EPUB and the Open Web Platform as the

Fundament for Education Publishing

EDUPUB Tokyo 2014

September 18, 2014

Bill McCoy and Markus GyllingInternational Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF)

International Digital Publishing Forumnon-profit trade association, formed in 1999

• 350+ member organizations from 45 countries (40% North America, 34% Asia, 21% Europe, 5% ROW)

• Member organizations include publishers, service providers, e-retailers, reading system developers, libraries, educational institutions, government agencies, national and global industry bodies

• Develop the EPUB standard

“Desktop Publishing” Was the First Step Towards “Digital Publishing”

•The traditional publishing industry has progressively adopted digital technologies since the 1980s

•PostScript, PDF, and XML

•These technologies were adopted primarily to optimize print output, with digital distribution and especially digital consumption as afterthoughts

•Even now with eBooks widely adopted in some geographies, the majority of revenue still comes from print for almost all titles, and most publishers are still operating in a “print first, digital later” mindset

EPUB makes the Web Platform work for portable documents

• Structured• Navigable• Packaged• Metadata• Reliable

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• .ZIP-compatible archive containing:

mimetype

META-INF/

container.xml

[manifest.xml]

[metadata.xml]

[signatures.xml]

[encryption.xml]

[rights.xml]

content/

Great_Expectations.opf

cover.html

chapters/

chapter01.html

chapter02.html

…

assets/

style.css

image1.jpg

…

<.epub File Structure>

EPUB 3 and Accessibility•EPUB 3 designed to fully meet all requirements for accessibility to people with blindness and other print disabilities

•IDPF has actively partnered with DAISY Consortium on EPUB accessibility•DAISY DTBook format being superseded in favor of EPUB 3 in order to “mainstream” accessibility features•EPUB 3 is a superset of DAISY functionality

•Governments and stakeholders around the world in the process of mandating use of EPUB 3 to meet accessibility mandates

XML first in novelsfrom books to ebooks

1625/03/2013

Page layout on

XML

Manuscript corrections

DAM

Author word files

Images

XML conversion and editing

XML to EPUBs conversion

PDF print file

Printer

XML file

EPUB file

Content proofing

Content drivenLight Semantics

Hachette Livre

start in 2001

Fixed Layout production

25/03/2013 17

InDesign to Fixed Layout

• InDesign Scripting and IDML export

• Conversion to HTML5 with absolute positioning

Layout driven

Fixed Layout production

PDF to Fixed Layout

• SVG export with appropriate tools

• Use SVG directly in spine

25/03/2013 18

Layout driven

Fixed Layout production

25/03/2013 19

PDF to Fixed Layout Images• High quality image export form PDF• Embed images in HTML5 files

Layout driven

New Publishing

Models:

Reference

Modules

新出版模式

• Trustworthy

• Current & e-first

• Discoverable

• Hosted on ScienceDirect

Adding Value

to Content:

Enhanced

e-books

富媒体电子书

• Data manipulation

• Calculations & formulae

• Virtual micriscopes

• ePub3 today

Digitizing

Important

Historical

Content:

Legacy

历史资源数字化

• Foundational Science

• Easy to find and access

• Save shelf space

• Archival rights

Understanding Researcher

User Needs:

了解用户需求

• User Centered Design

• Integrated Content

• Enriched Content

• Tools

Innovation in Digital Publishing and Putting the User First

Practical Benefits of Adopting EPUB•Lower costs of developing content that can flow to multiple devices and be distributed via multiple channels

•Leverage Web Standards without the complexity of full-stack web app development

•Utilize off-the-shelf authoring tools and distribution options

•Utilize free, open source technologies

•Enable content to conveniently flow into and out of your organization/territory as dictated by the business case

•Deliver on accessibility mandates

•Support evolution from “digitization” to native-digital storytelling with interactivity, rich media, etc.

•Leverage continued stream of community-driven innovation around EPUB

EPUB Global Adoption•EPUB 2 (previous version, pre-HTML5) widely proliferated for eBooks

•Reading System support for EPUB 3 rapidly increasing•Apple iBooks, Google Play Books, Kobo, Sony, VitalSource•Open Source development: Readium.org•IDPF collaborating w/ BISG on epubtest.org test suite and reporting

•EPUB 3 authoring tool options increasing•Apps from high-end (Adobe InDesign supports fixed-layout and reflowable EPUB 3) to mass-market (Apple Pages exports EPUB 3)•Specialized workflow tools (Aerbook, Metrodigi Chaucer, Aquafadas, …)

•Japan has holistically adopted EPUB 3•EPUB adopted for both trade eBooks and e-Manga

•Education industry rapidly converging on EPUB 3 for e-textbooks (EDUPUB)

What is the EDUPUB Alliance?

