Re: File headers

On Mar 12, 2013, at 7:49 , Ian Hickson <ian@hixie.ch> wrote:

> On Tue, 12 Mar 2013, Silvia Pfeiffer wrote:
>> 
>> I'm warming to this. Like COMMENT, these would not be extra headers in 
>> the current spec, but broken cues. However, how do we identify the end 
>> of such a directive with blank lines in them?
> 
> Don't put a blank line in them. (Or a line with -->.)

agreed.  if we don't like escaping blank lines, don't have them. it's no harder to remove them than it is to insert the escape.

The only case that this would fail for is if you want to in-line something that has significant blank lines, and the only format that comes to mind is VTT itself, and no, I don't want a VTT header that has, as in-line value, another VTT file :-(

So, possible outcomes

A) All headers are single-line.  Result: you want a short file-specific style sheet, either write it on one line, or put it in a separate file.

B) Headers can be multi-line, but they can't have blank lines.  Result: we'd need a terminator syntax the author can choose so as not to clash with the content, or else we still should have escaping.

C) Headers are multi-line, and blank lines and lines that emulate the terminator are escaped.  Result: when you in-line something, you have to look at it and maybe fix it up (or have a tool that does that automatically).


I think I prefer A,C,B in that order.



David Singer
Multimedia and Software Standards, Apple Inc.

Received on Monday, 18 March 2013 18:40:47 UTC