[MPEG-OTSPEC] Issues from CSS: Will they be covered by the text shaping WG?

[Levantovsky, Vladimir]

Folks,

In order to maintain the clarity of the discussion, I’d like to make sure we are clear about certain aspects of standardization process, especially when it relates to words we use to identify / label our activities. I think this would be useful for those folks in particular who have not had much of “formal” standards development experience, and for whom the terminology and the overloaded meaning of it could be a bit elusive.

The “working group” concept has different meaning to different people. For example, in the context of W3C, the Working Group is setup with clearly defined scope and a set of deliverables. These goals are defined by the formal document called the charter of the W3C WG, which has to be approved by the W3C Advisory Committee before the group is launched, and once the WG has accomplished its stated goals it is either disbanded or re-chartered, depending on the scope of work and future plans. In the context of ISO, the Working Group is a structural unit, an entity that is a backbone of the corresponding ISO Subcommittee, and is usually setup to fulfill the standardization needs in the particular field that may (but is not required to) span multiple industries, develop multiple different standards, and is expected to run over fairly lengthy timeline. E.g., JPEG and MPEG activities used to be setup as ISO Working Groups [of our Subcommittee #29), with JPEG continuing as the WG, and MPEG now been split into multiple connected Working Groups due to its wide industry scope and reach. I am not familiar with the details of the Unicode Consortium organizational structure, but I suspect that the UTC itself is close in its scope to what would’ve been a WG in ISO organization.

TL;DR: a “working group” term may simply mean a venue where things get done for some of us, and it may be seen as a BIG DEAL for others, depending on their prior experiences. This particular Ad-Hoc Group [on Font Format] is a unit of ISO Working Group where things get done – this is exactly the place where technical solutions are discussed and a consensus decision can be reached – but our “output” are proposals and expert recommendations to the ISO WG, the rest is happening there according to ISO Directives / process / policies.

I am sure it is our collective goal that the text shaping / layout discussions will provide us with necessary details to precisely define the scope of this activity and decide on how to formalize it in the best interests of the whole industry (and I don’t just mean us, I mean the users of the technology we will have developed, which is literally every living being who speaks and writes!)

To answer Murata-san’s question – most of the issues the CSS WG raised are directly related to the current font format activity. Some of them need further analysis and discussions, some (‘vert’ feature) have been recently addressed in the latest amendment (and may still need further discussions), some of them (cursive elongation) may not need any further development and may benefit from the already existing technical solutions (such as e.g. “JSTF – Justification Table”), but it is definitely within a scope of the _established_ AHG activities.

Hoping that you will find these explanations useful,
Vladimir


From: mpeg-otspec <mpeg-otspec-bounces at lists.aau.at> On Behalf Of MURATA Makoto
Sent: Wednesday, August 12, 2020 5:36 AM
To: mpeg-otspec at lists.aau.at
Subject: [MPEG-OTSPEC] Issues from CSS: Will they be covered by the text shaping WG?

The CSS WG of W3C raised 9 issues
about interactions of OpenType and CSS
in their liaison statement to SC29 WG11,
available at https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-archive/2020Feb/att-0005/CSS-SC29-20200113.pdf<https://protect-us.mimecast.com/s/wZ1VCER2v0u37w5psNMhUz>)

Are they in the scope of the text shaping WG?

1. Lack of font metrics for writing systems other than Western &
2. Italic / Oblique Default Angle
3. Compatibility problem with 'vert'
4. Clarifications for 'vert'
5. Clarifications for Bopomofo
6. Cursive elongation
7. Fidelity of Font Metrics
8. Required vs Optional Ligatures
9. Overline Metrics


--
Regards,
Makoto
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