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

[John C Klensin <[e-mail]>]

(adding the media-types list and doing a bit of trimming)

--On Monday, May 3, 2021 17:29 +0100 Ted Hardie
<[e-mail]> wrote:

> I think the set of work items Ned lays out might well be the
> basis for a working group.  I have concerns, however, with
> including the registration for a haptics top-level type in
> that work.
> 
> As the draft points out, there is a good bit of active work
> going on related to haptics in other forums (e.g. the MPEG
> Systems File Format sub-group).  If the work on registering a
> top-level haptics type is interspersed with work on multiple
> media type suffixes and media types for programming languages,
> I have concerns about the speed with which it can complete.
> If we want to see haptic signals be treated appropriately as a
> media type, I suspect the time we have to do it is not
> unbounded.  My personal advice is thus to progress the haptics
> work separately.  If that means as an ad-sponsored draft, I'm
> personally okay with that, but I think the best other option
> is to do it as its own short-lived group.  The other work (and
> the relevant expertise) is pretty distinct.

Ted,

As you have probably figured out from my recent notes responding
to Francesca and Claudio, I have a slightly different take on
this, again somewhat different than Ned's comments.  One reason
is that I think it would be really unfortunate to establish a
precedent that the way to get a top-level media type is to
invoke work going on at what I understand to be essentially the
WG level in another SDO and then plead urgency.  I would feel
somewhat differently about an established, recognized, deployed
international standard, but, as I understand "active work in ...
MPEG Systems File Format sub-group", this is fairly far from
that.

Analogies to other bodies treating I-Ds as if they are finished,
consensus, IETF work product are probably useful here.

So, in the hope that the IETF is still an organization in which
we can figure out what the right thing is to do and then make
the procedures work with it, let me suggest something which may
be a bit of a strawman:

(1) We get the WG that Ned proposed going, with adjustments as
suggested.  Getting it going should not take long, e.g., no one
as proposed a BOF or two as prerequisites.   The first charge
for that WG should be to review prior work discuss criteria for
new top-level media types.  I would hope that can be done fairly
quickly.  If we cannot reach at least sufficient agreement to
conclude that a Haptics top level type would be reasonable
(independent of the details of how it is defined and who is
defining it, much less candidate subtypes) then I suggest the
proposal is dead in the water independent of what other bodies
are or are not doing.

(2) Probably in parallel with the above, Francesca (or Murray)
do a call for volunteers who are familiar with and involved in
work on Haptics, in the MPEG group, in their "day job" settings,
or elsewhere.  Where they are tapped as participants in a
short-lived WG or as reviewers of a potential AD-sponsored
document is probably unimportant, as long as they represent
diverse perspectives.  The numbers, expertise, and industry
coverage are important.  Based on the outcome of that poll, they
reach a conclusion as to whether meaningful, informed, IETF
consensus on the details of the proposal (presumably a revised
I-D) is plausible.

(3) If the outcome of (2) is that we have a sufficient number of
such people, I don't have a strong preference between
AD-sponsored and a short-lived WG.  However, the less clear the
criteria are that emerge from (1) --or if the early result of
that effort is general principles but not anything we would
consider criteria-- the more I think a WG is needed.

(4) If the outcome of (1) is that a Haptics top-level type is
plausible but that of (2) is that we don't have, in the judgment
of the ADs,  the right combination of expertise, interest, and
energy, then I suggest we cut a deal with the MPEG effort (close
to one end of the pipeline) and/or the relevant ISO TC (the
other end) in which we promise them that we will allocate the
top-level media type and delegate responsibility for defining
subtypes to them as soon as they tell us that a standard that
described the properties and use of that type is finished (not
being worked on, but finished).  Note that punts the question of
how subtypes are evaluated and decided upon to another body.
Otherwise, that question is one of the harder issues facing the
question of criteria for a new top-level type (and a subject on
which I, personally, think the current I-D is fairly weak).

I don't know if it would be possible to complete the above
before IETF 111, but, if not, we ought to be able to come fairly
close.  And it is _really_ pragmatic.

  best,
   john






[1[
https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/dispatch/RRIs5MxWbQuF9kJJclJ-KsFQNIg

[2]
https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/dispatch/zE9eMvNXpCXF1LWAMt3y-_2GjJ0