sometimes it's could also be a better idea to be able to extract toc portion from book chapter to a separate one so that it can be easier for reading system to add more information to navigation.

The EDUPUB alliance formed in 2013. Its work included discussion of: (1) an education profile, (2) education structural semantics, (3) scriptable components, (4) packaging and integration, (5) open annotation, (6) distributable objects, and (7) QTI/LTI/Caliper best practices.

Digital textbooks are an important digital publishing scenario. New specifications and standards can facilitate new features and new technologies for each and every digital textbook.

The EPUB3 Working Group is presently formulating its charter. I would like to ask about whether the EPUB3 Working Group might find these EPUB for education and digital textbook scenarios to be of some interest? I would also like to ask about how we might best advance the state of the art with respect to digital textbooks at the W3C?

As a recent recipient of a doctoral degree, I need to publish my work to further my career. Because part of my thesis was an interactive presentation, traditional academic publishers cannot publish a significant element of my work.

Explanation:

1. Users: Graduate students, professors, researchers, and academics who must publish to further their careers:
   
   It is a trend in academia for researchers or grad students to use technologies other than the written word to present their thesis or research. This is not limited to any single discipline. In the humanities, immersive experiences are superior to books and journals for preserving and expressing culture. Medical education is exploring simulations, 3D modeling, and 3D printing technologies. Berklee College of Music has developed a multi-disciplinary program.
   
   

2. A professor whose thesis presentation includes a video game. They wished to publish immersive/interactive experiences as part of their research.
   

3. Benefits:
   
   If academic publishers could publish non-traditional “outside the book” formats, scholars could use the published works to further their goals
   

• Tenure review boards could consider all of a candidate’s work.
• An author/researcher can show all facets of their work when applying for funding for research
• Better Expressions of Culture — interactive or immersive projects are better than books and linear content for expressing and preserving culture.
• Community Engagement — interactive content can be a bridge from academia to interested non-academics.
• More Immersive Experiences for K–12 students would be possible.
• Remote learning in science and engineering would benefit from 3D technologies
• If academic publishers knew they could disseminate this kind of work they would be willing to take more chances

4. Future Need:
   
   Academics are considering more expansive forms of scholarship in the future, like “This article about Guidelines for Broadening the Definition of Historical Scholarship" from The American Historical Association.
   

…the guidelines proposed here are intended to be expansive and flexible enough to accommodate forms we have yet to anticipate. —Jim Grossman, The American Historical Association executive director.

Types of Digital Books

Perhaps, utilizing EPUB package metadata, developers could declare which type of digital book that a particular EPUB resource was, for example a “digital textbook” or “digital gamebook”. This information, utilizing a book type vocabulary, could be useful for reading systems, for instance to provide book-type-specific user-interface layouts, menus, and features.

Reading System Requirements and Capabilities

Perhaps, utilizing EPUB package metadata, developers could describe granular requirements for reading systems, including requirements pertaining to JavaScript scripting environments: specific API’s, features, and functionalities. As envisioned, this would involve a requirements and capabilities vocabulary.

For example, an EPUB resource, e.g., a mathematics digital textbook, could utilize package metadata to indicate that it requires the WebGPU API for 3D graphics.

Reading System Permissions

Perhaps an EPUB permissions system could be devised (see: w3c/epub-specs#1958) expanding upon the Permissions API and permission names vocabulary. Certain API's, features, and functionalities could, then, ask users for permissions, e.g., to access the browsable Web (see: w3c/epub-specs#1871).

EPUB, Web, and JavaScript Security

With a broad and granular requirements and capabilities vocabulary, EPUB resources and, perhaps, eventually websites could use metadata to declare their JavaScript-related requirements, and these – and, perhaps, only these – scripting API's, features, and functionalities could be made available, when supported by the reading system or browser, and when in accordance with users' configurations, settings, and permissions.

Saving and Loading Session States

I wonder how the Web Storage API applies to EPUB resources and their individual HTML pages?

Also, towards a multi-slot storage solution for EPUB resources – which would be useful for both digital textbooks and digital gamebooks – sketched, below, is a multi-slot storage solution which can allow EPUB resources to save and load session state without requiring direct access to a local filesystem. That is, an EPUB resource could utilize package metadata and a requirements and capabilities vocabulary to indicate that it requires access to this or a similar API without requiring access to other API's, features, or functionalities.

This sketch utilizes the Storage interface from the Web Storage API. In the sketch, the contents of data are saved to and loaded from storage slots.

interface StorageManager : EventTarget
{
  readonly attribute Storage data;

  iterable<Slot> getSlots();
  Promise<Slot> createSlot(object? args);
  Promise<Slot> copySlot(Slot slot, object? args);
  undefined loadSlot(Slot slot);
  Promise<Slot> saveSlot(Slot slot, object? args);
  Promise<boolean> deleteSlot(Slot slot);
  Promise<boolean> clearSlots();
}

interface Slot
{
  readonly attribute DOMString name;
  readonly attribute DOMString description;

  readonly attribute unsigned long long size;
  readonly attribute DOMString creationTime;
  readonly attribute DOMString lastModified;
}

The sketch intends to describe a sort of multi-slot digital bookmark and videogame state storage solution. With a bit more work, perhaps expanding on the sketch, developers could enable users to be able to simply close and reopen their digital books, resuming from saved states, and to be able to utilize multiple digital bookmarks, or storage slots.

Conclusion

Thank you. Any thoughts on these ideas?

As a Reader, Author, Publisher or Digital Seller, I would benefit from a way to ensure that the edition of the epub that I have purchased and is being made available is the authentic one that was released for this particular title, author and rights so that I have the reading experience that the author intended.

Currently, there are many instances in the reading ecosystem where inauthentic versions based on stolen content are being made available through self-publishing outlets in order to facilitate passive income for parties other than the author and publisher.

The reading experiences for these counterfeit editions are often poor because CSS has been stripped and other formatting altered in order to get whatever automation is included in ingestion to not be aware of the duplication of content.

If there was a way that everyone in the supply chain could know a file to be an authentic edition, it would go a long way towards slowing down this proliferation of counterfeit material that is confusing to readers and authors.

Introduction

Brief introduction to the "use case template".

This template might serve as an approach to document use cases in a more systematic and coherent way.

Recommended format:


As a <Reader | who will benefit from the use case> I would like to <what is the use case> so that <how I will benefit from the use case>

Explanation:

The expressions in angle brackets are meant to be placeholders for the specific content of a use case. The description should be technology-agnostic as it serves to define the users' needs and will not be a guide for a specific implementation.

