- From: Philip Jägenstedt <philipj@opera.com>
- Date: Fri, 07 May 2010 12:34:49 +0800
- To: "John Foliot" <jfoliot@stanford.edu>, "Tab Atkins Jr." <jackalmage@gmail.com>
- Cc: "Geoff Freed" <geoff_freed@wgbh.org>, "Maciej Stachowiak" <mjs@apple.com>, "Philippe Le Hegaret" <plh@w3.org>, "Edward O'Connor" <hober0@gmail.com>, "Ian Hickson" <ian@hixie.ch>, public-html@w3.org
On Fri, 07 May 2010 05:53:20 +0800, Tab Atkins Jr. <jackalmage@gmail.com> wrote: > On Thu, May 6, 2010 at 2:25 PM, John Foliot <jfoliot@stanford.edu> wrote: >> Tab Atkins Jr. wrote: >>> >>> SRT is the closest-to-ideal existing format, >> >> Tab, with all due respect, what documented facts is this bold assertion >> based upon? <em>URLs would be most appreciated here, as the Media >> Sub-Group >> are assembling a needs requirement document at this time.</em> > > All of the use-cases of actual caption use on the web, collected on > the WHATWG wiki at > http://wiki.whatwg.org/wiki/Use_cases_for_timed_tracks_rendered_over_video_by_the_UA. > Additionally, API-level access use-cases for captions on the web have > been collected at > http://wiki.whatwg.org/wiki/Use_cases_for_API-level_access_to_timed_tracks. > > >> As co-chair of the Media Sub-Group at the W3C Accessibility Task Force >> for >> HTML5, active participants (including, significantly, engineers from the >> related browser manufacturers) have been discussing Time Text formats >> for >> some time now, and a recent survey (2010-03-08 to 2010-03-11) of the >> larger >> a11y Task Force showed almost equal support for the minimal SRT format >> as >> well as a more robust format, likely DFXP/TTML and/or a profile of that. >> - http://www.w3.org/2002/09/wbs/44061/media-text-format/results >> >> The general consensus (and others are free to correct me) was that SRT >> was >> at best a minimal time-stamp format that could be used, but that it did >> not >> meet the 'robustness' test for all aspect of accessibility. Suggesting >> that >> it is the "closest-to-ideal" is pure folly and opinion at this time, and >> does not accurately reflect the opinion of those who are working >> closely at >> this subject (again, including engineers from Microsoft, Apple, Opera >> and >> Mozilla directly involved with <video> implementation in the browsers). >> In >> fact, Maciej himself suggested (in his survey response): "I don't think >> it's >> necessary to require a specific format for the initial proposal. It >> seems >> like requiring any one format will just make it more controversial." > > Indeed, plain SRT is pretty minimal, and doesn't address many of the > documented use-cases. But it's very simple to both author and parse, > and the extensions needed to make it handle all the aforementioned > use-cases are pretty minimal. It's also pretty common, apparently > especially so amongst amateur subbers, which implies that it probably > addresses the needs and desires of average authors pretty well. > > It may be that we end up needing to support multiple formats, such as > perhaps a profile of TTML. But I'd like to avoid that if at all > possible, and from what I understand implementors would too. I am one of those browser vendor representatives that voted in the linked survey, supporting SRT only. From what I have read of the TTML spec, I do not want to support it in Opera, mainly because it fails to make use of CSS for styling. >> Continue to expect significant and vocal opposition to this newly >> re-invented Time-stamp wheel, which apparently sprang to life earlier >> this >> week from the editor of the WHAT WG, as a complete and total surprise to >> Media Captioning experts and Accessibility specialists of all stripes >> within >> the W3C (such as Geoff, who's years of involvement within NCAM/WGBH - >> the >> 'inventors' of captioning for television "video media" - carries >> significant >> weight, research and experience when it comes to understanding both user >> requirements, as well as an understanding of implementation issues). > > No, the use-cases have been collected for a while, in hand with > significant effort from Silvia Pfeiffer. No need to invent a fiction > of Hixie creating these things out of whole cloth. Like Silvia, I have also been taking part in this discussion. I don't think WebSRT is going to be immediately perfect, but the general direction is one I approve of. If there are use cases it cannot serve, now is the time to raise them. It may very well turn out that we need a second complex format, but that doesn't negate the usefulness of WebSRT. (Hixie has participated very little in these discussions, so it's hard to frame this as his creation alone.) -- Philip Jägenstedt Core Developer Opera Software
Received on Friday, 7 May 2010 04:35:43 UTC