- From: Silvia Pfeiffer <silviapfeiffer1@gmail.com>
- Date: Sun, 24 Jun 2007 09:07:31 +1000
Such a development is a clear sign to change the spec to require theora/vorbis support instead of just recommending it. A baseline codec has to be a requirement. Thus, I suggest to change the wording to "User agents must support Theora video and Vorbis audio, as well as the Ogg container format". Best Regards, Silvia. On 6/24/07, Ivo Emanuel Gon?alves <justivo at gmail.com> wrote: > Dear WHATWG members, > > It has come to my attention that Apple developers behind the WebKit > platform, which powers the web browser Safari, apparently intend to > support the video element of the HTML 5 spec, section 3.14.7. It's > all fine and well, but not a victory for web interoperability, as they > do not intend to follow the "User agents should support Theora video > and Vorbis audio, as well as the Ogg container format" part. In their > own words: "should support in a spec does not denote a requirement. > We could have a perfectly suitable implementation of audio and video > as seen in this draft spec without having theora/vorbis codecs > available".[1] > > What this means, in my opinion, is that they will push for QuickTime > video, in spite of the effort of the Opera developers to push Theora > forward as the de facto standard for web video. Even if Mozilla and > the KDE team prepare their web browsers to support Theora, by choosing > to alienate it, Apple is allowing Microsoft to put WMV support alone > in their Internet Explorer, for if Apple, one of the big players, > shuns Theora, so will Microsoft. Considering the statistics, Internet > Explorer being currently the web browser with bigger market share, it > will force pretty much every web designer/programmer to stick to WMV > only. > > As everyone is aware, WMV is not an open specification, nor a proper > documented video format. Instead, it is heavily patented and locked > in one single vendor: Microsoft. This will force vendors to either > pay a license to legaly use WMV in their platforms, or to reverse > engineer support for it, infriging on software patents in certain > nations. > > This message is mostly an open letter to the Apple developers behind > WebKit and to every other browser/UA developer. Please, do not shun > Theora, or one of the following two things will happen: > 1) either the video element will become unrelevant and non-successful, > which is a shame considering its potential to revolutionize the web, > 2) or everyone will be locked in whatever new version of WMV Microsoft > releases in the following years--and expect some of these to be > incompatible between each other. > > Best regards, > Ivo Emanuel Gon?alves > > [1] http://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=13708 >
Received on Saturday, 23 June 2007 16:07:31 UTC