1. <Reader | who will benefit from the use case>:
   
   Here you should try to define the role of the user as precisely as possible. For example, instead of "as a publisher" you might say "as a publisher of scientifc textbooks" etc. Please keep in mind that a Reading System could also be a kind of user.
   
   

2. <what is the use case>:
   
   Try to describe your user's need as precisely as possible on a micro-level that could be implemented later on. Instead of a general statement such as "achieve a more user-friendly layout", you should prefer to speak of "achieve a more flexible table layout for huge and complex tables".
   
   

3. <how I will benefit from the use case>:
   
   Describe the ultimate goal of the user's requirement. For example, if you requested "a more flexible table layout for huge and complex tables", you might want to adapt for mobile use - "so that you may consume them on a mobile".
   
   

Detail

• What is the current problem.

More specific is better to help people understand.

• If the use case has a specific audience or circumstance, then who, when and how will people benefit from solving this problem.

Proposal (if any)

A use case does not need to come with a proposal or a recommendation. But if there is any, we can have it documented.

Classic books have been reprinted and reprinted for centuries. The paper books on the shelves wear out and disappear. But the content of that book remains permanent because it is printed over and over again. What matters is the content. Users change their computers every 3-5 years. But they keep the personal content they have created. They carry their documents and music to their new computers. They are permanent. It is continuous. E-Book Readers get old like paper books on the shelf. But their content needs to be preserved. Readers may want or even have to change their devices every now and then. And of course, they will want to move the content their e-books to the new device. They use Adobe Digital Editions to send the books to the new device.

W3C is developing EPUB, the universal book format. EPUB becomes the e-book standard. So it can be read on any e-book reader that supports that standard. Now that it has become a standard, it brings to mind MP3s, which can be listened to on almost every computer, music player. But perhaps something is missing.

What makes a book valuable are the parts that the reader likes. They highlight their favorite texts. Maybe they take notes on the page. With effort, they create their personal content. Of course, they will hope for the permanence of this content. New books are archived in the library after they have been read. But most of the books in the library will never be reread from beginning to end. Instead, only notes taken and texts highlighted are reviewed. Personal libraries last for decades. But devices, unfortunately, only last a few years. EBooks are superior because they don't wear out, because their data never disappears. But does the e-library really never disappear when it needs to be moved to a new e-reader!

When a note is made on a book, the note is not actually saved in the book. It is saved in a note file linked to the book. Later, when the book is opened, the relevant parts of the note file are parsed and displayed on the book again. But different devices have different ways of saving notes. There is no harmony. E-books can be moved to the new device, but notes cannot be transferred to the new device. On the new device, the book is as if the cover has never been opened. All the notes taken are gone!

For text highlighting to be more than a momentary technological entertainment, it must be permanent. It would be a waste of time to underline an important text while reading it if it cannot be permanent.

This is why notes can also be saved in a universal format. It can be a note file with the same name in the same folder as the book. W3C could set standards for saving notes. Perhaps this could be the EPUBNotes file type.

The device settings can now offer the following options: Notes can be saved according to the device's own note standard, or they can be saved according to the EPUB note standard. If the reader chooses to save according to the EPUB standard, the notes will be saved according to the rules set by W3C.

Imagine a future reader replacing his e-book reader: He sends the old EPUB books he bought to the device. But the device recognizes these books as new. There are no more notes. But when the reader copies the note files of the books from the old device to the new device will he get his notes back. Any device that supports the universal EPUB format will also support these note files. EBook reader devices are ephemeral. The e-library and the personal content that the reader creates in the book must be sustained.

In fact, a perfect solution would be for W3C to develop a standard for the e-reader to save book notes on top of the Epub file. Notes taken on PDF files are saved in the PDF file. This ensures the permanence of the notes. This is how the notes for Epub books should be! Perhaps WC3 could collaborate with Adobe on this.

Publishers will be pleased to see the design of the e-book improved. But why should they care about the quality of the reader generated content? Why should they ask W3C to improve that too? The reader gets more out of the book with the content they create. It is the reader's favorite parts that make the book valuable. They underline their favorite texts. They remember more parts of the book. So he can talk about the book at length to his friends. He can often bring up different parts of it. The reader will, of course, be advertising the book! The more the reader remembers about the book, the longer he/she will keep it on the agenda. Some of their friends will want to own the book. Then they will advertise it to their friends. The process starts to work. Now we can hope that the sales of that book will increase. It will make the publisher of the book happy.

In fact, this also makes it easier for e-reader manufacturers. They don't have to design new software algorithms for taking notes on the book. The standard rules are already in place. Manufacturers just need to write the appropriate program.

It is not unusual that the description of a provided image would be included in the text content. However, APA believes that good descriptions depend on the nature of interest involved. For example the self-same image might require a very different description when the topic is theatrical set design than when the topic is costume design. Regardless, APA also believes any image should be focusable so that a person who cannot see the image can share it without some who can see it for purposes of asking questions and holding further discussions of the image.

We have long had descriptions of how footnotes might be managed more effectively, especially in audio books, but we seem still to have no readers that do the job well!

I am currently creating some test for OCF about "zip file splitting accross multiple storage media" case and have some discussion here w3c/epub-specs#2360.

I suspect there might be some use case for splitting epub (zip) file but I don't have a strong use case yet. I can image something like epub with audio and video files but it's just hypothesis yet. So I wonder if anyone in this community has some real use case for splitting epub file.

Introduction

I would like mediaoverlay to have a normal format to support range so that it will not require publisher to wrap text with html element specifying id attribute to map to audio clip. Or if there is already such a way to define this in spec then I would like to know.

• who will benefit from the use case
  Content creator and reading system

• what is the use case
  So it will be easier to map each word to audio clip without adding HelloWorld

• how I will benefit from the use case
  There are a lot of benefit to have range in text. For example if content creator would like to map audio clip to each word then we don't need to wrap each word one by one. And it will be possible to use tool to generate smil automatically.

Detail

Use this smil as example it matches this text for one word. If we use span like this then it would be very difficult for reading system to highlight each word accordingly.

<span id="c01s0006">With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship.</span>

I searched around MediaOverlay but can see text src only can apply to IRI then we have a few problems.

1. IRI does not prevent us from defining range like http parameter for example http://example.org/ebook1?path=//table[1]/tr[1]/td[2]&start=412&end=414 but it is not well defined that can be used as contract between content creator and reading system. Also it can only deine very simple data type. (maybe serialize a json string to one parameter? But still need a definition)

2. The serialization format for selector. The Text Position Selector are very close to what I am looking for but it does not have dom range. While the Range Selector does not seem to have character offset which a DOM Range does support.

