Re: [webvtt] Rename "line position" to "line offset". (#194)

I wonder whether we should use words from the word processing/typesetting world, where the offset in character progression direction is called indent, and the offset in the block progression direction is leading?


> On Jun 8, 2015, at 8:53 , nigelmegitt <notifications@github.com> wrote:
> 
> I don't think this change helps much, if at all. Two main concerns:
> 
>  • the suggestion that 'offset' means something perpendicular to 'position' is too subtle and doesn't come from any normal usage of English.
>  • the term 'offset' normally refers to a relative change in position, i.e. you need an absolute baseline position relative to which you're adding or subtracting something. In this case there is no absolute position. Sentences like "The cue box's top side ... is aligned at the line offset" are very confusing and hard to read because that's a direct misuse of "offset" in this context.
> It also doesn't resolve the basic difficulty: sentences like "The text position defines the offset of the cue box..." demonstrate - are the two concepts of position and offset actually interchangeable, or orthogonal?
> 
> I've just noticed that offset is also used to describe times elsewhere in the document.
> 
> For me, the original confusion came from the terms "text" and "line", and this edit doesn't address that. I think an alternative edit that would have worked here would have been to use longer more expressive names. The points in decreasing order of scope in my mind are:
> 
>  • It's a cue setting
>  • It's expressed in either the inline or the block direction
>  • It's a position
> So you'd end up with something like "WebVTT Cue Inline Position" and "WebVTT Cue Block Position". I would critique this though, as being somewhat unwieldy. At least it makes clear that to understand the position you have to know the writing direction though, which is the key point.
> 
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David Singer
Manager, Software Standards, Apple Inc.

Received on Monday, 8 June 2015 18:40:17 UTC