Baseline Media Formats for XHTML+SMIL

Hi,
It's probably to earlier to talk about XHTML+SMIL, since this WG was 
only recently chartered for it. There is a potential serious problem 
that  the sooner it's address the better. This WG should consider making
some Baseline Media Formats a prerequisite to a XHTML+SMIL 
recommendation. High quality audio and video that are open, license free 
  and implementable in a variety of OS's are needed, good examples are 
vorbis audio (vorbis.com) and for video, even though it's only getting 
started Theora (theora.org) based on VP3 video.

As it stands now, XHTML+SMIL is only a W3C note, which only IE has
implemented, IE also has over 90% of internet users. Now, when XHTM+SMIL
becomes a recommendation and content producers start using it to create
cool and entertaining webpages, what media files are they going to use?
Microsoft's proprietary audio and video files is what will be used, thus 
making the XHTML+SMIL file a MS document, this is when I think
MS becomes the center of the Web. I have nothing personal against MS
it's just I don't want to see the 'absolute power corrupts absolutely'
scenario played out on the Web.

Jose Ramirez
Freedom is more important than cool technology

Received on Tuesday, 24 September 2002 12:44:13 UTC