So I wonder if could find a way to map certain word to audio clip without adding more html element.

Hello at all!
I hope to be on the right place to share this question. If not, please guide me to where this questions belongs to. Thank you in advance.

From a professional EPUB production service company I got the information that Apple did not allow the usage of the attribute epub:type="endnote" in the past.
But as far as I know this attribute is valid with the EPUB specs.

We asked Apple about the current state of this and they refer to the Kobo Specs and a similar issue and say to not use epub:type="endnote", since it is not declared as an error by the EPUB validation check.

But:

• The DAISY Accessible Publishing Knowledge Base does mention the attribute in examples: http://kb.daisy.org/publishing/docs/html/epub-type.html
• The Autorhing Guide of the IDPF from 2019 also lists it in the mapping of ARIA roles: https://idpf.github.io/epub-guides/epub-aria-authoring

So now I am confused:
Apple says, it is not an error in the EPUB check, but it still should not be used?
Is the EPUB check not up to date? Or which resource is wrong here?

Hi,

I'm working as a developer for Nota (the Danish Library and Expertise Center for people with print disabilities). We provide accessibility reading material for Danes, who cannot read ordinary printed text.

We''re in progress of moving from DAISY 2.02 to EPUB 3.

We have a number of narrated comic books in our collection, in our own custom DAISY 2.02 format (I can provide some examples if needed), but we want to use a standard format to distribute them in the future.

I've been looking at EPUB Region Based Narration and the EPUB 3.3 draft which includes comics.

But I don't see how to combine it with media-overlays.

Is Region Based Narration + Media Overlays the way to go?
If so how are they combined?
If not, is there a better way to do it?
What about reading system support?

Here is a link to a Google Doc with draft purpose statement and headers for defining scope and user profiles, to be drafted and iterated on per input from TF members https://docs.google.com/document/d/1pvydL4nuZ2IZQFhbsxWZAlFyo6sBu14si3o0OAI34IY/edit?usp=sharing

Introduction

As a publisher, I want to verify my content with retailers to guard against fraudulent sales and ensure readers are getting the real version of the book.

Detail

• What is the current problem.

There is a rise in fraudulent sales of book content, where a bad actor obtains the book file and metadata, removes DRM (if present), and posts the content on retail platforms posing as the publisher. The fraudulent copy is often priced lower than the original, and appears identical to the authentic version. Sales of this product benefit the bad actor, and no proceeds go to the author.

This issue impacts a number of people within the book supply chain, including:

• Author - lost royalties
• Publisher - lost sales, potential reputational harm if content is altered
• Retailer - security risk, reputational harm if content is altered
• User - mislead as to who is receiving the sales, security risk

Proposal (if any)

Develop a method for publishers to sign their content with a key that the retailer recognizes as verification. This could extend to a "shared secret" method between retailers and publishers to determine the authenticity of content. Content without the signature expected by the retailer would be flagged as suspicious and not be sold until authenticity is confirmed or fraud is determined.

Introduction

I created a first draft for a specification called SSS (Schema Structure Syndication). It's heavily inspired by how RSS is used to distribute podcasts. Was wondering what the right way to get feedback or how to start the process to work with W3C on this specification.

Couple things:

1. We are using schema.org types to distribute types content (starting with comics, but it could work with a bunch of schema.org types)
2. We are defining how to unlock paid content in the specification, so that creators can publish not just free content but paid content. (Not done yet)

Here is the specification: https://3s-docs.org
And here are the two apps that work with that specification:

1. Taddy - for comic creators (It outputs an SSS comic feed) - https://taddy.org
2. bam! - for comic fans (it can read any SSS comic feed)- https://bamcomics.art

On behalf of the Technical Committee of the Japanese DAISY Consortium, I propose to create a Community Group Report for the switching of horizontal and vertical writing.

The technical content of this proposed CG report is almost identical to a member submission of alternate styles tags specification. It has been implemented by Japanese DAISY readers and used by Japanese DAISY users.

In Japan, some persons with print disabilities find either horizontal or vertical writing particularly difficult. Dyslexic persons often have problems with vertical writing. Meanwhile, persons with autism or optic stenosis often have problems with horizontal writing. An experiment (see Section 3 of this document) conducted by KOUYAMA Tadashi reveals that dyslexic people tend to have more problems with vertical writing. More information (in Japanese) about his experiment is available here.

Use case: A publisher creates an EPUB publication having vertical-writing stylesheets and alternate horizontal-writing CSS stylesheets. By default, vertical writing is used. But some dyslexic users switch to horizontal writing.

Expected attendees: members of the technical committee of the Japanese DAISY Consortium.

Overview

Problem statement

Write, publish and maintain documentation to help the community find helpful and practical information on EPUBs.

Inspiration from: w3c/publ-cg#88

EPUBs are complicated. The spec doesn't fit on an index card. There are more reading systems then Democratic candidates for President. Book content is infinitely varied.

Proposed work

• Contribute to MDN and Open Web Docs
• Submit technical writing on EPUB tutorials, guides, "just the basics", and best practices.
  • IBM (the exceptional technical writers that they are) had an EPUB tutorial published in 2008!
• Replicate the knowledge-base and reference guide style of documentation that's published in the DAISY Accessible Publishing Knowledge Base.
  • Hub for practical techniques and examples
  • For example the doc on page lists is very handy.
• API documentation on related and specific HTML/CSS/JS web tech such as the epubReadingSystem object and other RS concerns.
• Triage docs based on the 33 open issues tagged as "Best Practice" and 4 other "Question" & "Accessibility" issues in the prior github repo (publ-cg)
• Attempt to get compatibility tables going, a la caniuse.com

Dependencies & risks

Stakeholders

• MDN Editorial Team
  • Follow strict editorial guidelines
  • Stay away from how EPUB overlaps with HTML
  • Offer specification interpretations
• EPUB WG
• EPUB CG
• W3C Product Advisory board
• Large community of developers
• Large community of non-developers

Risks

• Volunteers
  • Technical writing skills
• Resources
  • Time, effort, coordination
• Review and editing process
  • Quality control
  • Tracking mistakes / errata
• Upkeep and maintenance
  • Documentation going stale or out of date
• Vast ocean of RS implementations out there!
  • Compatibility data

Success criteria

• Users within the EPUB ecosystem have something better than relying on Google searches.
• SEO for EPUB help and guidance terms benefits from this work.
• Collaboration and maintenance on docs is easily done with little friction.
• The community feels alive again and this effort could cascades into and stimulate activity on StackOverflow and other forums.

