Draft proposal for a Streams API in WebApps WG

Hi,

FYI, a draft proposal for a generic Streams API has started to be discussed in the WebApps WG.
Probably something to review and/or monitor for WebRTC. The initial email is archived at:
  http://html5labs.com/streamsapi/

The initial email, copied below is at:
  http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-webapps/2011JulSep/1569.html

Francois.

Begin forwarded message:
> > Resent-From: public-webapps@w3.org
> > From: Adrian Bateman <adrianba@microsoft.com>
> > Date: September 22, 2011 20:35:17 GMT+02:00
> > To: "Web Applications Working Group WG (public-webapps@w3.org)" <public-webapps@w3.org>
> > Cc: Feras Moussa <ferasm@microsoft.com>
> > Subject: Draft Proposal for Streams API
> > archived-at: <http://www.w3.org/mid/104E6B5B6535E849970CDFBB1C5216EB4E17C253@TK5EX14MBXC136.redmond.corp.microsoft.com>
> >
> > There has been discussion in this group now and again about the need for stream
> > support as part of the File APIs including recently in the threads about Streaming
> > Blobs [1] and XHR streaming [2]. I've also had several private conversations with
> > members of the WG about the need we see for this kind of stream support.
> >
> > Initially, we thought that supporting a streaming Blob was the correct solution
> > but we ran into a number of issues with this as we investigated further. First of
> > all, people were confused about using the term "Blob" to represent something of
> > unknown size. Secondly, we received guidance from a number of people to keep the
> > two concepts of Blob and Stream separate.
> >
> > Back in March, we provided some suggestions about using streams in the context of
> > Media Capture and Speech with our submission to the HTML Speech XG [3].
> > Specifically at that time we said:
> >
> >  We propose the addition of a stream type. While this document does
> >  not present a detailed design for this type, we assume a Stream is
> >  an object that:
> >
> >    1. Has a content type;
> >    2. Has unspecified length;
> >    3. Can generally be used in the same places Blob can be used, for
> >       example URL.createObjectURL().
> >
> > Over the last six months, we have refined our thinking further and would like to
> > submit a proposal for review by the working group that provides that detailed
> > design. We believe that this work is part of the chartered deliverables for File
> > API (and includes XHR support):
> >
> >    Streams API - http://html5labs.com/streamsapi/
> >
> > We recognise that there are a number of different proposals for using stream-like
> > objects elsewhere in the web platform, usually for very specific use cases. What
> > we have tried to define here is a Stream object that is as generic as the Blob
> > object defined in the File API spec.
> >
> > As we started building applications with richer access to devices on the system
> > including files we found the lack of support for an object representing
> > asynchronous data of (initially) unknown size was important. Section 11 of the
> > proposal provides examples of the scenarios we have in mind. To start to address
> > this gap, we have implemented a preview of this mechanism in IE10 Platform
> > Preview 3 behind a vendor prefix (e.g. MSStream) to gain more implementation
> > experience.
> >
> > We look forward to hearing feedback on this proposal, which we've framed mostly
> > as a delta against existing drafts in this working group.
> >
> > Thanks,
> >
> > Adrian.
> >
> > [1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-webapps/2011JulSep/0725.html
> > [2] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-webapps/2011JulSep/0741.html
> > [3] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-archive/2011Mar/att-0001/microsoft-api-draft-final.html#streams
> >
> >
> >
> >

Received on Friday, 23 September 2011 10:05:38 UTC