Re: follow up on the discussion in HTML5 about metadata access

On Wed, 2011-05-11 at 09:50 +0200, Julian Reschke wrote:
> On 11.05.2011 08:01, Thierry MICHEL wrote:
> >
> >
> > And the notion of "valuable" changes over time ....
> > For example SVG 5 years ago, required extra plugin to display in the Web
> > browsers, in our days it displays natively in most browsers.
> >
> > Who knows, in the future this may happen to SMIL (part our SMIL is
> > already into browsers) and to Epub ...
> 
> Or PDF.

PDF might become part of the built-in feature set of browsers at some
point. Maybe. But it isn't part of the built-in feature set across
browsers *now*. Neither is ePub.

I think designing APIs for PDF and ePub should be in the "let's cross
the bridge when we get there" department for now. If in the future PDF
or ePub becomes part of the interoperable browser platform, the API
situation can be reassessed.

Designing APIs now without implementor participation may well be a
"wrong tomorrow" exercise that results in a lot of wasted effort,
because the requirement are different when it's time to have browser
APIs for PDF or ePub (if that day comes). (Consider the browser
implementor reaction to W3C Timed Text compared to WebVTT for example.)

-- 
Henri Sivonen
hsivonen@iki.fi
http://hsivonen.iki.fi/

Received on Wednesday, 11 May 2011 09:09:00 UTC