Re: SDP wrapper? Object-oriented API?

I would believe that SDP is a mere "implementation detail" if it weren't
for the fact that over on the webrtc-discuss mailing list, maybe half the
discussions involve how to tweak the SDP to get it to interoperate with
some gateway or other.

It's quite plausible to me that because of backwards compatibility issues,
dealing with SDP directly is going to remain a critical feature of getting
WebRTC to work with legacy systems. But among other things, that also leads
me to believe that the industry has suffered a collective failure of
imagination. SDP is a horrible API, and somebody, somewhere need to figure
out a better way of getting these systems to interoperate without arbitrary
edits to of opaque text files.

That's probably beyond the scope of WebRTC, but I'd appreciate it if
everyone involved in designing these API's took this as an important data
point. Folks like myself who want to use WebRTC but who aren't experts in
VOIP quite justifiably hate everything about SDP and everything it stands
for. It's a significant problem in desperate need of a real solution.

Ken


On Fri, Jun 14, 2013 at 8:58 PM, cowwoc <cowwoc@bbs.darktech.org> wrote:

>
>     An object wrapper would be nice but it wasn't really the point I was
> trying to make.
>
>     My point is that if SDP really is an implementation detail then the
> specification must ensure that we can swap it out for something else in the
> future without breaking backwards compatibility. To me, that begins by
> specifying that the SDP argument is an opaque token. WebRTC 1.0 might use
> SDP while WebRTC 2.0 might use some other format.
>
> Gili
>
>
> On 14/06/2013 11:47 PM, Suhas Nandakumar (snandaku) wrote:
>
>> My 2 cents ..
>>
>> I personally dont feel why would one want to modify SDP frequently than
>> supporting few special cases. Also once the APIs, SDP Usages and
>> constraints are finalized, i envision there will be much lesser need to
>> modify SDP by hand.
>>
>> Needing to have a object wrapper is fine by not sure if it is a MUST
>> requirement.
>>
>>
>> Cheers
>> Suhas
>>
>> ______________________________**__________
>> From: cowwoc [cowwoc@bbs.darktech.org]
>> Sent: Friday, June 14, 2013 6:10 PM
>> To: public-webrtc@w3.org
>> Subject: Re: SDP wrapper? Object-oriented API?
>>
>>       +1. I understand that the spec authors are determined to stick with
>> SDP and that's okay, but can we get the specification to explicitly
>> state that SDP arguments are to be treated as read-only opaque tokens at
>> this time? This leaves the door open to providing an object-oriented API
>> for mutating SDP at some future time.
>>
>> Gili
>>
>> On 14/06/2013 3:14 PM, piranna@gmail.com wrote:
>>
>>> Isn't there somewhere a wrapper for SDPs? It's crazy trying to work
>>> with them, and nothing have been decided yet about using a more
>>> object-oriented API that modify the SPD strings by hand, while it has
>>> been agreed several times on this list about SDPs should be
>>> implementation detail... Also, such wrapper should be a basis where to
>>> start to develop that higher-level API...
>>>
>>> --
>>> "Si quieres viajar alrededor del mundo y ser invitado a hablar en un
>>> monton de sitios diferentes, simplemente escribe un sistema operativo
>>> Unix."
>>> – Linus Tordvals, creador del sistema operativo Linux
>>>
>>>
>
>


-- 

Ken Smith
Cell: 425-443-2359
Email: smithkl42@gmail.com
Blog: http://blog.wouldbetheologian.com/