I have an an application which runs in Browser and is similar to ePUB Reader. There is a requirement to add metadata tags in the content e.g. a paragraph in the HTML files.

I have reviewed the ePUB specification which talks about adding the metadata in the node of Package file (*.opf file). However it doesn't talk about how to tag the metadata to a specific content element (say

tag) in the content documents i.e. xHTML file.

Is there any specification / standard to add the metadata in the content documents (.xHTML files) ?

Description

EPUB Reading Systems should make it easy for a person to get a formal citation or reference. This feature would enable the reader to select a portion of text and then use a shortcut key or button to get the formal citation and copy it to the clipboard.
The user should have the ability to select from a number of accepted formats for citations. The first time a person uses this feature, they should be prompted for a citation format to choose from. After that, this would be the default citation format, but the end user could choose to change this.

This feature is something that everybody could take advantage of, but persons with disabilities who use Assistive Technology would greatly benefit from this feature. We suggest this be taken up in the Publishing Community Group.

This discussion started in the Accessibility Reading Systems Testing working group.
Epub Test Results Page

There were several issues filed that are related to this feature:

[Get reference, a composite function, ] (daisy/epub-accessibility-tests#85)

[How to create a reference or citation when no page list has been provided] (daisy/epub-accessibility-tests#87)

[Identify current location for notes and citations] (daisy/epub-accessibility-tests#86)

This is referenced in the Publishing CG issue tracker as well

As a graduate student, I am required to cite my sources using page numbers.

We currently have a few issues reported are related to selector

https://github.com/w3c/publishingcg/issues?q=is%3Aissue+is%3Aopen+label%3A%22selector+or+annotation%22
And I have filed issue here w3c/web-annotation#448

The selector is apparently base of quite a few higher level spec/feature such as annotation, media overlay and maybe anything would related to mapping something else to certain fragment (text or part of image) of html document.

The reason I would like to start this as TF is to see if anyone would be interested in working on selector as well since it's widely related to other feature. And I need help with drafting document.

A short term goal would be to draft a tech report.

I am developing an ePub. In the content.opf file I have to specify a series of metadata by using DC standard. For example dc:title and dc:creator.

However my book is a multilanguage book, that is, it contains three translations of the same text: Italian, English and Russian. The standard reference manual states that I can have more dc:language statements. For example:

    <dc:language>it</dc:language>
    <dc:language>en</dc:language>
    <dc:language>ru</dc:language>

but it does not say how to specify the other metadata for more than one language. Consider, for example, dc:creator. I tried

    <dc:creator xml:lang="it">Dario de Judicibus</dc:creator>
    <dc:creator xml:lang="en">Dario de Judicibus</dc:creator>
    <dc:creator xml:lang="ru">Дарио де Юдицибус</dc:creator>

I get an error from the distribution platform validator, which states that the format of ePub is not correct. It looks like I cannot use xml:lang in dc:creator even if, in theory, that is an XML attribute that can be used with any XML tag. Same for dc:title:

    <dc:title xml:lang="it">Il Titolo del mio Libro</dc:title>
    <dc:title xml:lang="en">My Book Title</dc:title>
    <dc:title xml:lang="ru">Название Mоей Kниги</dc:title>

Could someone who has had to face the same problem as me, namely writing the OPF for an ePub that contains a text in multiple languages, tell me what is the correct way to do it? In the standards for the OPF 3.x I have not been able to find any useful information to establish this. P

Hello. I would like to propose a new attribute for the EPUB Multiple Renditions specification and model.

"The need to include more than one Rendition of an EPUB Publication has grown as Reading Systems have evolved and become more sophisticated. While some measure of content adaptation has always been possible at the style sheet level, it is both limited in what it can accomplish and limited to content rendering. Existing fallback mechanisms within the Package Document similarly only ensure that resources can be rendered."

Presently, the EPUB Multiple Renditions model provides a means of differentiating between Renditions via a number of markup attributes: rendition:media, rendition:layout, rendition:language, rendition:accessMode, and rendition:label.

The rendition:media attribute identifies the media features of a Reading System the given Rendition is best suitable for rendering on.

<container xmlns="urn:oasis:names:tc:opendocument:xmlns:container"
           xmlns:rendition="http://www.idpf.org/2013/rendition"
           version="1.0">
   <rootfiles>
       <rootfile full-path="Sandman.opf"
           media-type="application/oebps-package+xml"/>
       <rootfile full-path="Sandman-large.opf"
           media-type="application/oebps-package+xml"
           rendition:media="(min-width: 1920px)"/>
   </rootfiles>
</container>

The rendition:layout attribute indicates whether the given Rendition is reflowable or pre-paginated.

<container xmlns="urn:oasis:names:tc:opendocument:xmlns:container"
           xmlns:rendition="http://www.idpf.org/2013/rendition"
           version="1.0">
   <rootfiles>
       <rootfile full-path="EPUB/reflow/magazine.opf"
           media-type="application/oebps-package+xml"/>
       <rootfile full-path="EPUB/fxl/magazine.opf"
           media-type="application/oebps-package+xml"
           rendition:layout="pre-paginated"/>
    </rootfiles>
</container>

The rendition:language attribute indicates that the given Rendition is optimized for the specified language.

<container xmlns="urn:oasis:names:tc:opendocument:xmlns:container"
           xmlns:rendition="http://www.idpf.org/2013/rendition"
           version="1.0">
   <rootfiles>
       <rootfile full-path="EPUB/en/package.opf"
           media-type="application/oebps-package+xml"
           rendition:language="en"/>
       <rootfile full-path="EPUB/fr/package.opf"
           media-type="application/oebps-package+xml"
           rendition:language="fr"/>
       <rootfile full-path="EPUB/es/package.opf"
           media-type="application/oebps-package+xml"
           rendition:language="es"/>
   </rootfiles>
</container>

The rendition:accessMode attribute identifies the way in which intellectual content is communicated in a Rendition, and is based on the [ISO24751-3] "Access Mode" property (e.g., auditory, tactile, textual, or visual).

<container xmlns="urn:oasis:names:tc:opendocument:xmlns:container"
           xmlns:rendition="http://www.idpf.org/2013/rendition"
           version="1.0">
   <rootfiles>
       <rootfile full-path="EPUB/comic/package.opf"
           media-type="application/oebps-package+xml"
           rendition:accessMode="visual"/>
       <rootfile full-path="EPUB/novel/package.opf"
           media-type="application/oebps-package+xml"
           rendition:accessMode="textual"/>
   </rootfiles>
</container>

The rendition:label attribute allows each rootfile element to be annotated with a human-readable name.

