Re: Audio

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On Mon, 9 Aug 2004, csant wrote:

> A possible 'audio' media type, on the other hand, could be a
> collector for all audio events on a web page - addressing thus not
> only the pure aural enjoyment of the document, but also the visual
> experience enriched by some audio events. As such, IMHO, the
> 'audio' media type represents the ideal crosspoint between visual
> and aural, and could be the missing link between 'speech' and any
> of the visual CSS.
> 
> The 'audio' media type thus IMHO needs:
> 
> 1. 'background-sound':
> 1.1. 'background-sound-source': <uri> | none | inherit
> 1.2. 'background-sound-loop': loop [<number>] | inherit
> 1.3. 'background-sound-balance': takes values from 'voice-balance'
> 1.4. 'background-sound-volume': takes values from 'voice-volume'
> 1.5. 'background-sound-clip': cue | "padding" (still no property name
>       for this: it is the aural padding between cue and the element)
> 1.6. 'background-sound-offset': <time> in ms (milliseconds) or s
>       (seconds)  after the state it should play becomes true
> 1.7. 'background-sound-duration': takes values from 'voice-duration'
>
> If 'background-sound' seems to be verbose, you could use 'backsound'.
> One more entry needed as a shorthand.
> 
> 2. 'audio'
> 2.1. 'audio-balance'
> 2.2. 'audio-volume'
> 2.3. 'audio-loop': loop [<number>] | inherit
> 2.4. 'audio-duration': <time>
>
> For embedded audio files (e.g. in OBJECTs)
> 
> 3. 'volume': 'voice-volume' 'background-sound-volume' 'audio-volume'
> 
> 4. 'balance': 'voice-balance' 'background-sound-balance' 'audio-balance'
> 
> 5. a means for precise serialization of sounds.

If you are just focussing on the need for background sound, it might
be worth allowing for playlists as well as explicit sound files.
This doesn't effect the syntax as the same url(address) syntax
can be applied to both playlists and sound files.

I would be in favor of a shorter name such as "sound" in place of
the longer "background-sound".

A further feature of potential interest is the ability to add sound
when a field gets the focus (:focus), or when a link is clicked
(:active). By staying with "sound" as the property name, we can use
it on body for the page background sound, and on controls for
dynamic effects. The CSS specificity rules could be interpreted
as suppressing the background noise set on the body element when
a sound property is supplied on a pseudo class, when this has
a higher specificity.

Forcing a serialization of currently selected sounds seems like more
work than is justified considering the limited value it would bring.
How would you define it in a way that is useful?  I would recommend
using a mixing model, and leave it to authors to figure out how to
use this for effective end-user experiences.

Finally, in your examples, it is unclear how the properties 
interact with each other, in particular, loop and duration.

> > p.s. I think that :visible is addressing a different issue
> > and has value in its own right.
> 
> :visible has the big problem that it mainly relies on the size of
> the screen.

I don't see that as a major problem, but do agree that the concept
is probably not particularly valuable, i.e. I would be happy to
drop it and make the implementor's life a just little bit easier!

- -- 
 Dave Raggett <dsr@w3.org>  W3C lead for voice and multimodal.
 http://www.w3.org/People/Raggett +44 1225 866240 (or 867351)
 
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Received on Monday, 9 August 2004 16:55:42 UTC