- From: Dan Burnett <dburnett@voxeo.com>
- Date: Thu, 24 Jul 2014 17:07:13 -0400
- To: Martin Thomson <martin.thomson@gmail.com>
- Cc: Peter Thatcher <pthatcher@google.com>, Jan-Ivar Bruaroey <jib@mozilla.com>, "public-media-capture@w3.org" <public-media-capture@w3.org>
Comments below.
-- dan
On Jul 11, 2014, at 7:09 PM, Martin Thomson wrote:
> On 11 July 2014 15:59, Peter Thatcher <pthatcher@google.com> wrote:
>> Is {video: {mediaSource: {exact: "application"}}} really that bad for a JS
>> developer to write?
>
> Actually, yes.
>
> What I have a problem with more is the potential for this to be *not*
> exact. I don't think that we have any use case where an application
> is uncertain over whether it wants powerpoint or your video camera.
> That just doesn't make sense to me.
>
So I'm finally catching up on this thread that came out while I was traveling and on vacation. At this point in the thread I will give some history that may or may not be relevant:
The original reason we used audio and video (rather than camera/mic, for example), was two-fold:
1. We wanted the ability to obtain both audio and video with one request, because in some cases the camera and microphone were in the same physical device, and
2. Anant, and others from Mozilla, adamantly insisted that even if an application requests/wants a camera it must be possible for a user agent to allow a user to substitute *any other similar input, including a file, a different camera, some other random stream, etc.* For this reason we used the generic terms "audio" and "video".
Whether and how this is important to those of you implementing this at Mozilla I don't know, but that's the history. My reason for bringing this up is to remind folks that this was important at one point and to explain that even if the application is certain what it wants the user agent may still do something different (according to Anant a couple of years ago).
Received on Thursday, 24 July 2014 21:07:32 UTC