<container xmlns="urn:oasis:names:tc:opendocument:xmlns:container"
           xmlns:rendition="http://www.idpf.org/2013/rendition"
           version="1.0"
           xml:lang="en">
   <rootfiles>
        …
       <rootfile full-path="EPUB/package.opf"
           media-type="application/oebps-package+xml"
           rendition:media="color, min-width: 1024"
           rendition:layout="pre-paginated"
           rendition:label="Color-optimized print replica"/>
   </rootfiles>
</container>

Proposed, here, is a new attribute for the rendition XMLNS, rendition:requires. This new attribute would be useful for indicating that a Rendition requires JavaScript or, more granularly, that it requires specific JavaScript features.

The following example shows how one could express that a Rendition requires JavaScript:

<container xmlns="urn:oasis:names:tc:opendocument:xmlns:container"
           xmlns:rendition="http://www.idpf.org/2013/rendition"
           version="1.0"
           xml:lang="en">
   <rootfiles>
        …
       <rootfile full-path="EPUB/package.opf"
           media-type="application/oebps-package+xml"
           rendition:media="color, min-width: 1024"
           rendition:layout="pre-paginated"
           rendition:label="Color-optimized print replica"
           rendition:requires="javascript"/>
   </rootfiles>
</container>

The following example shows how one could express that a Rendition requires more granular JavaScript features:

<container xmlns="urn:oasis:names:tc:opendocument:xmlns:container"
           xmlns:rendition="http://www.idpf.org/2013/rendition"
           version="1.0"
           xml:lang="en">
   <rootfiles>
        …
       <rootfile full-path="EPUB/package.opf"
           media-type="application/oebps-package+xml"
           rendition:media="color, min-width: 1024"
           rendition:layout="pre-paginated"
           rendition:label="Color-optimized print replica"
           rendition:requires="js-feature1 js-feature2 js-feature3"/>
   </rootfiles>
</container>

EPUB/A is a preliminary work item of ISO/IEC JTC1/SC34/JWG7. EPUB/A is expected to specify (1) which feature of EPUB should be used and avoided for long-term preservation, and (2) the packaging of EPUB publications together with any additional data such as other versions and other documentation into an OAIS Submission Information Package (SIP).

It will be based on two technical specifications:
ISO/IEC TS 22424-1 Digital publishing — EPUB 3 Preservation — Part 1: Principles
ISO/IEC TS 22424-2 Digital publishing — EPUB 3 Preservation — Part 2: Metadata requirements

Alicia Wise who is a leader of preparation PWI regarding EPUB/A gave a presentation in a JWG7 meeting yesterday.

This topic will be discussed in a JWG7 meeting in 2023 May.

This issue was first raised in the
w3c/publ-maintenance-wg-charter#16 (comment)

I have an an application which runs in Browser and is similar to ePUB Reader. There is a requirement to add metadata tags in the content e.g. a paragraph in the HTML files.

I have reviewed the ePUB specification which talks about adding the metadata in the node of Package file (*.opf file). However it doesn't talk about how to tag the metadata to a specific content element (say

tag) in the content documents i.e. xHTML file.

Is there any specification / standard to add the metadata in the content documents (.xHTML files) ?

Description

The problem of titles that do not have the print page number inserted into EPUB has been a problem for a long, long time. We suggest that the Publishing Community Group address this problem.

There are library systems that are willing to ingest EPUB and insert page numbers into the text, but they insist that there be an accepted mechanism for doing this. The Reading Systems should also agree to go to a virtual page number when none exist. In this way,We can resolve the many issues that lack of print page numbers present. This is essential for citations and collaboration.

This issue exists in the Publishing CG issue tracker

Digital Only Page Breaks#19

The Problem

Accessibility is really important to me, but I will probably never have the
funds to provide audio versions of what Pipfrosch Press is publishing. Some of
my planned publications will have frequent content updates rather than just
being static publications. For example, my planned field guide to Contra Costa
County will likely never ever be finished, with new species accounts added every
year and existing species accounts modified with some frequency.

For the print-disabled user, Text To Speech (TTS) Synthesis will be how they
access the content.

ePub currently has two different mechanisms for providing pronunciation hints to
TTS Synthesizers, PLS and SSML.

When there is only one way to pronounce a grapheme, PLS is the better option as
it allows a single document that can be updated as needed, either by the ePub
publisher or by a school / library as needed. PLS also supports multiple
phonetic alphabets at the same time.

Where there are multiple ways to pronounce a grapheme, SSML is better because it
allows the specific pronunciation to be specified for the use case of the
grapheme. However SSML only allows a single phonetic alphabet to be specified.

Unfortunately neither solution allows for regional pronunciation variations.

Even though both PLS and SSML have been in the ePub standard for some time, they
are not implemented by the vast majority of ePub viewers. I have heard of one
custom viewer used by a Japanese school district that implements them, but I was
not able to confirm it.

I recommend a new solution, a single solution that covers both use cases as well
as allowing for region-specific pronunciations and allows for as many different
phonetic alphabets as the ePub publisher knows about.

This solution does not have to be restricted to ePub but could work with any
digital publishing format, including websites and PDF (though perhaps not as an
embedded solution within PDF, I do not know).

This probably should only become part of the ePub standard if Apple, Google, and
EDRLab are on board and are committed to implementing it in their software. How
to get them on-board I have no clue, I have social anxiety and as a result do
not often portray confidence when proposing solutions, even were I to find a way
to get their ear, and unfortunately when proposing something without an
appearance of confidence, those with the power to implement can not see past the
presentation to see the value of what is being presented.

This solution probably needs to be adjusted by those with far more experience in
the issues related to TTS Synthesis than I have, but this solution should be
fairly easy to extend as is.

It probably needs to be yet another W3C project for experts in the field to
refine. It is my hope that someone who knows how to work the system to make
things happen sees the value in this and runs with it. I do not need any credit
if that happens, I just want a solution that works well as I publish my ePubs. A
solution that brings my ePubs to print-disabled users enjoyment rather than
frustration.

JSON Pronunciation Library

Example JSON file attached.

The format for the JSON Pronunciation Library shall be JSON. JSON was chosen for
the ease of which valid JSON files may be generated from a number of programming
languages from database queries, including Python and PHP. I am personally a big
fan of XML but this I think should be JSON.

The character set for the JSON pronunciation library will be UTF-8.

The first definition in a the JSON pronunciation library shall be lang and
either be assigned a string value of a BCP-47 language code or a list of BCP-47
language codes.

Examples:

"lang": "en"
"lang": "en-US", "en-GB"

In most cases, the generic language is to be preferred over a localized
language.

