This document summarizes a presentation about digital publishing and the adoption of EPUB 3 and the open web platform. It discusses how EPUB 3 builds upon web standards to provide structured, accessible content for digital and offline use. EPUB 3 supports features like fixed layout, rich media, and interactivity through its use of open web technologies. However, adoption has been slowed by the sufficiency of EPUB 2 for many uses and a lack of reading system upgrades. Overall support is growing, and the IDPF is working to deliver on EPUB 3's potential through documentation, tools, and collaboration with other organizations.

1. Global Adoption of Digital
Publishing, EPUB 3, and the
Open Web Platform
Bill McCoy
Executive Director
International Digital Publishing Forum
(IDPF)

3. • IDPF mission: foster an
open, global ecosystem
for digital publishing
• Based on web standards

4. What is digital publishing?
Digitally distributing premium
content (that includes words)

5. What is content?
A combination of information
and experience

6. Why do people read books?
To get a job done

7. “People don’t want to buy a
quarter-inch drill, they want a
quarter-inch hole”
- Theodore Levitt

8. Newspapers help me…
• Become well-informed
• Unwind at the end of the day
• Kill commuting time
• Find my next car, or a job
• Unload this stuff

9. Three levels in the architecture of a job
• What is the fundamental job or problem the
customer is facing? Includes functional,
emotional and social dimensions
• What are the experiences in purchase and
use which, if all provided, would sum up to
nailing the job perfectly?
• What are the product attributes, technologies,
features, etc. that are needed to deliver
these experiences?

10. Three fundamental ways to
deliver content experiences
files, apps, and websites

11. vs.

12. Options for content in 1993…Files
Files Apps Websites

13. Options for content in 1997…Files
Files Apps Websites

14. Today’s Landscape…
Files Apps Websites

15. The Open Web Platform
Files Apps Websites

16. The Open Web Platform Technology “Stack”
Courtesy of W3C

17. Open Web Platform Specifications
 HTML 5  SVG 1.1  XMLHttpRequest
 CSS 2.1  WAI-ARIA 1.0  Selectors API
 CSS 3 Selectors  MathML 2.0  CSSOM View
Module
 CSS 3 Media  ECMAScript 5
Queries  Cross-Origin
 2D Context
Resource Sharing
 CSS 3 Text  WebGL
 File API
 CSS 3 Backgrounds  Web Storage
and Borders  RDFa
 Indexed Database
 CSS 3 Colors  Microdata
 Web Workers
 CSS 3 2D  WOFF
 Web Sockets
Transformations  HTTP 1.1 part 1 to
Protocol/API
 CSS 3 3D part 7
 Geolocation
Transformations  TLS 1.2 (updated)
 CSS 3 Transitions  Server-Sent Events
 IRI (updated)
 CSS 3 Animations  Element Traversal
 …
 CSS 3 Multi-  DOM Level 3
Columns Events
 CSS Namespaces  Media Fragments

20. EPUB 3 beyond HTML5
• A road-map for using the Open Web Platform to reliably deliver
structured, interoperable, offline-usable content
• Specifies minimum required functionality for
• Global language support
• Accessibility
• CSS layout and fonts
• Core media types
• Defines capabilities needed for portable documents
• Packaging
• Logical structure and navigation
• Metadata (publication- and element-level)
• Declarative event bindings
• Extensible media type support via structured JavaScript
• Fine-grained references to content fragments
• Synchronization of media playback with content rendering

22. EPUB 3 Directly Includes…
 HTML 5  SVG 1.1  XMLHttpRequest
 CSS 2.1  WAI-ARIA 1.0  Selectors API
 CSS 3 Selectors  MathML 2.0  CSSOM View
Module
 CSS 3 Media  ECMAScript 5
Queries  Cross-Origin
 2D Context
Resource Sharing
 CSS 3 Text  WebGL
 File API
 CSS 3 Backgrounds  Web Storage
and Borders  RDFa
 Indexed Database
 CSS 3 Colors  Microdata
 Web Workers
 CSS 3 2D  WOFF
 Web Sockets
Transformations  HTTP 1.1
Protocol/API
 CSS 3 3D  TLS 1.2
 Geolocation
Transformations
 IRI
 CSS 3 Transitions  Server-Sent Events
 Element Traversal  …
 CSS 3 Animations
 CSS 3 Multi-  DOM Level 3
Columns Events
 CSS Namespaces  Media Fragments

23. EPUB 3 vs. EPUB 2 in 5 bullets
• Styling & layout improvements for reflow
content
• CSS 2.1 + Select CSS 3 Modules
• Embedded fonts
• Alternate stylesheets (day/night, etc)
• MathML
• Fixed-layout content
• Including SVG as first-class citizen
• Interactivity and rich media
• Scripting support
• Accessibility support
• Global Language support

