[Bug 17465] <track> text tracks need to allow a @default attribute per group of @kind tracks

https://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=17465

--- Comment #4 from Silvia Pfeiffer <silviapfeiffer1@gmail.com> 2012-06-12 15:56:13 UTC ---
(In reply to comment #3)
>
> The site author can't know that the user is learning a language, but even so,
> wouldn't it make exactly as much sense for a hearing user to have two subtitle
> tracks enabled?

In theory, maybe. There's much less of a need, because either you don't
understand the language that is spoken and want to read in your own native
language - then you choose a subtitle track in your own native language. Or you
understand the language spoken in the video, but not well enough to fully get
it - in which case you want the spoken language's subtitles. In both cases
would you likely get confused if there were two tracks available.

We did consider this use case at one stage, but said it would be more of a
gimmick and rare and if the author needed it they could always code it up in
JS.


> With automatic track selection, you'll want to enable the captions or subtitle
> track that best matches the user preference, not one captions track and one
> subtitle track. In other words, I don't think it makes sense to consider
> captions and subtitles separately, they are in the same bucket as far as
> automatic selection goes.

Maybe. It depends on what browser settings you're introducing. If you introduce
one for "native language" then that would influence the subtitle selection (and
maybe the caption selection if no subtitle track is available). If you
introduce a setting for "captions always" on, then that would influence the
caption selection (and maybe the subtitle selection if no caption tracks are
available). In both these cases you would indeed only pick one default track.


> Default metadata tracks seems weird, given that scripts are needed to make
> sense of them and can enable them by setting .mode = 'hidden'.

They turn the use of tracks on. Not sure what's weird about that.


> The problem is know how to interpret a page with default captions *and*
> subtitles. Should I pick one of them depending on user preference, try to
> enable a subtitle and a caption track and fall back to the defaults, or
> something else?

Yes, this is the only combination for which "default" needs to be defined,
since they compete over screen real estate. I'd say that if both kinds have a
default track, the one that matches the user preferences better wins (i.e.
blind -> caption track, else subtitle track)


> We currently enable the first captions or subtitle track with a default
> attribute. The automatic selection we plan to do would consider all captions
> and subtitle tracks as a group and pick the one that best matches the user
> preference, falling back to the default.

OK, that's another approach that can work. Thus, just one default on
(CAPTIONS+SUBTITLES) and a separate default each on DESCRIPTIONS, CHAPTERS, and
METADATA?

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Received on Tuesday, 12 June 2012 15:56:16 UTC