Re: WebVTT Spec Question

Hi,

Dave thinks WebVTT needs some kind of metadata system:

> Well, I think we should have a formal system for un-registered
> meta-data. people will need ancillary stuff, and we can either have a
> well-defined sandbox, or…a mess. I tend to prefer the former.

Ian suggested putting metadata in comments:

> We do, it's called a comment. You can put any proprietary data you
> want there, and other UAs will ignore it.

and then later wrote:

> HTML does have a mechanism like this, and it has proved to be a huge
> mistake. People waste tons of time[…]

HTML is a really interesting example here. Consider the first pass at
embedding Creative Commons license metadata: they put RDF/XML islands
inside HTML comments. That was truly disastrous. The current solution,
to link to the CC license with <a rel=license href=...>, is far more
reasonable and discoverable.

So, on the one hand, I agree with Ian that the experience we've had in
HTML has been pretty bad. But the experience we had in embedding this
kind of metadata in comments was much, much worse. I recommend doing
something lightweight à la HTML's rel="" registry, and if we ever figure
out how to address this problem in a better way on the platform, switch
to whatever that turns out to be at that time.


Ted

Received on Thursday, 18 April 2013 18:17:50 UTC