ref to smil content

There are quite a few scenarios I can think of where I'd like to be able to
reuse a SMIL fragment that describes a subset of the presentation that will
either occur more than once in the overrall presentation or that I would
like to not author inline in the presentation but instead author separately
for modularization purposes. 

Examples are multi-level switch statement where a leaf may be chosen in more
than one branch. Another example is where I want to display a portion of the
presentation in multiple places in the timeline based on user action,etc..

My current understanding of SMIL 2.0 is that primary approach is that all
the smil markup is specified inline and all the media is specified by
reference. As a comparison, XML Schema allows an element definition to
either be specified inline in the parent or referred to (name attribute vs.
ref attribute).

 The linking module doesn't seem intended for reuse of SMIL markup but
rather for interactive usage. There is some discussion in the RealOne
documentation of how to refer to an external SMIL presentation using certain
combinations of attribute settings on a/area but I don't know how standard
this interpretation is.

Ideally, I would like the reuse to occur in the same file. Is there a way to
do this? Would it be through the MediaObject route or the Linking route? How
would the fragment (such as a timing container) be indicated to be a global
object that will be explicitly incorporated into zero or more targets? 

Alternatively, if the only way to reuse SMIL markup is to place it into a
separate document, then what is the correct usage and constraints? Many of
the scenarios would desire that the reused markup would be run in a region
of the calling presentation such as RealOne describes using the "target"
attribute. Is this a standard interpretation? 

Any insight would be much appreciated.

Thanks,

Gabe Beged-Dov

Received on Wednesday, 16 January 2002 14:25:31 UTC