As I see it, {anchor} has two completely different, and opposite, effects!First, it can be used as a target for another presentation *to link to*, allowing you to specify a temporal sub-section to start at. Fine.Second, it can be used to divide up a media object (spatially or temporally) *to link FROM*.This is not good programming practice! There should be an {anchor} tag used for the first functionality, and something else (I think even {a} would be better than {anchor}) for the second functionality!Further, what about this situation (I use "{" instead of "<" ):{a href="file1.htm"...} {video src="blah.vid"...} {anchor begin="0s" end="5s" href="file2.htm" /} {/video}{/a}If the user clicks on the video in the first five seconds, which file does it go to????

>As I see it, {anchor} has two
>completely different, and opposite, effects!First, it
>can be used as a target
>for another presentation *to link to*,
>allowing you to specify a temporal
>sub-section to start at. Fine.Second,
>it can be used to divide
>up a media object (spatially or
>temporally) *to link FROM*.This is not
>good programming practice!

This is something SMIL links have inherited from HTML. In HTML, you can use the "a" element both for
1) inserting links to other destinations in a document, using the "src" attribute
2) inserting link end points into a document, using the "name" and the "id" attribute

For 2), SMIL uses the "id" attribute only

>Further, what about this situation (I
>use "{" instead of "<" ):{a
>href="file1.htm"...} {video src="blah.vid"...}
> {anchor begin="0s" end="5s" href="file2.htm" /}
> {/video}{/a}If the user clicks on
>the video in the first five
>seconds, which file does it go
>to????

i checked the SMIL spec, and it doesnŽt seem to discuss this, although i remember that we discussed it in the working group. i guess the second link will overwrite the first one, so youŽll go to link "file2.html". more generally, the behaviour should be the same as with an HTML image enclosed within an "a" element that also contains an image map.

iŽll bring this as an error to the SMIL group, and will see that it gets added to the errata.

-Philipp Hoschka, W3C