Re: Checking what features could be 'at risk'

Hi Philip, Davy,

> I'll let Thomas answer in detail, but given the current state of browser
> implementations, I'd say the following cannot be supported via a polyfill:
>
> * stopping at accurate end time in #t=start,end
>
> * smpte and clock time formats
>
> * track dimension
>
> * id dimension.
>
> Or, in short, what *can* be supported via a polyfill is:
>
> * time dimension with start time in NPT format
>
> * spatial dimension

Nothing to be added to this list. For NPT start and end times, I would
say a rough guarantee of about 1s accuracy for both start and end can
be given, however, I am not sure if such thing as a "rough" guarantee
(empirically determined) makes sense.

> As mentioned in the teleconf via IRC, I don't think it is acceptable to
> count polyfills as implementations for state transition purposes. That is
> not to say that they aren't useful, just that they aren't proof that a
> feature is implementable in shipping software with all the extra issues that
> come up there.

The delivered User Script adds Media Fragments URIs support with the
acknowledged constraints, asterisks, small prints, and limitations to
browsers that support User Scripts. Now I am a W3C newbie and not sure
about the strictness of the implementation requirements. Strictly
speaking, I agree with Philip that polyfills are _not_ sufficient.
Wearing my pink glasses I would say that polyfills serve nicely to
show how implementations can more or less look and feel like if
implemented natively. The real thing will certainly be more accurate,
polished, error-proof, etc. I just had fun developing the JavaScript
library and User Script, and hope to have contributed something others
can build upon. If it's useful for the state transition of the
document produced by the WG, perfect. If not, no questions asked and
no hard feelings. Really.

Up to the WG heads to decide.

Best,
Tom

-- 
Thomas Steiner, Research Scientist, Google Inc.
http://blog.tomayac.com, http://twitter.com/tomayac

Received on Thursday, 24 November 2011 10:38:37 UTC