- From: Aryeh Gregor <Simetrical+w3c@gmail.com>
- Date: Mon, 17 Aug 2009 20:27:01 -0400
In 4.8.2.1.9: It's kind of a nitpick, but I don't think this sentence is accurate: "Another example of an image that defies full description is a fractal, which, by definition, is infinite in complexity." First of all, we're talking about describing images here, which are presumably projected onto finite-resolution displays, and which are certainly being processed by finite-resolution retinas. Visually, it's not possible for anything to have infinite complexity. Second of all, mathematically, fractals are rather interesting things, but "infinite in complexity" is not a correct description by any definition of complexity I'm aware of. Fractals are often generated by very simple definitions or computer programs, so they have low Kolmogorov complexity. Something like a Sierpinski triangle is very simple to explain, understand, draw, and picture. You could describe one like this: "An equilateral triangle pointing upward. A downward-pointing triangle of half the height has been removed from the middle, leaving three upward-pointing triangles each half as tall as the original. From each of those three, another downward-pointing triangle has been removed, leaving nine quarter-height triangles, and so on ad infinitum." That's an accurate and precise description. I'm not sure fractals are a good example here at all. But if they are, at least the text ", which, by definition, is infinite in complexity" should be removed. In 4.8.10.4: The NETWORK_LOADED state is described (normatively) as "The entire media resource has been obtained and is available to the user agent locally. Network connectivity could be lost without affecting the media playback." This suggests to me that it would be incorrect for this to be the state of the resource if, during playback of a lengthy video, the user agent began deleting the already-played earlier part of the video, so that the full data was no longer available. However, the resource fetch algorithm sets NETWORK_LOADED regardless of whether earlier parts of the resource are still available, and nothing I can see ever changes the network state from NETWORK_LOADED to any other state. This seems contradictory, or at least confusing. In 4.8.10.5: There are some Unicode characters (U+231B? an hourglass?) here that are showing up as white boxes for me at the beginning of some of the list elements. "HTTP partial range requests" sounds odd to me, and "partial range" is redundant. Maybe just "HTTP range requests"? The HTTP spec uses "range retrieval requests". In 4.8.10.7: "The user agent cannot be in this state if playback has ended, as the current playback position can never advanced in this case." "advanced" -> "advance"? In 4.8.10.10: "If the attribute is absent, then the user agent should avoid making a user interface available that could conflict with an author-provided user interface. User agents may make the following features available, however, even when the attribute is absent: "User agents may provide controls to affect playback of the media resource (e.g. play, pause, seeking, and volume controls), but such features should not interfere with the page's normal rendering. For example, such features could be exposed in the media element's context menu." This doesn't make a lot of sense to me. I would have expected a list of features after the first quoted paragraph, but instead there's another paragraph that partially repeats the content of the first paragraph. It reads like it originally said something different, and then something was chopped out and not patched up properly. This isn't really a comment, since it's too late to change it, but I'm curious: why is the default that the author provides controls, instead of the UA? It seems like it would be simpler for the UA to supply controls unless the author opts out. Would you expect many authors to manually supply controls? In 4.8.10.12: Is "The user agent stops fetching the media data before it is completely downloaded" really a good description for abort? It can trigger during the NETWORK_LOADED state, can't it? Also, doesn't it only fire when the load is aborted by the user or a script? "play" and "playing" have confusingly similar names.
Received on Monday, 17 August 2009 17:27:01 UTC