Re: Response to call for public review of WebVTT FPWD

On Tue, Apr 7, 2015 at 8:50 PM, Andreas Tai <tai@irt.de> wrote:
> Hi Sylvia,
>
> thanks for the response, the bug handling and the proposed solutions. I will
> comment on them in the bug tracker if needed.
>
> One comment:
>
>>> To re-assure you that you have authored a WebVTT file that will be
>>> processed exactly as you want (based on normative text) and also if you
>>> want to write a WebVTT compliant parser you most probably have to read
>>> the complete spec.
>>
>>
>> There's a validator at https://quuz.org/webvtt/ that will help write valid
>> WebVTT files.
>> If you want to write a parser, yes, you will need to read more than the
>> syntax - also the parser section.
>>
>>
>> Yes, Anne von Kesteren's tool is very helpful. But as author you also want
>> to know how your content get´s rendered.
>
>
>
> Use your Web browser for that
>
>
> I do but they are the implementation of the spec not the reference. As you
> may expect from different implementations of the same spec they often do not
> implement the same feature set and if they implement the same feature they
> do it not always in the same way. The spec is the "law". The browsers are
> only the citizens who shall follow the law but not always do.

You're correct in theory and the spec can have rendering examples to
encourage the implementer to get the rendering right. However, in
practice, as an author, what you really care about is what your users
see and they will get to see what is implemented reality. So, the way
to go here is to make test suites that help everyone get on the same
page, including implementers and specification authors.

WebVTT is part of the W3C Web Platform Tests Project:
https://github.com/w3c/web-platform-tests . If you have an interest in
this space, please become involved! It would be nice to have somebody
in this community who feels responsible for having complete WebVTT
feature coverage in the Web Platform Tests.

Cheers,
Silvia.

Received on Tuesday, 7 April 2015 20:45:41 UTC