[MPEG-OTSPEC] Draft AHG report for your review

[suzuki toshiya]

Dear Vladimir,

Thank you for clarification. OK, so the "may not necessarily fall under the SC29/WG3 umbrella" means the mismatch of the technical scope - SC29/WG3 would discuss the font file format, not the expected API, behaviour, and the rasterized result of the implementations.

On 2020/10/07 23:18, Levantovsky, Vladimir wrote:
> On Wednesday, October 7, 2020 5:01 AM suzuki toshiya wrote:
> 
>>> The AHG conducted numerous discussions that touched on many aspects of extending our work into the new technical areas.
> 
>>> We considered a broad range of approaches and possible solutions that operate on and at the interface between text encoding and font format, including both general and specific aspects of standardization work that may not necessarily fall under the SC29/WG3 umbrella.
> 
>> Because there is a description "new technical areas", I hope more detailed comment for "not that may not necessarily fall under the SC29/WG3 umbrella". Is it technical mismatch (e.g. a part of ISO/IEC 14496 is inappropriate), or, organizational/procedual mismatch? (e.g. ISO style development is inappropriate).
> 
> As you know, the Font and Text CG was created under the W3C umbrella to explore new work items related to text layout and shaping, as well as anything else that may fall between text encoding and font format specification. The work of this CG will most likely produce new specifications related to this areas, as well as new proposals to extend font format specification. Some topics [such as script-specific shaping specifications] may be adjacent, but not directly related to font format, and the new spec may be produced elsewhere (either W3C or Unicode, as the CG decides), other topics such as extending glyph IDs fields to overcome 64K limit are directly related to OFF but require significant, wider community effort, and the results of this work is expected to be offered as an input to SC29/WG3.

Also thank you for mention about 32-bit GID. Yes, it is clearly font file format discussion. I'm still wondering whether it should be standardized as an extension of ISO/IEC 14496-22, or, different font file format (of MPEG-4? or something else? yet I'm unfamiliar how many font file formats were proposed and dropped in the past, under SC29/WG11). I'm glad to hear that SC29/WG3 Font AHG would keep the door opened to hear the proposal for such big change.

>> The proposal to extend the font file format of ISO/IEC 14496-22, like, LABL table extension proposed by Adam, is still appropriate to be discussed under SC29/WG3 umbrella, without waiting for the formation of the technical group under W3C? I think, Font AHG is keep the motivation to maintain the font file format spec, and not leave it to W3C's technical group.
> 
> Yes, the AHG is still an appropriate venue to present and discuss any proposals to extend ISO/IEC 14496-22, and the standard development will continue under SC29/WG3. There are no dependencies between the two groups and both of them operate freely and independently.

Thank you for clarification of the position! I apologize to say such personal feeling, sorry, I'm afraid some people may have different views about the venue to discuss the future of the font file format. But anyway, the technical group following to FTCG to develop some standards or specs (under W3C, or Unicode, or somewhere else) is not formed yet. Considering this situation, and SC29/WG3 meeting is forthcoming, so it sounds reasonable choice for the Font AHG members under SC29 to keep the maintenance of ISO/IEC 14496-22.

Regards,
mpsuzuki