Calling volunteers / Transition to W3C / Shutting down this group

[Tobias Fischer]

Hi All,

I’m writing to let you know that we put this Google Groups Mailing List
for the EpubCheck project in read-only mode right after this email.
We would like to inform you about what's going on and what lead to this
decision.


TL;DR:
1. The EpubCheck Mailing List is now at public-e...@w3.org. Send an
email with subject "subscribe" to subscribe.
2. Maintenance Release 4.1.0 in November will not yet contain EPUB 3.1
support.
3. We need volunteers and developers who work on the project and on the
codebase.


Details:

As you might have heard, the project is now managed by the EpubCheck
TaskForce (TF) [1], a sub-group within the W3C EPUB3 Community Group
(CG) [2] which was created after the IDPF W3C merger earlier this year.


# New Mailing List

Since all the development and organisational work is now done in the CG
and the TF, discussion of the EpubCheck roadmap should also take place
there. That’s why we are putting this old list to read-only and created
a new W3C Mailing List at public-e...@w3.org. Send an email with
subject "subscribe" to subscribe or manage your subscription at [3].
This will help us to bundle the various communication channels and make
it easier for volunteers to work.


# Work Plan

The EpubCheck TaskForce has agreed on a work plan which can be found in
the EpubCheck Wiki [4].

Our top priority at the moment is to finish the Maintenance Release
4.1.0 which does NOT include EPUB 3.1 support yet.
This decision was discussed for a long time, but since we have solved
many issues since the last release [5] and there are currently no
resources available for further development, EPUB 3.1 support has been
postponed. We know that this is not ideal, but that's also one of the
reasons we're writing to you.


# Call For Help

Maintaining EpubCheck isn't easy. In the past few years, this work has
been done primarily by a small group of volunteers [6]. We know how
valuable EpubCheck is, and we are calling on this community, and on
those individuals and organizations who use EpubCheck in their
day-to-day operations, to volunteer.

What do we need from you?

1. Development assistance.
Are you a Java developer? Have you contributed to EpubCheck in the past?
Please have a look at the open and unassigned issues of the 4.1.0
milestone [7] or the "bug" backlog. There’s also an issue category
"reviewed & ready for implementation" with issues ready to be worked on
immediately. Further information can be found on the wiki page
"Contribute" [8].

2. Development help for issue triaging
We need people with EPUB dev experience to work on sorting through the
issue backlog, propose solutions as comments, and review resolutions
proposed by others. We could alse need first responders to new issues
who get in touch with the author and try to break down and reproduce the
problem. See the section "Day-to-day work" on the WorkPlan wiki page [4]
for more details.

3. Translators
Starting with version 4.0.0 became multilingual. We currently have
translations for German, Japanese, Spanish, French and Italian. Dutch
and Portuguese are being worked on but need improvements. We are always
looking for translators who help maintaining the current translations or
add new ones. More details can be found on this wiki page [9].

4. Experienced GitHub users who also know EPUB to assist with test suite
reorganization per Romain’s instructions [10]. We are dividing the files
among several people so that this not too large a task.

5. YOU as part of the TaskForce and/or Community Group.
Join the CG via [2] and get notified about the next CG meetings (there
is no fee for membership) and/or join the new Mailing List for EpubCheck
discussion only.
The next EpubCheck TF meeting is on October 26. Details will be released
on the new mailing list soon.


# Questions?

If you have any questions please don't hesitate to ask Tzviya Siegman
(CC). She was kind enough to take charge of the TaskForce.

If you are a developer who wants to contribute, or if you have a dev
team at hand that can contribute (e.g. to EPUB 3.1 support), please
contact us via the new Mailing List. If for any reason you want to
contact us privately, don’t hesitate to send an email to me or Romain
Deltour (CC).


Thank you for your understanding and help.


Best Regards,
Tobias Fischer


Individual Contributor to EpubCheck
EpubCheck TaskForce Member

Head Of Development / Senior Software Engineer (XML/EPUB/PrintCSS)
@ pagina GmbH Publikationstechnologien, Tübingen, Germany




[1] https://github.com/w3c/publ-cg/wiki/Testing-and-Validation
[2] https://www.w3.org/community/epub3/
[3] https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-epubcheck/
[4] https://github.com/IDPF/epubcheck/wiki/WorkPlan
[5] https://github.com/IDPF/epubcheck/compare/v4.0.2...master
[6] https://github.com/IDPF/epubcheck/graphs/contributors
[7] https://github.com/IDPF/epubcheck/projects/2
[8] https://github.com/IDPF/epubcheck/wiki/Contribute
[9] https://github.com/IDPF/epubcheck/wiki/Translating
[10] https://github.com/IDPF/epubcheck/wiki/TestSuiteCleanup

[Tobias Fischer]

Hi,

I'm sorry to say this, but unfortunately I sent the last mail to this
list with INCORRECT INSTRUCTIONS for signing up on the new list.

If you followed my instructions from the last mail and sent an email
with subject "subscribe" you most likely sent it to the wrong email
address: to the list address I provided instead of a special signup
email address.

## Correction for signing up on the new EpubCheck Mailing List:
Please re-do and send another mail with subject "subscribe" but this
time to the correct signup address => public-epubc...@w3.org <=
or manage your subscription at this page:
https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-epubcheck/

After that, normal post to the new Mailing list go to
public-e...@w3.org, the default mailing list address.

I apologize for my mistake.
If you have any questions regarding the new email list or the signup
process, don't hestitate to contact me or Tzviya.


P.S.: Next meeting will not be on Oct. 26 as announced, but tomorrow on
Oct. 25 at 18:30UTC.
More details to come on the new mailing list.
We hope to welcome some new group members.



Best regards,
Tobias



Am 08.10.17 um 13:29 schrieb Tobias Fischer: