RE: MediaStream ended vs inactive

Hmm, I thought we had agreed that MediaStreams can be reactivated.  If they can't, then 'ended' is the right name for the attribute, and attempting to add a Track to an ended stream should raise an error.  I'm in favor of letting them be reactivated - I can't see any reason not to do it.


-          Jim

From: Travis Leithead [mailto:travis.leithead@microsoft.com]
Sent: Tuesday, June 11, 2013 1:39 PM
To: Jim Barnett; public-media-capture@w3.org
Subject: RE: MediaStream ended vs inactive

Now that you mention it, I don't know if we are all in agreement that MediaStreams can be "reactivated" as you describe. Personally, this makes a lot of sense to me, but it would be great to see if we have consensus on this behavior.

From: Jim Barnett [mailto:Jim.Barnett@genesyslab.com]
Sent: Tuesday, June 11, 2013 10:04 AM
To: public-media-capture@w3.org<mailto:public-media-capture@w3.org>
Subject: MediaStream ended vs inactive

We had a discussion on this a while back, but never reached a conclusion.  Currently a MediaStream moves to the 'ended' state when all its Tracks end and/or are removed.  However an ended MediaStream can move back to the active state if new Tracks are added to it.  'Ended' as a word has a rather final ring to it, so it would be better to change the name to 'inactive'.  Thus a MediaStream starts off in the inactive state (if it is created without any Tracks), moves to active when Tracks are added, back to inactive when the Tracks end or are removed, and then back to active if more are added, etc.  The MediaStream could fire events (perhaps 'active' and 'inactive') to signal these transitions.

Concretely, we would get rid of the 'ended' attribute and the 'onended' event handler, add a state attribute (with values active and inactive) and two event handlers onactive and oninactive.  (Alternatively, instead of a state attribute, we could have a Boolean 'active' attribute, as long as we're confident that we'll never want a third state...)

Any comments?


-          Jim