24. EPUB 3 Early Adoption Being Driven
By Need for New Capabilities
• Fixed-layout eBooks
• Comics, manga, “coffee table” books
• Enhanced eBooks
• Children’s, e-textbooks
• Japanese market

25. Categories of Digital Books
Semantics Heavy
Dictionaries
Encyclopaedias Travel guides
Management Textbooks
Wine guides University,
Cooking
professional
Content Layout
driven driven
History books Practical,
health
Comics, Mangas
Essays Graphic novels
Novels,
Romance Juvenile fiction Children « Beaux livres »
Courtesy: Hachette-LIvre 25

26. EPUB 3 Will Be Universally Supported
•Incremental improvements in styling & layout are broadly useful
•Accessibility is necessary for many, and provides benefits for all
•Semantic markup, equations, text-to-speech, …
•Handling nuggets of fixed content within reflowable eBooks
•Alignment with modern browsers & the Open Web Platform
•Better specification of content & reading system conformance
•Publishers need a single unified workflow for content production

27. But, We Aren’t Quite There Yet!
•For novels and text-only linear non-fiction, in North America and
Europe, EPUB 2 is “good enough”
•EPUB 2 will get to Kindle and other platforms more easily for now
•More EPUB 2 authoring & generation tools available
•“Chicken and egg” syndrome thus lessens urgency for Reading
Systems to upgrade (a huge effort for Reading System developers)
•Most used custom renderers not browser engine for EPUB 2
•Flash and native mobile/tablet eBook apps not dead yet
•Vendors still promoting proprietary “HTML5-based” alternatives
•iBooks Author, Amazon Kindle KF8, Inkling Habitat, …

28. The Most Deceptive Three Words from
a Proprietary Platform Vendor:
“We’re HTML5 Based”
•Innovations shouldn’t wait for standardization but there’s a fine line
between nimble “innovating” and greedy “privatizing”
•Vendors of proprietary solutions seek the cachet of openness and
skill-set-transfer without actually being open or interoperable
•Forks of Web Standards have generally failed or become niches
•Mozilla XUL
•OpenLaszlo
•Adobe Flex & AIR
•Adobe PDF XFA forms

31. Open Web Platform for Apps:
The Landscape Is Still Messy
•Widgets
•Apple Dashboard
•SmartTV (inc. Yahoo! Widgets)
•Facebook 3rd-Party Web Apps
•Full applications
•Palm/HP WebOS
•Windows 8 “Metro” apps
•Chrome Installable Web Apps
•Firefox OS (aka Boot-to-Gecko)
•Native app frameworks wrapping web-standards-based content
•PhoneGap (now Adobe PhoneGap Build and Apache
Cordova)
•Brightcove App Cloud
•Appcelerator Titanium
•W3C has just chartered a System Applications WG

32. Open Web Platform for Apps Headaches
(With Implications for EPUB 3)
•iOS UIWebView performance is disadvantaged by lack of Nitro JS
•Currently restricted to Safari and iBooks for “security” reasons
•HW acceleration support varies significantly by platform
•Esp. for SVG, HW acceleration is critical to performance, but is
not enabled on iOS Safari/UIWebView
•Patent issues and browser vendor foot-dragging killed W3C
Widgets WG
•The browser vendors are also the OS platform vendors so
have mixed motivations
•HTML5/JS tools and frameworks far less mature than native app
and Flash ecosystems, particularly for designers
•The good news – competition between platforms and pressure
from across the IT industry are combining to spur progress

33. Growing Industry Support for EPUB 3

34. IDPF Focus for 2013: Delivering on the
Promise of EPUB 3 as Portable Documents
for the Open Web Platform
•Best practices documentation, samples, training, evangelism
•Tools
•Validator for content, preflight, test suite for reading systems
•Open source implementation - Readium
•Continuing to evolve EPUB to meet publishing industry
requirements
•Adaptive layout, dictionaries, indexes, advanced/hybrid fixed
layout, lightweight content protection (DRM), annotations
•Collaboration with other stakeholders
•W3C, DAISY, BISG, EDItEUR, IMS Global Learning, …
•EPUB to become an ISO-level International Standard

35. “The PC revolution … invited innovation by others. So too with the
Internet. Both were generative: they were designed to accept any
contribution that followed a basic set of rules… Both overwhelmed
their respective proprietary, non-generative competitors, such as
… online services like CompuServe and AOL.”
But our future could be “sterile appliances tethered to a network of
control.”
Jonathan Zittrain (The Future of the Internet – And How to Stop It)