Session Date/Time: 23 Jun 2026 19:00
Spencer Dawkins: Hello.
Jérôme Martinez: Hello.
Spencer Dawkins: I think I see, uh, Steve joining us. Hello, hello. I always feel signed in.
Jérôme Martinez: Hello.
Spencer Dawkins: Hi Steve. How's your day?
Jérôme Martinez: Hot.
Spencer Dawkins: Too hot.
Jérôme Martinez: I don't know even in the US, but in Europe it is hot everywhere.
Spencer Dawkins: So so, yeah, so I'm in the South Central, uh, the, sorry, the center of the South United States, in Texas. And, uh, temperature there here is about 33, 34, something like that. Should be, uh, well, it shouldn't be, but it will be something like 36 or something like that, 37 by the end of the week. Uh, I just talked to a friend in, uh, Ukraine, uh, this morning. And, uh, she is in northwest Ukraine, and, uh, I think they are 33. So, uh, I saw I saw a forecast y'all are supposed to be, uh, getting like maybe some 40s some places in Europe.
Jérôme Martinez: Yeah, exactly.
Jérôme Martinez: But in Texas, I think that in Texas, and that at night it gets colder, but here it doesn't. It just stays hot.
Spencer Dawkins: Yeah.
Jérôme Martinez: Like, cooler, but not enough. Every day it's getting hotter. Only we will have three days left of very, very hot and then should be okay.
Spencer Dawkins: Stay cool, both of you guys. Uh,
Charles Eckel: Yeah, air conditioning is not like necessary where you live, right?
Spencer Dawkins: Hey Charles, how's it going?
Charles Eckel: Yeah.
Jérôme Martinez: There's some debate in the in Europe about air conditioning, yes. It is still very strong debate. Again this year, very strong debate.
Spencer Dawkins: How was it, Charles? I was saying, uh, I was talking to a friend in northwest Ukraine this morning, and the temperatures are almost the same for her as they are for me in Dallas. I told her, "You might as well move to Texas."
Charles Eckel: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's, uh, I know it's brutal right now. Um, yeah, one of my teammates, Eric, Eric Vyncke, he's, uh, in near Brussels, and it was very, very hot for him. I think even, even London's quite warm for, I mean, just strange.
Spencer Dawkins: Barbaric, really. So, um, I will go ahead and sign Charles into our, uh, guest list, and, uh,
Charles Eckel: Oh, is that, uh, where you have your, where you're keeping notes?
Spencer Dawkins: Yeah.
Charles Eckel: Okay.
Spencer Dawkins: And, uh, did did did uh yeah, there. And, And, uh, Robert is out doing, uh, Tools Team stuff, I believe, this week. So that may that may have been last week, but he's still someplace close to New Zealand. So he is he is cooler than than I am certainly. Um, and so he is he has a regret this week. Um, go ahead and wait another moment before let's get started. Um, and, uh, I want to say this in front of Charles, so it's a good thing that Charles is on the on the, uh, call. Um, Charles, uh, we talked about, uh, rechartering, and we talked about a couple of, uh, new drafts that, uh, one of them is, uh, a dependency for the other one. So, uh, Steve asked about, uh, submitting those, uh, you know, or submitting at least the first one to get started, um, and I talked with Robert after our call last week or last month, and Robert said, uh, "It's probably good for us to have at least some proposed charter text that describes what we're trying to do before we submit those." So, uh, we have not submitted either one of those yet. There was Dave Rice, at least popping up.
Dave Rice: Uh, yes. Hello. Good afternoon, sorry. A few minutes late. Hey.
Spencer Dawkins: Cool. Excellent. So, uh, welcome. And, uh, I'll let you go ahead and sign in also on the notepad. Um, I was just but I was just saying we, uh, are getting to the point. So, um, I guess number so number one, um, I'm just looking. Um, so we have, um, we have, uh, our, uh, tags document that is in the, uh, RFC Editor queue, uh, and we have the, codec specification that is, uh, waiting for AD go-ahead. And that is, uh, a so that was IETF, uh, Last Call, uh, ending. And, uh, Steve has submitted a dash 19 revision. So, uh, if if that seems like a good thing to go ahead and move forward,
Charles Eckel: That that one looked good. Um, I I saw, Steve, you, you, uh, addressed the comments that were, uh, received um, from I guess both, uh, yeah, Gen-Art, but then also I think, uh, IANA had some comments as well, which were addressed. So, um, but but I wasn't, um, Spencer, I thought you mentioned something about a SEC, uh, uh, SEC review.
