Generalities and the SYMM Charter

Hello,

First time poster here. I've been watching the list topics for about a 
month now and dialog is pretty technical, so forgive me for the base 
questions.

I've had an interest in SMIL since around 2001. I'm a web standards 
buff, a technical communicator, and a user interaction specialist by 
trade so my interest is more with the product interface side of SMIL as 
opposed to the programming. I think I'm reasonably well-oriented to 
SMIL; I've read the only two books fully focusing on SMIL that are worth 
reading (Kennedy's and Bulterman's) as well as Steve Mack's Streaming 
Media which had some interesting ideas for front-end folks like me, and 
lately I've been poking through the 3.0 draft, when I find the time 
(what a whopper).

My own interests aside, and as much as I would like to see SMIL get some 
traction online, that just doesn't appear to be happening. It seems it 
made a little headway years ago and then just disappeared, and along 
with it went what few SMIL presentations I once knew about that were 
worth bookmarking (only about 15, mostly academic stuff, but a few 
documentary and art pieces that were quite good and creative). Today, I 
can't find a decent SMIL presentation to save my life...old, new or 
otherwise. Any reference that comes up in Google always leads to a 
broken link or a proprietary format that I can't even try to play (I use 
a Mac).

I'd like to turn it to you now: As people with direct hands-on, I'd be 
curious and thankful for any comments you might give about why SMIL is 
rare (seemingly extinct) online at this point (whether communication 
reasons, technology, whatever), what needs to be overcome to turn that 
around, and/or any predictions you might have for the future of web SMIL.

Also, I notice it's been a year to this month that the SYMM Charter 
hasn't been updated 
(http://www.w3.org/AudioVideo/2004/symm-wg-charter20060601.html), which 
is also evident in section 12, where it says SMIL 2.0 is the latest 
recommendation. Since the document is clearly dated, maybe someone can 
clarify a couple of things. First, I find the reference "Next 
Generation" (NG) curious, and can only guess it means to indicate SMIL 
3.0, is that right? Second, how accurate are the milestones now that 
it's been a year? Is NG (3.0) still expected to be a CR this month?

Thanks for your time and thoughts.

Destry Wion
wion.com

Received on Sunday, 10 June 2007 06:28:51 UTC