[MPEG-OTSPEC] Updates to specification

[梁海 Liang Hai]

Norbert, John, Dave, and James,

Would you guys like to split the discussion about process into a separate thread?

James,

> I would urge against a "reference implementation" approach: a prospective implementer should be able to find out everything they need to know by reading the spec; …

Ideally yes. However it’s been pretty clear that in this small field of font technologies, it’s not realistic to expect many independent implementations from scratch, and thus a first-party reference implementation is vital for adoption of new technologies/features.

> … they should not have to reverse engineer an implementation, reference or otherwise.

I don’t think there’s an intention to include certain information only in the reference implementation when people talk about it… It’s just literally meant to be an “implementation” (parallel to any implementation) and a “reference”. I don’t think anyone plans to use a reference implementation as an excuse for low quality and incompleteness of the specification.

Best,
梁海 Liang Hai
https://lianghai.github.io

> On Aug 17, 2020, at 11:34, James Clark <jjc at jclark.com> wrote:
> 
> I believe the two independent and interoperable implementations requirements originated with the IETF. It's stated in more detail here:
> 
> https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2026#section-4.1.2 <https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2026#section-4.1.2> 
> 
> I would urge against a "reference implementation" approach: a prospective implementer should be able to find out everything they need to know by reading the spec; they should not have to reverse engineer an implementation, reference or otherwise.
> 
> James
> 
> On Sun, Aug 16, 2020 at 11:49 PM John Hudson <john at tiro.ca <mailto:john at tiro.ca>> wrote:
> On 15082020 11:41 pm, Norbert Lindenberg wrote:
> > I agree with John that it would be useful to look at how the groups working on some other essential standards decide what goes into their specifications, and when. John, can you point us to a reference for the W3C independent implementations requirement?
> 
> This is the W3C Process Document, which details, among other things, the 
> path to advance a Technical Report to a Recommendation.
> https://www.w3.org/2004/02/Process-20040205/tr.html <https://www.w3.org/2004/02/Process-20040205/tr.html>
> 
> My understanding is that two independent and interoperable 
> implementations are normally sought in the Call for Implementations 
> stage, but it isn’t an absolute requirement. Fantasai or someone else 
> from W3C can certainly provide a more complete explanation of how 
> important the implementation report tends to be. Here, for example, is 
> the WOFF2 implementation report:
> https://www.w3.org/Fonts/WG/WOFF2/Implementation.html <https://www.w3.org/Fonts/WG/WOFF2/Implementation.html>
> 
> JH
> 
> -- 
> 
> John Hudson
> Tiro Typeworks Ltd    www.tiro.com <http://www.tiro.com/>
> Salish Sea, BC        tiro at tiro.com <mailto:tiro at tiro.com>
> 
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