[MPEG-OTSPEC] Defining the text shaping working group’s scope

[Levantovsky, Vladimir]

On Saturday, August 15, 2020 11:12 AM Liang Hai wrote:

Part of the reason why I’m not keen on organizing this collective effort under ISO’s management (be it a WG, Ad Hoc Group, or what), is that ISO and/or JTC1’s publication process is not suitable for the documents we’re thinking. All we need is an easy to navigate modern website with all the vital information we want to maintain, but I doubt ISO/IEC ITTF will grant us that. To be honest, it’s a pain to read those procedural documents in JTC1’s official format—it’s just gonna discourage potential participants for no good reason.

This group have for years united many people who genuinely care about font technology and text layout / shaping, but it also has open doors policy to new members and new ideas! This is why we decided to start exploration activities here, to determine if the scope of text layout and shaping [and the needs we want to see covered] are suitable for continued development as part of ISO OFF activity, or if we can find a better venue for it. I for one agree with Liang that there are certain areas that can be best served by “living documents”, those that are likely to address topics that aren’t normative by nature.

Unicode Standard is a good example – some of its parts needed to be made normative and are standardized by ISO 10646, others live as technical reports and annexes that can be updated and revised fairly quickly, when the needs arise. I agree that text layout / shaping implementations may be best served by a collection of shared “knowledge base” and “best practices” documented in a way that makes them stable, unencumbered by IPR, readily accessible, and published by a reliable source, but at the same time those that can be easily updated as the “knowledge base” extends and “best practices” recommendation change.

I guess if there is one favor I’d like to ask everyone, it would be that we should put aside any preconceived notion of what we originally thought could be a good venue, and postpone this decision until we have discussed and agreed on the text shaping scope and requirements. [Specific need for creating these specification as “living documents” can easily become one of those requirements, if we reach a consensus on it.]

Thank you,
Vlad

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