• A global community for focused coordination of ongoing work among multiple standards organizations and their stakeholders (currently IDPF, IMS Global, W3C)

• Not YASO (Yet Another Standards Organization)creating EMFF (Even More File Formats)

• A lightweight superstructure to help ensure that existing widely-adopted standards mesh and meet requirements of next-generation learning content

• EDUPUB = Open Web Standards (inc. next-gen Portable Documents) + Educational Connectivity

The EDUPUB 2014 deliverable

a comprehensive model for the interchange and deployment of educational content

based on the Open Web Platform

expressed as an integrated set of specifications including EPUB 3 (IDPF), LTI, QTI, Caliper (IMS) and other emerging standards

EPUB-centric Lens on EDUPUB

Equip EPUB 3 with everything needed for EDU content:

• Integrate existing IMS standards (QTI, LTI, Caliper)

• Deliver general EPUB capabilities needed for EDU (annotations, widget API, discrete entities)

• Develop EDU-semantic-enhanced profile of EPUB 3

• Facilitate rapid implementation (Readium open source)

EPUB adopters in general benefit:

• EDU content pushes the envelope of required capabilities

o Interactivity

o Connectivity

o Complex information design,

o A11Y requirements

EDUPUB Alliance 2014 Deliverables: cheat sheet

Content Context

Structured profile of HTML5 (Reflowable & Fixed Layout)

Assessments

Package-level metadata (edu, a11y)

Outcomes services

EDU structural semantics vocabulary Analytics services

Discrete Entities (Markup & Packaging)

Widgets (Markup, API & Packaging)

Annotations (W3C OA adaption)

Multiple Renditions (Dependency)

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Implementation

Open Source PoC based on Readium JS

Public Drafts Available Now:

• EPUB 3 EDUPUB Profile public draft 2 released Sep 8

http://idpf.org/epub/profiles/edu/spec/

● “Satellite Specs” referenced in EDUPUB Profile:● Open Annotation in EPUB http://idpf.org/epub/oa/

● EPUB Discrete Objects http://idpf.org/epub/do/

● EPUB Widgets Packaging and Integration

● http://idpf.org/epub/widgets/

● And from IMS: Using Caliper Analytics, QTI and LTI

with EPUB 3: EDUPUB Best

Practices:http://www.imsglobal.org/edupub/index.

html

● http://idpf.org/ongoing

Notes on EDUPUB Accessibility support

omnipresent

Well-tempered, semantically rich markup/structure (HTML5 profile)

Logical Reading Order

ARIA

Package-level schema.org a11y metadata

optionally/conditionally present

Media Overlays (synced hybrid text/audio, full or partial)

TTS enhancements (PLS, SSML)

Multiple Renditions (forthcoming)

http://www.idpf.org/accessibility/guidelines/

EDUPUB Alliance: Roadmap ahead

EDUPUB 2014

Finalize current specification deliverables

Work on OSS implementations (Readium, other)

EDUPUB 2015…

Gather input from community on EDUPUB 2014 feature set

Identify critical next steps & who needs to be involved

Planning EDUPUB Implementation Workshop: Phoenix Feb 26-28 2015

• The ICT landscape can be viewed as a set of specialized ecosystems, each comprising a “platform”

• Tech firms often seek to establish their own platform(s)

• Platforms generally exhibit “lock-in”• Switching costs• Network effects• Barriers to entry by competitors

The Platform Game

• Lower barriers to entry

• Lower switching costs between providers of platform components

• Same tools, skills applicable across platforms• Promotes competition among multiple

implementations of a given architecture

• Network effects accrue across all adopters not solely a single platform provider

• Open platforms as generative architectures

Open Standards Encourage Interoperable Platforms

Adopting EPUB as your EDU content platform will increase your operational efficiency, and maximize your distribution opportunities

EPUB and the overall Open Web Platform are fundamental to preventing lock-in to proprietary platforms

We’re still just at the beginning of EDU publishing beyond paper: HTML5/EPUB will enable you to evolve from digitization of print to creating native digital content

Getting Involved

http://epubzone.org

http://idpf.org

http://readium.org

@idpf.org@billmccoy