Re: HTML 5, SMIL, Video

On Sat, 20 Feb 2010 12:52:41 +0100, Dick Bulterman <Dick.Bulterman@cwi.nl>  
wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> I think that Philip's answer is refreshingly honest. If I may  
> paraphrase, it is: I don't know anything about the alternative, but I  
> don't think we'll choose it.

I think this is actually a fair summary and applies to both smilText and  
DFXP with the modification "don't think we'll implement them in the  
immediate future". Other implementors may feel differently.

> I hope you appreciate that this is a frustrating standpoint for those of  
> us who actually HAVE thought about the short-, middle- and long-term  
> aspects of captions, subtitles, timed labels and motion text, both  
> within and outside of a document.
>
> Of course, we could follow Silvia suggest to add yet another format for  
> in-line text. Maybe I'm just hopelessly ignorant in thinking that  
> modular functionally, extensibility and reuse make a positive difference  
> for addressing a11y concerns. Who knows, maybe the short-term is all  
> that really matters.

I think we should have one extremely simple format like SRT right now and  
eventually one on the far other end of the scale that can handle all  
current use cases and is extensible for the future in some fashion.  
However, there must be some order of priorities and I think reaching a  
consensus on a complex format and having inter-operable implementations  
shipped in several browsers is still years away. Of course this is  
frustrating to everything who rightly think that SRT isn't enough, but it  
would be even worse to have nothing at all for years to come.

-- 
Philip Jägenstedt
Core Developer
Opera Software

Received on Monday, 22 February 2010 04:26:09 UTC