Spencer Dawkins: Uh, so I I I'm looking I'm looking at the Datatracker, and there is a directorate Last Call, uh, review that is not submitted yet. So I'm I'm just looking to see who that is, if there is anybody.
Charles Eckel: Do we have expectations around that? Maybe it'd be worth, uh, I don't know if we know who the reviewer is, who they assigned, but, uh, just to know if that's something we're, we're worth waiting on or or do we just move forward?
Spencer Dawkins: Uh, Michael Michael Jones. Um, so two things. I think you can go ahead and move forward. The, uh, the, the directorates will, uh, go ahead and say, "Oh, well, you know, now that this is on an I IESG telechat agenda, then there's another review due anyway." Uh, so if you if you are a good person like, uh, Mallory, um, then, um, then, um, uh, then, uh, Mallory would be checking, you know, any changes, you know, "Were my comments addressed?" And has anything else popped up. Um, and if you haven't submitted one yet, um, that would be, um, this would be your clue that it would be good to write a review. Okay. But, uh, so, so
Charles Eckel: Um, yes, so so in that case, if if, uh, I I can take a look and I think this one can probably, uh, go forward. It'll it'll probably be scheduled, well, yeah. Anyways, yeah, we can move that one forward.
Spencer Dawkins: Excellent. That is that is that is, of course, fabulous. Um, and, uh, I'm just writing down in the notes that, uh, Charles will move this one forward. Um, and, uh, I'm skipping a couple of things down just to get to, uh, hot topics for, uh, this call. And I want to go ahead and share a screen. Uh, I had a, um, I had an action, uh, at the la- at the last meeting to, uh, put together, uh, some proposed charter text for us, and, uh, I failed utterly. Um, so, uh, but the nice thing is that, meetings are forcing functions for working group chairs also. Um, so, uh, I have stuff that is new that is in blue. I have stuff that is struck out that is in strikeout, um, and just wanted to, um, basically make sure Well, number one, let me make sure that I've got this right. Uh, and then we can wordsmith. But basically, what we're talking about is, we still, uh, are chartered for, uh, currently, for, well, our charter covers a, the Matroska media container chapter codec specification. Uh, so we would, uh, we would be working on that. Uh, our charter does include the FFV1, uh, version 4 video codec specification, so we would keep working on that. Um, we have, uh, and I'm never sure how to, what order in which to talk about these. But basically, uh, we have a, uh, update to the Matroska media container specification. Um, this this is what would have been version 5 if we were still talking about version numbers. Uh, but this is this is the things that have come up since we have, uh, published version 4 of Matroska. Uh, and then we need a, um, one new, uh, element for the, EBML specification that would allow people to understand what they're looking at, more or less. Um, so, the way I was describing this was basically, uh, we've produced, you know, we've we're chartered to do this, uh, this work. And so far, we've done this work. Um, and, so far, we still need to do this work, uh, here. And, uh, we're talking about new work, uh, this is where Charles wakes up, um, and, uh, we have some addition Tell me if I've got this right. We've got some additional capabilities that were not defined in the base Matroska specification that would be useful to define, we figured this out because of, um, implementation and deployment experience. Uh, so we will provide a specification that provides those capabilities. This is what we're calling Update 1 on, uh, in our discussion so far. Um, and the EBML specification does not include a mechanism for documenting when an element has been added to a specification that is written using EBML. Matroska does that. Matroska we're starting to, uh, we're starting to add new, uh, elements that people that do version 4 as in the base spec, uh, the people who do, uh, I don't know the version numbers, um, 9559 Matroska will not know what those are. Uh, and we want to be able to add those things for the specifications that are being for the, uh, capabilities that are being added to Matroska, uh, in Update 1. So, um, that gets us those four specifications. Um, the first one that's on the list in blue is, um, and I think I think we've talked about this with Charles, but, Charles, the Matroska specification was, uh, one big specification. And we, uh, split out I think a total of three or three or, well, I think we split out four specifications. Uh, we've got this one that we're, uh, planning to move forward on the fourth specification or the fourth split-out specification. Um, we've taken off the we've taken off our list for now. Uh, did not seem to be immediately, uh, useful to implementers and to, uh, archivists. Um, we're still we still have FFV1 version 4, um, in black. Uh, we have, um, we have, um, then the EBML, uh, schema update, which is, I think, uh, Steve has got about 80% of that document written. It's, what, like a page?
