RE : [Moderator Action] Bugs and TT (was TT and subtitling)

> -----Message d'origine-----
> De : Joe Clark [mailto:joeclark@joeclark.org] 
> Envoyé : mercredi 5 février 2003 18:13
> À : TimedText
> Objet : [Moderator Action] Bugs and TT (was TT and subtitling)
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Yes, I'm on this list too. Happy new year!
> 
> >It is one of my company's current aims to add the ability for
> >bitmaps to be propogated through the chain from authoring to 
> >display, for channel identification, logos etc. Whilst these usages 
> >may not fall into the TT charter, the ability of TT to carry bitmap 
> >data would IMHO considerably enhance its utility in the contexts in 
> >which it is likely to be used.
> 
> There's a huge trend in Canada toward animated channel-identification 
> logos ("bugs" 
> <http://www.eddietalbot.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/squashthebugs/>). I've 
> seen Flash animations less sophisticated than some of these, like 
> Showcase's. They're inserted by rack-mounted equipment not very 
> different from Line 21 encoders. (It's been the better part of a year 
> since I toured Showcase's plant.)
> 
> In any event, they're certainly *text* or at least *writing*, and 
> they are timed in two respects:
> 
> * They appear and disappear at certain times (whether static or 
> animated). In particular, they disappear during commercial breaks.
> 
> * Animation where applicable.
> 
> Position also comes into play. Generally speaking, broadcasters here 
> are too brain-dead to displace bugs to get out of the way of 
> subtitles (sic-- foreign-language subtitles). But on occasion, I've 
> seen bugs move over the course of an evening's viewing from bottom 
> right to top left, for example, where the unit of time expressed is 
> the *program* (first ten shows bottom right, overnight subtitled 
> movie top left).
> 
> Broadening the discussion, what are generically known here as 
> disclaimers (as in reference to program content, but also, oddly 
> enough, in announcing that a program has audio description) are 
> essentially very large bugs that appear and disappear. They're also 
> text.
> 
> >  Unicode does not cover every conceivable character
> 
> I would debate whether bugs and disclaimers are even "characters"; 
> human beings have always created individual drawings where the 
> existing writing system is not sufficient.
> 
> >Some of these may not be efficiently carried by SVG.
> 
> And let's not get too hung up on accommodating W3C technologies and 
> nothing but. Let us not recapitulate the errors of the Web Content 
> Accessibility Guidelines 1.0.
> 
> >         Personally I feel that in most cases the cause is lost for
> >existing **emission systems** (e.g. TV, DAB, DVD) adopting TT.
> 
> Not at the authoring level and at a level midway between authoring 
> and emission.
> 
> Case in point: I know one broadcaster that has the idea (not a very 
> solid one, in my view) of converting all subtitling and even closed 
> captioning to Microsoft Word files (!) that are simply pushed through 
> at airtime, rather comparable to live-display captioning.
> 
> At the authoring level, we're dealing with timed text all the time. 
> What else do captioners and subtitlers deal with?
> 
> >         Certainly if TT were to be adopted for subtitling for our
> >purposes it would need a parallel or extension mechanism to carry 
> >timed graphic data.
> 
> Or simply *refer* to it and call it up (and dismiss it, etc.) at 
> predetermined times.
> 
> >Current multimedia standards (eg SMIL) are generally not appropriate
> >for subtitling.
> 
> That's a tad broad.
> -- 
> 
>      Joe Clark | joeclark@joeclark.org
>      Author, _Building Accessible Websites_
>      <http://joeclark.org/book/> | <http://joeclark.org/bookblog/>
>      <http://joeclark.org/access/>
>

Received on Wednesday, 5 February 2003 18:05:28 UTC