Re: Survey ready on Media Multitrack API proposal

On Thu, 11 Mar 2010 22:26:33 +0800, Dick Bulterman <Dick.Bulterman@cwi.nl>  
wrote:

> On the multi-track issue:
>
>> I agree, but think that the "nice feature" is the possibility of having  
>> parallel text tracks, while having mutually exclusive tracks is  
>> absolutely fundamental. If we can't handle grouping in a nice way we  
>> can discard it and require scripts to achieve parallel text tracks. But  
>> let's finish this in the HTML WG.
>
> I would continue to argue that two separate concepts are being mixed  
> here:
> 1. a general mechanism for selecting alternative forms of content (or  
> structure), and
> 2. a synchronization mechanism that allows 0, 1, or more elements to be  
> displayed at the same time.
>
> The first (which SMIL handles as <switch> and which is being reinvented  
> here as <trackgroup>) should be totally decoupled from the second (which  
> SMIL handles as <par>,<seq> and <excl>). It will make your life -- and  
> that of authors -- much easier in the future.

How would <switch> work with <track>? I don't really like all aspects of  
the <trackgroup><track> solution, so if something SMIL-inspired would be  
cleaner, I'd like to see it.

Synchronization is implicit by putting <track> inside <video> -- there's  
no way to *not* have them synchronized. Still, something to keep two  
separate <video>s synchronized might be neat (even if I don't know what to  
use it for), can you show how SMIL can be used to achieve that?

-- 
Philip Jägenstedt
Core Developer
Opera Software