Jérôme Martinez: We could add more, but, uh, for now, yeah, yeah, it's not very big.
Spencer Dawkins: Yeah, there there was a a page plus boilerplate, I think. Um, and then, uh, the Matroska media container update is, uh, more, uh, more significant amount of work. Um, so that's what we would be asking to do in a recharter. Um, and conveniently, okay, so, number one, Robert has not seen this yet, because he was in New Zealand by the time I put it together. So, I would like for Robert and the working group to have a chance to look at this. Um, and then, uh, Charles, there's there's various places where we could put this, uh, that are not in the Datatracker yet. Um, do you care where those where we have that conversation that is not in the Datatracker yet?
Charles Eckel: Uh, have you done one of these in the past, and what did you use for that?
Spencer Dawkins: Neither Robert nor I were alive then. Okay. So, uh, we've got we've got a, um, working group we've got a we have a working group chairs, uh, GitHub that we could put it there. Um, we can we can put it in the Wiki for the, uh, working group. Um, I mean, so there's various places we could put it that are not Google Docs.
Charles Eckel: Yeah. Um, I think the GitHub, I mean, especially this group's been using GitHub for some of the documents, too, right? So, I think to me that seems like a pretty natural fit. And, you know, people can have pull requests or you can create issues, do all the normal stuff.
Spencer Dawkins: Okay. So, this seems, um, seems plausible.
Charles Eckel: Well, one question I had on the the documents that are kind of in in flight, uh, haven't, you know, but but not, uh, in the current version of the charter. Um, and and I know there were some issues with getting those, uh, approved, but why don't we just submit those as individual drafts initially, and then later on, you know, uh, when we have the charter updated and everyone's had a chance to look at them, then adopt them and rename them accordingly?
Spencer Dawkins: Yeah, um, we can do that. I think the reason that Robert and I were talking about going ahead and adopting them was that, um, the working group participants have had a chance to do that. But we have not done a formal adoption call. So, uh, if you're more comfortable with us submitting those as individual, that that that that could be brilliant.
Charles Eckel: I mean, I think that that would be good and it also addresses this, uh, charter issue, right? If we the race condition there. Yeah. All right. Sure.
Spencer Dawkins: So, we'll just decouple those, and, uh, yeah, and so we we don't need to pause work on them, but we just don't formally adopt them.
Charles Eckel: Yeah. Absolutely not.
Spencer Dawkins: Okay. So, we'll do that as individual.
Jérôme Martinez: Technically, what does it mean? Uh, it means we we submit the XML but it's not tagged as the seller document.
Charles Eckel: Well, you you just change the, so it's not draft IETF seller blah blah blah, instead it's, uh,
Spencer Dawkins: draft- draft- your- name- -seller- -whatever- blah blah blah.
Charles Eckel: Yeah. So just replace the IETF part with your name and that way everyone, you yeah, you keep everything else essentially the same. That way everyone knows it's an individual draft and the working group hasn't adopted it.
Jérôme Martinez: Yeah. Okay.
Spencer Dawkins: Cool. And,
Spencer Dawkins: okay. Um, and, uh, Spencer will move starting text to, uh, GitHub. Okay. Um, so that was our That was our big thing this week. Um, what else do we need to talk about?
Jérôme Martinez: Just saying that I am late on FFV1 V4. Um, my plan is before next meeting that I I merge a couple of PR, uh, for the specification and that I start a new draft.
Spencer Dawkins: Mm-hmm. Well, um,
Spencer Dawkins: um, if I'm remembering correctly, and I'll look before I keep talking. But if I was remembering correctly, that one that one is, uh, expired. Is it not?
Jérôme Martinez: Yeah, it is expired. And I I want to to send a new, uh, draft. Yes, yes, yes. Yes, exactly.
Spencer Dawkins: Yeah. Absolutely. Perfect. Um, and, we are we are still waiting on codecs, uh, chapter codecs for now, right?
Jérôme Martinez: On codecs, part 3.
Spencer Dawkins: Okay. Cool. Um, do we have anything else that we need to talk about when we are when we are gathered on the call?
Charles Eckel: I don't think so.
Spencer Dawkins: Okay, folks.
Jérôme Martinez: I just have a comment on the charter. Uh, basically, um, in the past, we were proposing to do to define a specification for what already existed. But, uh, over the last, I don't know, 10 years, we are we know there was some needs that didn't exist before we didn't do, but, uh, the reason is to still work on them is because we know of some, uh, that need to be added to the for the format to be on more, uh, extensible and have more features. I don't know if that's something you want to put in the charter or not. Basically, we are transitioning from what existed before and what we know is missing.