The text to speech synthesizer will only use a JSON Pronunciation Library that
matches the current specified language within the (X)HTML document. For example,
if the current document is specified as "en-US" then a JSON Pronunciation
Library with lang="es" would not be used for pronunciations except for a
string within a node labeled with the XML attribute lang="es". This is to
avoid collisions where languages that share the same alphabet have words with
an identical grapheme but are pronounced quite differently, allowing the Text to
Speech Synthesizer to use its own pronunciation algorithms in the event that an
entry exists for one language but does not exist for the language specified for
the string being read.

Pronunciation Context Dictionary

The JSON Pronunciation Library will have at least one context dictionary named
default but may have additional context dictionaries. In the example
JSON Pronunciation Library, additional context dictionaries named taxonomy
(for taxonomy names) and proper (for proper names) are provided.

The default context dictionary is to be used by TTS synthesizers either when
a context is not specified or when the grapheme is not found in the specified
context dictionary.

Each context dictionary will have a list named entries

grapheme entry

Each context dictionary entry list item must have a grapheme definition that
specifies either a string or a list of strings. Examples:

"grapheme": "job"

"grapheme": ["estivate", "aestivate", "æstivate"]

The specified grapheme should not be interpreted as case sensitive.

In cases where only one pronunciation for that grapheme is provided, one of more
phonetic alphabets with the corresponding phoneme can be specified. An example
that provides a phoneme for both ipa and x-sampa:

{
  "grapheme": ["estivate", "aestivate", "æstivate"],
  "ipa": "ˈɛstɪˌveɪt",
  "x-sampa": "EstI%veIt"
}

The text to speech synthesizer can then pick the alphabet it has the best
support for and use that phoneme to pronounce the grapheme.

speechpart

In some languages, the same grapheme may have a different pronunciation
depending upon the part of speech it is used in. For example, the grapheme
wind in English is pronounced differently---and has a different
meaning---depending upon if it is noun (or adjective) or a verb.

In those cases, a speechpart can be defined and the (X)HTML author should
specify the speech part with a span element. The speechpart will then hold
either the phoneme or regional variation phoneme. An example:

{
  "grapheme": "wind",
  "speechpart": {
    "noun" : {
      "ipa": "wɪnd",
      "x-sampa": "wInd"  
    },
    "verb" : {
      "ipa": "waɪnd",
      "x-sampa": "waInd"
    }
  }
}

When the speechpart is not specified by the (X)HTML the text to speech
synthesizer may attempt to detect the speech part based upon a grammatical
parsing of the sentence, as some seem to do already, but best practice
should be for the (X)HTML author to specify the speechpart as an XML
attribute to a span element around the grapheme.

When the speechpart is not determined or does not match a specified
speechpart then the first speechpart should be used. In the above
example, with the sentence "That is a beautiful wind turbine" wind is an
adjective but since a pronunciation for the grapheme wind as an
adjective is not specified, the noun phoneme for wind would be used since it
is the first defined speechpart.

Regional Pronunciation

Within the same language, sometimes a grapheme has a different pronunciation
depending upon political borders or cultural grouping.

An example of this is the grapheme vase. It seems to be pronounced differently
in America than in Great Britain than in Australia, though I am not positive
about the latter.

In those cases, a list of phonemes for the grapheme may be provided. For example:

{
  "grapheme": "vase",
  "languages" : [
    {
      "lang": "en-US",
      "ipa": "veɪs",
      "x-sampa": "veIs"
    },
    {
      "lang": ["en-GB", "en-IE"]
      "ipa": "vɑz",
      "x-sampa": "vAz"
    },
    {
      "lang": "en-AU",
      "ipa" : "vɐːz",
      "x-sampa": "v6:z"
    }
  ]
}

In these cases, the lang specifies the pronunciation language rather than
the document language. A British user reading an ePub that specifies en-US
will probably prefer that words be pronounced the British way and in fact may
have lower comprehension if they are pronounced the American way.

However there are cases, such as poetry where rhymes and near-rhymes are
important, where the (X)HTML author should be able to specify that a particular
regional variation of the language be used.

Context Dictionary Use Cases

In some cases, such as taxonomy names and proper names, the correct way to
pronounce a word may differ from the way the same grapheme is ordinarily
pronounced.

The (X)HTML author should be able to define context dictionaries for these
special cases and use an attribute in a span or other element around the string
that alerts the text to speech synthesizer to look in the specified context
dictionary for the pronunciation before looking in the default context
dictionary. What the author names these dictionaries should be up to the
author.

(X)HTML Attributes

The written language should be detected from the specified language in the
ePub OPF file <dc:language></dc:language> element, but allowing that
language to be over-ridden within an XHTML document with the lang
attribute, such as one might have for a bibliography entry for a work that
is written in a different language.

At least in English and most languages I am familiar with, words are
delimited by white-space. How to specify a sub-string including a space is a
grapheme the TTS Synthesizer should look up in the library I have not yet
considered but it would be an attribute to a parent span (or whatever) node.
Probably a binary attribute (the kind represented without a value in HTML but
has any value in XML to indicate True). I understand that in Australia, they
call a root beer float a spider. Things like that could, at the discretion of
the (X)HTML author, be accommodated for by specifying root beer float as a
grapheme. That is probably a very poor example, but there are other examples
where those of us who are not print-disabled see a string but read it in our
minds as words other than what is printed. Especially strings that involve an
abbreviation.

For the other attributes...

If it were up to me, I would create speech- attributes the TTS synthesizer
could trigger off us.

For specifying the speechpart, something like

<p>Remember to <span speech-part="verb">wind</span> your watch once a week.</p>

For specifying the spoken language to be used when it is critical that a
particular regional pronunciation be used:

<p>Tim reverted to his British roots when he started rhyming about the cool vase
he found in the woods, the perfect mother’s day gift he otherwise could not afford:</p>
<p speech-region="en-GB">“The vase, so boss, was buried in the moss.”</p>

Note that the speech-region attribute should trigger the text speech to text
synthesizer to use an algorithm for the specified region even for a grapheme
that is not specified in the JSON Pronunciation Library. But in that example,
even if the speech synthesizer only had an algorithm for American English, it
would still read the grapheme vase correctly in the rhyme.

For specifying the context dictionary, something like:

<p>According to <abbr>Dr.</abbr> <span speech-context="proper">Job</span> Walters...</p>

Please lets make this happen. For the present, even though no one is
implementing them, I will use PLS and SSML but those systems have limitations
that could easily be solved by this kind of a pronunciation library.

