Kouji Ishii

Ishii joined Microsoft after developing software for printing machines such as automatic paste up composers. He was a part of the development team for MS Word from versions 6 to 2000. During that time, he also helped create the basis of what came to be the CSS3 Text Layout specification. He established a company called Glue Software after leaving Microsoft. With the help of Antenna House, he is working on CSS3 specifications to allow for beautiful, legible Japanese text on the web and in e-books. He is a co-editor of the W3C CSS3 Text specification.

→ Follow Ishii-san on Twitter @kojiishi

Session: ePUB 3.0: The next generation e-book standard based on HTML5 and CSS3

The ePUB format is a standard for formatting electronic books, or e-books. The ePUB Technical Committee is currently working on the next version, ePUB 3.0, which is based on HTML5, CSS, and SVG, and is designed to be compatible with major browser engines. In this session, a panel of experts who are closely involved with ePUB 3.0 will discuss the format, and some of the problems and challenges involved in developing it. The session will pay special attention to issues of language support in ePUB, with a particular focus on providing vertical-text support — important for e-books in Japan, Taiwan, and China. These issues are currently being addressed by the Extended Global Language Support (EGLS) subgroup of the ePUB Technical Committee.