Re: Draft for summary of an HTMLCue proposal

Did anyone raise problems with the idea or was there merely a non-specific lack of enthusiasm?

Kind regards,

Nigel

From: Silvia Pfeiffer <silviapfeiffer1@gmail.com<mailto:silviapfeiffer1@gmail.com>> Date: Wednesday, 12 August 2015 22:18

Have you approached browser developers yet and got their thoughts on the matter? This was an idea discussed in the html WG in the past and didn't get very far.

Best Regards,
Silvia.

On 13 Aug 2015 6:06 am, "Andreas Tai" <tai@irt.de<mailto:tai@irt.de>> wrote:
Dear all,

One open task I had was to draft a summary for the HTMLCue proposal. This summary is intended as a base for discussion with other standard groups or with developers from the browser communities.

The proposal could be discussed in tomorrows TTWG meeting (see agenda topic 9a)

Best regards,

Andreas

"""
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What?
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We propose to specify an implementation of the text track cue API where the format of the cue data is HTML. The "cue type" is called in the following HTMLCue.

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Why?
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Different file formats are used for the distribution of subtitles and captions in the HTML ecosystem. Currently only WebVTT has a defined Cue Concept that is implemented by Web Browsers. It would extend the reach of accessible content a lot if the text track API can be used by any subtitle format.

Options for a solution:

1) Mapping of other formats to VTTCues
Although this maybe a short-term option a lossless mapping is often not feasible and requires considerable knowledge of the source and the destination format. It would also need continuous alignment of each of the subtitle formats with WebVTT and vice versa.

2) Define a cue type for every subtitle format
Even if these different cue type specifications would exist it is unlikely that browsers will support all different cue "specializations".

3) Define a generic cue type
This cue type should be easy to implement by browsers and it should be possible to map the semantic the scope of different existing formats.

We think an HTML cue as a variant of the third option is the best solution.

The strength of a  generic  HTML cue type is that, assuming that the way to render these cues is clearly defined somewhere, basically any kind of subtitle format that can be translated into HTML could be supported, as long as the browser, a client side JS   or a server based solution does the translation work somewhere. One way to make use of the doc fragment is to place the doc fragment as an overlay over the video.

The HTMLCue could be defined as HTML extension. The HTML Spec itself does not need to be changed.

It may be worth noting that under the hood some browsers already translate WebVTT to HTML and some client side JS solutions translate TTML to HTML.

=> Next Steps?
We would appreciate to hear your opinion about this so that this activity can be started during TPAC in October 2015.
"""

--
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Andreas Tai
Production Systems Television IRT - Institut fuer Rundfunktechnik GmbH
R&D Institute of ARD, ZDF, DRadio, ORF and SRG/SSR
Floriansmuehlstrasse 60, D-80939 Munich, Germany

Phone: +49 89 32399-389<tel:%2B49%2089%2032399-389> | Fax: +49 89 32399-200<tel:%2B49%2089%2032399-200>
http: www.irt.de<http://www.irt.de> | Email: tai@irt.de<mailto:tai@irt.de>
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