Thank you for your time.
pronunciation.json.txt

The Fixed Layout Accessibility TF in the working group has been working on a number of best practices for the accessible development of fixed layout content.

In discussing those best practices, we consistently encountered one major issue with accessibility: fixed text is really difficult to make accessible for those with disabilities like low vision, learning disabilities, or cognitive disabilities. Anyone with a print disability that benefits from things like changing fonts, font size, layout, highlighting, or affordances that rely on manipulation of the text or format are left out by FXL in general.

We came to a conclusion that creating a method for transforming the text of a FXL book into reflow that is controlled by users might be the solution to this issue. This will sound similar to the method proposed in Multiple Renditions, but in the interest of both avoiding a case where we have "separate but equal" content in the same EPUB, and reducing the workload of content creators, we have two main proposed solutions (these interestingly can also be used together, so please read them as such):

Visual to Textual Explainer
This method proposes using different style sheets for the same XHTML content document, but with one managing the FXL rendering and one managing a reflow rendering of the same page. This would use media queries in conjunction with an addition to the OPF to signal to a reading system that this book has this rendering method, and the recommendation would be that the RS offers an affordance for switching or loading one rendering or the other, or even displaying them side-by-side or in the same view.

Visual to Textual using Fallbacks
This method is similar (and would also rely on a metadata addition to the OPF and possibly multiple style sheets) where a content creator could provide the reflow version of a FXL page as a fallback, and the reading system would provide the affordance described above for switching or loading the different versions.

There's a number of technical questions that get raised by either method, as well as implementation matters, so we're eager for the community to hopefully take an interest in this and see what we can do to make fixed-layout accessible to everyone!

I think epub would benefit from being able to define certain pages—things like maps, Dramatis Personae, etc—as "Quick Reference" pages. The reader interface would provide a control to easily show a list of such pages in an e-book, and selecting a page from the list would bring up the contents of that page, without losing or leaving the current reading progression spot.

Regarding pages such as TOCs or indexes, the goal with viewing those pages is typically to jump to some other spot in the e-book and read from there. Quick Reference pages would differ in that they would be geared for viewing the contents and resuming reading from the original spot. If it were a website, a modal/pop-up window would be an appropriate interface.

Thanks! 😊

Introduction

As a student I would like to have latex included in epub so that I could have the raw latex data when reading.

Explanation:

T.B.D

User story

As a reader exploiting academics and technical documents I often use different reading systems because of different files formats or because of different devices I use for reading. As an example, I prefer to read an EPUB on Thorium while I'm at the Office, but I use Colibrio while traveling and reading on my mobile device. I also prefer to use Zotero for PDF documents on my desktop but Acrobat Reader on my mobile phone.

As a result of this practices, I can't use any Annotation or highlight tool provided by reading systems because they do not allow me to centralize that outside of them, even when I can perform an export, it's disconnected from the file and won't be updated when I add notes. It's hard to maintain a set of notes up to date and gathered over different reading situations. My fallback is a set of markdown files edited outside of any reading application, it implies a lot of copy/paste operations.

Details

Explanation:

1. Audience: Anyone having reading practices with heavy use of bookmarks, highlight and annotations and reading different formats using different devices / reading applications.

   • Specific audience: students, researchers, anyone using a large amount of documents and needing to make references or organize his thinking.

2. Use case: I need to centralize my bookmarks, highlights and annotations independently of reading system or device. I want them in a common format I can use with a large choice of applications.

   • Problem: bookmarks, annotations and highlight are Reading system dependent.

3. Benefit: I can concentrate on gathering thoughts and points of reference while reading and I can easily search, link, organize, compile & reuse my notes when I need to.

   • Specifically, this would remove interoperability headaches and give me more agility in my intellectual work.

Proposal for modern handling of errata-corrige or greater changes in ePub3 publications

ePubs can have subsequent editions, but here I mean a different kind of changes that can happen to be made to ePubs:
I know that when you create an ePub publication on some important ePub self-publishing firm, it is possible to upload a corrected version of the same ePub, that customers could download, to update their copy if they want.
This means that the HTML code could change in XHTML documents with no change in ISBN or other metadata publication ID.

The above mentioned firms also have annotating systems (I do not know what is their approach to this problem). And many RSs also have annotation systems.

This proposal is to overcome the epubcfi limitations when something changes.
Or it is general and does not deal with the epubcfi system at all, given its limitations.

This would encourage publishers to make errata-corrige changes respecting reasonable constraints, or providing the old version of the modified elements.

I would like to know, and hear from you, whether it could be possible to devise a method of handling errata-corriges in ePubs that
(this is the proposal)
encompasses including the old version of an HTML element or structure along the new one, in a way that it does not break the eoubcfi values (or it does) but that allows that still the old element is there, like hidden, still in the DOM but not for display,
and even subsequent versions are possible as well (like versioning but inside the XHTML document, not like a it was a website with file versioning).

I think this could be tricky, but maybe HTML5 has something for that.

It could be something "included" in the new element, like a special attribute string with HTML inside (tricky for escaping with subsequent versions maybe?).

Or an attribute that, if present, it refers to another element (it means "this element has a previous version, please see ID='old_chap01_par27' at the end of the DOM").

Or a special enclosing recursive tag I do not know.

The main goal should be that the old epubcfi (or other kind of positioning value) the annotation system has got, is still useful to retrieve the new element, but the RS know that it has changed, and it could even understand what changed and whether the old position is within that range or not.

It would be useful also when a mistake in the HTML layout appearance was made when releasing the publication.

That should be a method that also would be applied to an HTML structure, if necessary (this is vague but I mean something that is "bigger" than just an HTML element).

This proposal is mainly for the RSs to be allowed to retrieve the position of some annotation system even if something changes.
Epubcfi values are very prone to disruption when those changes happens. I made a previous proposal about forcing publishers to put id on every HTML element so that it is redundant to put XML indexes. The proposal was abandoned. But it was not even enough in fact.

This new proposal is maybe better because
-it is not so expensive when single HTML elements change (that is the common case)
-it makes a sort of versioning system available.

It would be an improvement.
This is my idea, maybe it is so simple, but other ideas are welcome because I think this would be an important addition to ePub3 (or ePub4) specs.

Regards

I see it was requested in the a11y task force call on 2021-02-11 that I add a note to the optimized publication section explaining the differences between these concepts, but such a discussion doesn't appear germane to the section. Audiobooks aren't in scope of the specification, TTS is not an optimization, and full audio only falls into the category when it's not included with full text, as already explained.

I'd suggest putting a general explanation in the techniques document section on primary access modes instead. I think this discussion is helpful in terms of explaining when a primary mode of auditory should be specified (even if audiobooks don't fit the discussion, they could be mentioned in comparison).

