Re: [tt-af-1-0-req] Some (late) comments on the requirements

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On Tuesday 20 January 2004 08:01 pm, Bert Bos wrote:
> Luke-Jr writes:
> > On Monday 19 January 2004 02:56 pm, Johnb@screen.subtitling.com wrote:
> > > > One hopes that the TT AF is simple enough to not need modules or
> > > > optional parts...
> > Timed text is hardly simple. There are many effects that can be applied
> > to text, such as fading, stretching, and dissolving. To handle any kind
> > of effect, there would need to be some part of the format allowing people
> > to define any new effects that might be used in the future.
> If you consider all possible instances of "timed text," then I agree
> that it is not simple, but should all those instances really be
> handled with a single language?
The best languages are ones that make it simple to do simple things, but allow 
complex things to be done with more complex code/markup. Restricting a 
language or format will only cause a better format to replace it in the 
future as more complex features are needed.
>
> When I first heard about the timed text activity, I looked at what
> people were using for subtitles (or captions? which is which?). I saw
> some formats such as Quicktime, Mplayer and RealText. They were very
> simple and it didn't seem like a lot of work to make a language that
> could do what those languages did, with maybe some "low hanging fruit"
> thrown in, and then get that language adopted by the users of
> Quicktime, Mplayer, RealText and others. That would give
> interoperability and would probably make many people happy.
You seem to have only looked at the most inferior timed text formats that 
exist. Much more powerful formats such as Sub Station Alpha and Advanced Sub 
Station allow for much more complex effects to be done (though these 
themselves are not powerful enough IMO).
>
> The danger of extending the scope to film credits, synthesized spoken
> text and any other "timed text" is that it becomes harder and harder
> to please everybody and I'm afraid that the result will be very much
> delayed and not make anybody really enthusiastic.
The result is already much delayed IMO. HTML came around before other text 
markup languages had become popular. There are many timed text formats 
already, which implies that such a standard has been needed for a while.
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Received on Tuesday, 20 January 2004 15:59:02 UTC