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

[Ted Hardie <[e-mail]>]

Hi John,

Response in-line.

On Tue, May 4, 2021 at 4:47 AM John C Klensin <[e-mail]> wrote:

> (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.
>
>
I believe the issue here isn't the state of the standards-making in another
body but the core proposition of the effort:  haptic signals are media.
There are a lot of consequences of that core proposition, the most
important of which for me are that these signals can be bound with other
media into coherent multimedia resources and that we can build
interoperable standards that allow both haptic media and these multimedia
resources to be handled by any compliant systems that follow that
standard.  (The other obvious way to model them, as application
instructions, leaves us in a very different place).

If we agree with that core proposition, than incorporating haptic signals
into the media types and other aspects of media processing that are under
the aegis of the IETF is the right thing to do, and the time to start that
work is now, when it is still possible to have the aspects of the system
handled elsewhere adjusted more readily.  Waiting until that work is
completed strikes me as what I grew up hearing called "the wrong mistake".

We could also, of course, ignore the work and that proposition.  The likely
outcomes of that, in my hazy crystal ball, is either that the relevant work
will create a MIME-like system that looks like but isn't quite actually
MIME (which means that all of the other media types which are consumed by
that system will have to deal with being part of two subtly different
systems) or that deployed systems will squat on a string in a way that
simply routes around our registry and rules.  I am sure you can supply the
examples which lead me to that conclusion pretty readily.

I have not replied to your proposal below to cede the territory to another
body, simply because I think a major point of any effort in this space is
how multimedia works rather than how single-medium signals are consumed.
That being the case, I don't think we can cede without ceding much more of
the multimedia landscape than I think you intended.

Just my opinion, of course.

regards,

Ted Hardie


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
>
>