The other options I can think of include:

• adding a description of the difference between media overlays and a pure audiobook to the media overlays section of the core specification (not sure TTS fits here)
• writing a separate informative note that explains the differences between the three to avoid shoehorning this into sections where it doesn't fully fit

We might even want to consider a mix of these (e.g. descriptions in the techniques and media overlays).

In recent discussions, it has been suggested that utilizing SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) could be a viable solution for creating fixed layout EPUBs that are accessible. This issue serves as a reminder to conduct a thorough analysis to determine the feasibility of this approach.

Background

SVG is a comprehensive standard that fully supports accessibility features and enables the creation of pixel-perfect graphics. These characteristics make it an attractive option for designing fixed layout EPUBs. However, there are concerns regarding the limited support for SVG in various reading solutions and rendering engines, as well as potential challenges with assistive technologies.

Objectives

The main purpose of this investigation should be to evaluate the practicality and potential benefits of utilizing SVG for accessible fixed layout EPUBs. The following objectives should be considered:

1. Assess the compatibility of popular reading solutions and rendering engines with SVG
2. Investigate the current support for SVG in assistive technologies commonly used for accessing EPUBs
3. Identify any existing limitations or issues related to using SVG for fixed layout EPUBs
4. Evaluate the benefits of SVG in terms of creating pixel-perfect graphics and enhanced accessibility features

As per the design of WCAG 2.x and EPUB Accessibility 1.x, The producer need to ensure that all Content Documents meet all the accessibility requirements for claiming conformance to EPUB Accessibility 1.x or WCAG 2.x.
The publishers find it challenging to meet this requirement of nearly zero tolerance, especially when they are publishing big publications.
I am not sure if we can do much about this at this stage, this issue will be addressed by WCAG 3.0. But it is worth starting a discussion.
Please see the minutes of accessibility task force held on August 12, 2021 for the initial round of discussions:
https://www.w3.org/publishing/groups/epub-wg/Meetings/Minutes/2021-08-12-epub-a11y#section3

Introduction

As a graduate student, I am required to cite my sources and include page numbers.

Explanation:
Reflowable books without page numbers are frustrating for people who must follow standards like those of the IEEE or APA.

Detail

1. Audience Graduate students required the use standardized citation styles for research papers.
   Researchers whose work requires citations that include page numbers.
   Librarians and media specialists who maintain collections and recommend books for research.
   
   

2. Use Case Clinical Psychology graduate students who must write papers that adhere to the APA citation standard. Excerpt:
   

SHORT QUOTATIONS
If you are directly quoting from a work, you will need to include the author, year of publication, and page number for the reference
In-Text Citations: The Basics, Purdue University

3. Benefits If more publication formats conform to existing citation requirements, there would be a wider range of materials available to me as a researcher.
   
   Page numbers in indexes provide important information about book content and relevancy.*
   
   A reflowable, customizable format with page numbers could satisfy scholarly citation requirements and be accessible.
   
   Publishers could fulfill legal obligations of accessibility while giving the higher education market citable publications.
   
   Librarians and Media Specialists who maintain collections for researchers would have more options for acquiring publications if more formats had page numbers.
   
   

Many publications and especially textbooks will include specialized content unlikely to expose sufficient accessibility support. While there numerous available examples from any academic speciality, we illustrate the general issue by the example of scored music. A harmony, counterpoint, or composition textbook, a title in music history, as well as a common hymnal will each contain many scored music examples or even complete musical scores along with the text words possibily associated, e.g. as in a hymn or a song. The common general purpose browser or ebook reader is unlikely to provide features rich enough to sufficiently examine and learn the content. Note that displaying scored content is insufficient. Simply causing audio playback is similarly insufficient. Yet tools exist that are able to support the required feature sets. Our problem therefore is to work out how to allow sufficiently capable tooling to function within the general purpose ebook reader or browser.

User Story / Details

I am work in a DSO (Disability Service Office) or am a Teacher and want to give/assign a few pages or a chapter to a student. I would like to be able to have a convenient way to do this just like I can with PDF's.

Currently DSO's can extract the chapter or specific pages and hand the student a tagged PDF, but there is no way to do this with EPUBs, which is one of the blockers for mass adoption in higher education.

Considerations

• Copyright information would need to be preserved
• any specific fonts, CSS styling, Java Script needed
• Ability to create a mini-EPUB or a Web document that a student would be given a link to that would render the chapter / pages requested on any browser

“Title”: Extracting Math from Digital Publications

User Story / Details

As a blind student studying mathematics in college I can purchase a digital copy of my mathematics text book and have my assistive technology (AT) (Screen Reader and Braille Display) help me access the text within the digital book. Where I run into problems is depending on the book either there are images of the complex math equations without any textual description, or if there is a textual description it says “Math Equation”, and I must rely on sighted assistance to copy that math into some other software which allows me to explore the equation with my AT.

Possible Solution

Lately newer textbooks are starting to include MathML where I can explore the equation and all the parts which is wonderful, but depending on the Reading System this can be cumbersome and there is no way to extract this math into applications that I am more familiar with in reading/writing math equations.

At school I use LaTeX for all my classes, and ideally I would love to be able to when I encounter a math equation in my textbook extract that equation and bring it in my LaTeX editor so I can fully understand the equation and work on solving it.

Additional Benefits

As a side benefit all students would benefit from being able to quickly copy the math equation to their math editors of choice without transcription errors.

Considerations

Could we include a button to copy the Math equation out of this EPUB, is there copyright issues or is this fair use?

Upon extraction be able to convert MathML into LaTex or vice versa

Publishers may already have LaTeX format of the MathML how should we handle this?

Should publishers include both LaTeX and MathML as well as a textual based description of the Math?

This relates to w3c/epub-specs#1599 when there are page breaks embedded by the publisher in the EPUB however there is no print equivalent.

I think we all agree that when a publisher embeds page breaks into their publication it is a better solution than no page breaks at all and leaving it up the the Reading Systems (even with guidance from us) as each may end up with a different algorithm and then citations and getting to a specific page will be problematic across different reading systems.

The big question is, what do we recommend to be added to the metadata to indicate these page breaks are "virtual/digital Only" in nature and not synced with a print page book? Or if the source of the pages are from a Word Document or PDF?

This could be addressed in the accessibilityFeature with a new value we we have total control over, however if we don't feel this is specifically an "accessibility" feature and more of a "usability" feature where does this go?

This could be addressed using the refines statement to the source-of "digitalPagination" or something like that?