Re: ... other formats in HTML ...

On Sat, 01 Dec 2007 18:29:17 +0100, Dr. Olaf Hoffmann  
<Dr.O.Hoffmann@gmx.de> wrote:
> A markup language for text is in general not much related to
> audio, video or graphical content at all, but if one starts to add
> specific elements for other contents, suddenly the choice gets
> very arbitrary if the list is not complete.

HTML 5 targets these domains:

  1. Semantics and APIs for Web Documents
  2. Semantics and APIs for Web Applications

The approach to improving these domains has been looking at what authors  
are trying to do now and how we can help making that easier and "better".  
As such, the choice is not arbitrary, but based on use cases and existing  
practice.


> Therefore as for this multimedia domain I'm looking mainly
> for a consistent line in the draft, how this non trivial
> problem is solved.
> Therefore this should not be taken as suggestion. I did not
> even start to suggest something. It is more an experimental
> approach to find out, how the current state was reached.

Previous iterations of HTML left us with <img>, <iframe>, <embed>,  
<object>, etc. Apple introduced <canvas> which other vendors liked as  
well. Ian Hickson drafted a specification for it which everyone then tried  
to implement. <video> and <audio> were introduced because of proposals  
 from various vendors, but also because there's no way currently to create  
a video player without resorting to a proprietary platform. There's a lot  
of video on the Web and there likely will be more so making it a  
first-class citizen seem sensible. <audio> can be used as audio player,  
but is also very useful for sound effects in games, etc. (Initially  
<audio> was a simple DOM object you could create for simply playing and  
looping of sounds.)

You mentioned text before. I personally think HTML itself addresses that  
need already, but if you want to embed a text/plain file I'm not sure why  
<object> is not sufficient.

You also mentioned animation. Most animation you see on the Web is of  
presentational nature. It seems more natural to address that with CSS,  
such as the WebKit animation proposal:

   http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2007Nov/0090.html

I hope this helps a bit.


-- 
Anne van Kesteren
<http://annevankesteren.nl/>
<http://www.opera.com/>

Received on Saturday, 1 December 2007 18:35:59 UTC