HTML charter and Timed tracks

On the issue of charter, I see nothing in the HTML charter about developing a timed text format, there are other places in the W3C for that. While specifying how a timed track is referenced by HTML as embedded content does seem to me legitimate, I think the current direction goes well beyond this.

I respectfully  ask that the chairs and the Hypertext Coordination Group clarify whether they think developing a timed track format is in scope for HTML or whether it more properly falls in the remit of the Timed Text WG, the SYMM WG (or both) to further work on a suitable timed text format based on SRT, should that be deemed necessary. 

-----Original Message-----
From: public-html-request@w3.org [mailto:public-html-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of Ian Hickson
Sent: Friday, May 07, 2010 8:00 AM
To: public-html@w3.org
Subject: Re: Timed tracks

On Fri, 7 May 2010, Philip Jägenstedt wrote:
> 
> (Hixie has participated very little in these discussions, so it's hard 
> to frame this as his creation alone.)

For the record, I have followed the very same strategy I have used for everything else in the spec: I have read, carefully and in detail, every e-mail ever sent on the subject to the mailing lists (p-h-a11y, p-h, and whatwg), I have publicly collected concrete use cases [1][2] and invited everyone to contribute their own [3][4], I have researched the vast number of options available to us, e.g. all the various timed track formats [5], again in public, and I have used all this information to try to come up with solutions that satisfy all the use cases without introducing unncessary complexity and without closing off future avenues for extensions, again with all of the proposals done in public [6]. These proposals are, as Philip says, based on the ideas in the aforementioned mailing list discussions, for example those documented in the bugs for which I am doing all this work in the first place [7][8], and those documented in task force polls [9].

The work is far from done; maybe WebSRT isn't a good solution, and then it'll be thrown out and something better used instead. However, the working group charter calls for me to make proposals in the form of spec text [10], and the working group process for issues with these proposals to be raised in bugs [11], and I intend to follow exactly this model, just as I have with everything else.

[1] http://wiki.whatwg.org/wiki/Use_cases_for_timed_tracks_rendered_over_video_by_the_UA
[2] http://wiki.whatwg.org/wiki/Use_cases_for_API-level_access_to_timed_tracks
[3] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2010Apr/1103.html
[4] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html-a11y/2010Apr/0189.html
[5] http://wiki.whatwg.org/wiki/Timed_track_formats
[6] http://wiki.whatwg.org/wiki/Timed_tracks
[7] http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=9452
[8] http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=9471
[9] http://www.w3.org/2002/09/wbs/44061/media-text-format/results
[10] http://www.w3.org/2007/03/HTML-WG-charter#decisions
[11] http://dev.w3.org/html5/decision-policy/decision-policy.html

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'

Received on Friday, 7 May 2010 09:53:37 UTC