Spencer Dawkins: These so these so these are basically somewhat characterizing the additional stuff that would be in what would have been V5 if we were still doing version numbers.
Jérôme Martinez: Okay.
Spencer Dawkins: Yeah. I I was going to go ahead and see, uh, if anybody had questions about what the additional capabilities are. There are a few, um, and we can, uh, Charles, we can list we can list those if if you're more comfortable with that.
Charles Eckel: Yeah, I mean, if if it's a a short list and we, uh, we believe we have agreement on what those things are and it's clear, then that would certainly be helpful.
Jérôme Martinez: I put in the chat, uh, links to GitHub. Well, basically there's a tag Matroska V5 that probably want to rename. But basically, it list all the things we've left out, uh, I mean, the oldest is from 2017, that we know we want to do but didn't exist before so we didn't take the time to formalize it.
Charles Eckel: Okay.
Spencer Dawkins: Cool. Excellent. Fabulous. So, that and yeah. Exactly. So, I will so I will start I will start out with that list.
Charles Eckel: You know, I I don't have any, uh, concerns with the the draft charter right now. I mean, I haven't even read it through from start to finish. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You'll you'll have more concerns after you do that, I'm sure. I mean, the one thing that's in the back of my mind is, is there a way to, uh, update it so that, uh, people know we're working on extensions, additions to these mechanisms, kind of that that's what the working group does, and you wouldn't necessarily need a a recharter if something else that fell into that bucket, uh, came up. Um, when we put deliverables that are specific to a specific document, then you kind of need to, right? And and I mean, maybe it's not a big deal. But, uh, we could also have the, um, um, I'm just thinking of deliverables versus milestones. And if there's a way to generalize the charter. Not that's not always a good idea, but that's just something I I plan to look at when I kind of read the thing from start to finish. And, Spencer, I was wondering, I mean, have did you and Robert already talk about that? Has the working group thought about that? I don't want to rehash things you've already worked through.
Spencer Dawkins: Yeah. So, um, so a good a good thing for us to ask you, and I don't want to put you on the spot today, but, uh, for us to get some feeling for how permissive the current IESG feels about, uh, charter text. You know, some of them are really tight and don't do anything else, and some of them are other other deliverables as approved by the AD or, you know, things like that. So, uh, just be thinking about that. And actually, let's be thinking about that as we're discussing the proposed charter.
Charles Eckel: Yeah. Yeah, I think I think that's that's fair. And and there are other, uh, working groups that, uh, are their charters kind of written that way, that there's a, uh, in addition to say some specific deliverables that they had in mind at times of chartering, there's something about, uh, uh, provide a form for discussion, uh, related to like a certain topic, so that it really leaves it open for someone say to bring an individual draft and and start work on it and and perhaps even adopt it, as long as it, um, is kind of covered by that. And the challenge is always to you don't want to just make your charter too vague. But but, uh, but something we we can look at because I think ours is looking to be extremely specific, which, you know, has some some nice aspects to it. But maybe we can generalize certain parts of it.
Spencer Dawkins: Yeah. And like I say, I don't want to I don't want to ask you to wordsmith this on the call seeing it for the first time because I'm not that kind of a working group chair.
Charles Eckel: No, I mean, that that sounds good. And and I'm also not against doing, you know, somewhat trivial updates to the charter in in the future if we just want to add something simple. So, yeah. But but there is a bit of process involved. So, you know, if we can easily avoid that, great.
Spencer Dawkins: Yeah. Absolutely. So, I will I will add that to our list here, um, and we will, yeah. And, Nope, not that, sorry. Cool. Do we have any other business?
Jérôme Martinez: I don't think so.
Spencer Dawkins: Okay, folks. Oh, I, sorry, I forgot I forgot the obvious thing. Has anybody noticed the need for corrections to our previous meeting minutes?
Jérôme Martinez: No.
Jérôme Martinez: No, no, it is fine.
Spencer Dawkins: Perfect. Excellent. And, that gets us I still get to give you guys 30 minutes back. Rejoice.
Jérôme Martinez: Yeah, we can start.
Spencer Dawkins: Congratulations. And, and stay cool.
Charles Eckel: Yeah. Yeah, good luck.
Jérôme Martinez: Thank you. Good work. Thank you.
Spencer Dawkins: Always a pleasure. Bye, guys.
Jérôme Martinez: Bye.