RE: words, lines, etc. [was RE: TT and subtitling/captioning - separating...]

Al,

> 2. Lines in poetry should be entified, i.e. marked with appropriate
> container elements, and not separated with separators 
> comparable to html:br.
>   The Scooby theme song example is poetry, IMHO.

Agreed, element tags are not displayed, so the presence of inline tags to
mark content specific concepts (like a line in a poem, a verse, stanza,
chorus etc....) would not affect the display. But the content should not
include markup that is display related (i.e. the position of a line break
for a specific display line length). Line breaking **opportunities** and
conversely line break suppresion should however be marked (using wraparound
markup!) within the content.
 
> The presentation spaces for [subtitles and captions]
> are confined enough so that we can't ignore these divisions 
> (as John has said).
> I don't have a suggestion or precedent for how to approach this

Subtitles and captions certainly require stronger mechanisms than appear to
be available in current style models - at least for a 'relaxed' (device
independent) document. I believe it possible though tortuous to explicitly
achieve most of the existing subtitling / captioning display modes using
existing style mechanisms - but this is at the expense of device
independence and with a far higher degree of coupling between style /
content and timing than is IMHO desirable.

regards 
John Birch

The views and opinions expressed are the author's own and do not necessarily
reflect the views and opinions of Screen Subtitling Systems Limited.