Re: Displaying multiple lines in WebVTT

On Thu, 26 Apr 2012, Glenn Maynard wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 26, 2012 at 5:54 PM, Ian Hickson <ian@hixie.ch> wrote:
> > 
> > I do not believe that it will. Mere tutorial-level information will be 
> > sufficient for this kind of thing. That is, whatever mechanism people 
> > use to learn the language will be fine.
> 
> People aren't likely to read tutorials for VTT when they've already 
> comfortable with SRT.

Most people writing VTT captions are not familiar with SRT. Most people 
writing VTT captions haven't even been born yet.


> > The specific example above is a single bitmap from a DVD caption 
> > track. (First hit on Google for that cue's text identifies the source 
> > correctly. It happened to be what I had playing -- with captions 
> > enabled, coincidentally -- when I replied to the earlier e-mail.)
> 
> (Bitmap DVD captions, from what I vaguely recall--it's been a decade or 
> so since I wrote a decoder for them--only *support* showing a single 
> bitmap at a time.  This has no connection to how things should be 
> authored in VTT.)

I disagree about how captions should be authored. I understand that this 
would lead us to different conclusions about how the format should be 
designed. Not sure what to do about that.


> They're lines spoken by two different people at different times.  Why 
> would you put them in the same caption?

Because you want them to render at the same time.


> The only way that could even be done would be with a timestamp tag, 
> which just seems pointless and harder to edit.

No timestamp tag. This isn't a transcript or karaoke file. It's just 
subtitles. They're not supposed to be faithful to the exact timing of the 
dialogue, or even necessarily the exact delivery. It is perfectly normal 
to show multiple (usually two) lines of dialogue in a single cue.

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'

Received on Friday, 27 April 2012 15:26:52 UTC