[MPEG-OTSPEC] Some thoughts on the "under consideration" proposals

[Skef Iterum]

On 6/30/23 13:25, Dave Crossland wrote:
>
> Hi Skef!
>
> Great to see you share your personal thoughts here :) I want to 
> comment on a couple of meta topics you raise at the top here. For the 
> more substantial technical discussions, I propose you repost those the 
> "Official MPEG repository to discuss issues on Open Font Format 
> (ISO/IEC 14496-22)" at https://github.com/MPEGGroup/OpenFontFormat 
> since the discussion features on Github's Issue tracker are more 
> stronger than this old mailman list (markdown, reactions, tagging, 
> milestones, etc).

I think that just recently we were encouraged (by Vlad, at least) to 
post feedback to this list rather than use that GitHub project. And 
anyway the latter seems to be for the existing spec, and I didn't see 
either a branch or a pull request there that integrates the proposals in 
question (which would be premature anyway, I think), so it doesn't seem 
like it's the place to have /these/ technical discussions at present.

In any case, given the nature of the comments, I don't think there's 
much value in my personally following up beyond, perhaps, occasional 
clarifications. I'm raising issues that I suspect /may/ be of wider 
concern. Beyond that I obviously can't serve as some kind of "moderator 
of general concern".

>
> On Fri, Jun 30, 2023 at 1:37 PM Skef Iterum <skef at skef.org> wrote:
>
>     for the relevant parties and knowledgeable experts to come
>     together in a representative working-group-like structure
>
>
> As you may know, and as I understand it, the phrase "working group" 
> has a specific and formally defined meeting on this mailing list (and 
> that Github repo): It refers to the SC29 Working Group, which Josh was 
> the Adobe rep for the USA delegation at the last WG meeting, and I 
> believe more country delegations are likely to join upcoming meetings.
>
> Therefore this as an "ad hoc group" mailing-list/issue-tracker is "not 
> a working group", nor is the activity in 
> https://github.com/harfbuzz/boring-expansion-spec.
>
> So I am unsure what you mean by a "representative working-group-like 
> structure [yet to happen]". Could you be more concrete?
Sorry, that was a very general comment on my part, not relating to any 
particular ISO process. But, to give an example: whether ISO itself can 
or cannot host the kind of group I described under whatever 
circumstances depends on whether all parties that /should/ be 
represented agree to use ISO for that purpose. Maybe they will. Maybe 
there is /no/ context all of those parties can agree on, in which case 
we will struggle along. I'm just describing what I see as the best case, 
which I hope we will all try to work towards.
>
>     (He also said "silence is approval", which I'm not sure really
>     works in practice, but is probably a nicer way of saying "put up
>     or shut up".)
>
>
> Again, AFAIK, this is the MPEG policy; once a submission is made to 
> the WG, the AHG has an opportunity to provide wild comments, and the 
> WG members have a formal comment and balloting process (which takes 
> several quarters to run through), but in both venues, "silence is 
> approval". I hope Vlad might be able to point to specific ISO policy 
> documents to confirm this :)
>
That may be the case, but what is in this or that specification or 
proposal only matters to the extent that it gets adopted, and adoption 
itself is not an ISO process or policy. You, Dave, may remember my 
experiences with SVG 2.0 a few years back (not as a working group member 
but just a "fan"). That is as good an example of any of how the 
standards process is ultimately trying to generate a kind of consensus, 
and if you wind up loosing that you've lost more or less everything.

Skef
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