As EPUB evolves, as the W3C Digital Publishing Interest Group (DPUB) gathers requirements for (portable) web publications, those of us involved in these efforts hope to get broader community feedback. Would it make sense to have a digital publishing category here, as a home for such conversations?
I’d like to second @dauwhe’s suggestion. As it is, neither ebook developers nor web developers have a real venue for contributing to web publication or digital publishing standards. Discussions and suggestions so far at the DPUB have strongly favoured publishers and user agent vendors (browsers and reading systems) with limited input from the freelance developers who are the ones actually doing most of the work. Having a small space here for discussions could go some way towards fixing that
I like the idea. That being said what I have no experience with is how intimidating discourse, as a tool, is for people who are not on the technical side. Ideally, we would like a place where both users and techies, both publishers and geeks feel equally comfortable.
Of course, one way of judging this is to try it…
I think this is partially, and unfortunately, true.
There is certainly space authors to question or propose things in the HTML specification through github issues. At the same time, since implementation is important, if there isn’t uptake from browsers we are likely to suggest it move to incubation - i.e. here on discourse, or if a proposed specification is already available to the WICG repository.
Regarding Ivan’s question of how friendly discourse is as a discussion platform, I think the true answer is “as friendly as the people who are there” - it doesn’t take much technical skill to use, but the people involved will determine the value and tone of the discussion.
I’m all for it. Discourse isn’t a huge pain for non-technical users. Some companies use it as their customer community discussion board.
Plus, a narrative running discussion that doesn’t go into the weeds of github issues is appreciated by those of us who want to follow the activities at a higher level due to time constraints.
Just my $.02 USD
-Jean
Let us raise this on our next IG call, hopefully both Dave and Tzviya will be around. I am fine giving it a try. @dauwhe, @TzviyaSiegman, do you agree?