Some examples was: Re knife and fork.

Glenn,

As threatened - some diagrams to illustrate speaker change marks. These are
NOT real world examples - but are intended to give an idea of how generated
content may need to change depending upon the line breaking strategy (and
here I mean line breaking in a time sense) or other display options. Note
how indentation occurs when the speech for a speaker wraps on a
subtitle/caption that is multi-speaker. Note also that speaker marks ONLY
occur when the subtitle/caption is multi speaker.

My view is that ideally it should be possible (using TT-AF) to generate all
three of these examples from a single file - a file that contains a single
text tree (with only one occurence of the text), with three timing trees,
and one or three style sections. This would be an explicit 'knife and fork'
file.

I also believe it should be possible within TT-AF to express the content of
these subtitle/captions in such a manner that a competent UA could use
information within the file (e.g. roiles, styles, region sizes, scene change
timings and readability metrics) to generate output that is suitably
formatted and temporarlly flowed. This would be a 'relaxed' authored file.

Attachments:

Three diagrammatic files showing different ways of presenting the same
subtitles/captions. Apologies for MS format - but does allow an easy
representation of what should appear on screen.
One core data file containing the text / timing and speaker identity.

 <<Doctor fragment 2line.doc>> 
 <<Doctor fragment 2line colour.doc>> 
 <<Doctor fragment 3line.doc>> 
 <<Doctor Timing.doc>> 

Finally - a disclaimer - these files IN NO WAY represent what a professional
subtitler might produce - NOR do they represent typical
captioning/subtitling practices - save for the points they are intended to
illustrate - i.e. the placement of speaker marks and consequent indentation
(or use of colour to differentiate speakers) - note colour choice is my own
and not intended to be representative of any particular industry standard.

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.