Subject: Re: [dispatch] [art] Status of Haptics I-D in DISPATCH?

From: Ned Freed <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 03 May 2021 11:29:56 -0700 (PDT)

> Folks,

> First off, glad to see some traffic on the haptics I-D. Thanks to Francesca
> for jump-starting the latest round of discussion.

> At the risk of sounding biased (as one of the authors of the I-D), I would
> second Ted’s latest proposal that we not overload the WG with other media
> type-related work, lest it end up de-prioritizing or delaying consideration of
> the haptics proposal.

This sort of thing is what WG charters are *for*. If the haptics work needs to
come first, say that in the charter. If anything this increases the liklihood of
your proposal getting some attention, because people interested in the other
work items will be incentivized to help with the haptics work, in order to get
to their items.

ADs have a vast array of things competing for their attention. WG chairs, not so
much. As such, leaving your proposal as an AD-sponsored item is far less likely
to produce timely results than doing it in a WG.

> I appreciate the importance of Ned’s list, but Ted is correct in that the time
> to get the haptics proposal reviewed (and hopefully, approved) is not unbounded.
> More on that below.

As I said before, not only are you talking about a new top-level type, you are
talking about one that has the potential to interact with specific protocols,
e.g., one that have specific slots for audio and video types where the top-level
value is assumed, in complicated ways. As such, you are going to need involvment
from a much wider range of people than you would for most of the other items on
this list.

> Setting aside the implications (inadvertent or otherwise) of Claudio’s
> comment that Apple or Google need to be on the authors list for IETF to even
> consider an ID  (or work on it expeditiously),  I would point to the following
> Draft Amendment of the ISO/IEC 14496-12 (ISO Base Media File Format) standard.
> It is the one that has our proposal to treat haptics as a top-level media type,
> akin to audio and video, in ISOBMFF files (like .mp4, .3gpp, etc.).

> https://www.iso.org/standard/81604.html

> For those familiar with how MPEG works, a DAMD means that the proposal has
> gone through two rounds of balloting from various ISO National Bodies (including
> the US National Body). And yes, Apple and Google are indeed part of the US
> National Body 😊. We are happy to report that no objections were received to
> the haptics proposal in either the CD or DAMD ballot rounds from any of the 20+
> National Bodies that voted on it. It has now moved to FDIS ballot (the haptics
> proposal having been merged with other updates to 14496-12 for a new 7th
> edition) that is expected to complete by July.

> MPEG has also issued a Call for Proposals on the Coded Representation of
> Haptics – Phase 1 at the just concluded MPEG134 meeting last week. The CfP
> seeks technologies that would help standardize a haptic coding format and a
> haptic decoder in MPEG. The press release and final CfP docs themselves should
> be available in a few days. Draft versions of the Haptics CfP documents from
> MPEG133 in January 2021 can be found here:
> https://www.mpegstandards.org/standards/Explorations/40/.

I could even begin to count the number of times I've been told that this or that
is critical because of the actions of some other standards group, and for that
reason the IETF needs to engage post haste. IME a common result of such pleas is
to slow the work down, as people begin to argue about how the IETF should handle
its interactions with other standards bodies, rather than focusing on the
technical issues at hand.

				Ned