Re: Metadata in the VTT file header (bug 15851), use cases (and a need to close this)

On Thu, 30 Aug 2012 20:14:08 +0200, David Singer <singer@apple.com> wrote:

>> This is backwards compatible!
>
> Alas, it ain't.

Yes it is.

> Existing parsers will try to treat
>
>> STYLE
>> #foo { color:green }
>> i { font-family:serif }
>
> as the first cue.

Yes. And it will be dropped on the floor and the parser will carry on  
parsing the next cue. That's exactly what we want.

>> No escapes needed! It doesn't support embedding "-->", but I'd rather  
>> change the parser to only be aggressive about "-->" after the first  
>> real cue than to support &escapes; in metadata values.
>
> Right, I agree.
>
> I think the following is equally readable (ignoring whether STYLE is ALL  
> CAPS or not, and not really considering how one applies  styles to cues)
>
> WEBVTT
> language: fr
> kind: subtitles
> STYLE: |
> #foo { color:green }
> i { font-family:serif }
> .
>
> 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:05.000
> <c.foo>testing <i>testing</i></c.foo>

I think the pipe and the dot look like noise or typos and the backslash  
escaping is very confusing. Authors are confused already about how things  
should be escaped in various languages. Let's not make it worse if we can  
avoid it.

-- 
Simon Pieters
Opera Software

Received on Friday, 31 August 2012 08:55:46 UTC