Re: Fwd: [xml-dev] SMIL markup

On Mon, Aug 25 2003 "Simon St.Laurent" wrote:

> My simple application is stop-motion animation using graphics with
> captions and some sound, typically MP3 and MIDI.

http://www.ludicrum.org has some good examples of doing just this with
XHTML+SMIL.

> I don't need all the capabilities of XHTML+SMIL, 

Then use only those need.

> nor do I find promoting
> the now-frozen forever-incomplete XHTML+SMIL capabilities of Internet
> Explorer a worthwhile activity.  If I'm going to actually be working
> with SMIL, my primary viewer is going to be RealPlayer One - partly
> because it's widely distributed, partly because it supports MIDI, and

Keep in mind that IE supports MIDI (see the Ludicrum page) and, last
I checked, it is widely distributed.

> partly because there's hope for further development with Real's
> releasing their SMIL support as open source in Helix.

Ah, yes ... open source IE would be something!  Open Source Helix,
along with Ambulant and some smaller projects open a lot of potential
for SMIL Profile and Basic.  The X-Smiles project holds some promise
for future development of text in SMIL.  There is no currently no
public, or announced private, development for XHTML+SMIL.  However,
XHTML+SMIL already provides what people need for this behavior, with
direct, even simple and natural, inclusion of text.

> Otherwise, it looks like I'm stuck waiting for SVG to absorb all the
> parts of SMIL I find useful, and hoping that MIDI finds support in an
> SVG player someday.

Keep an eye on upcoming Adobe SVG Viewer versions -- there is more
media support expected.

> Proclaiming that "SMIL is a meta-language, so this isn't our problem"
> doesn't satisfy me at all. 

The problem is (or isn't ;) handled at the Profile/instance level (and
in players for these profiles/instances), not at the SMIL
Recommendation level -- just like with XML.
 
> The URL hack for handling text goes back to
> SMIL 1.0, before visions of meta-languages took over, and it is still an
> enormous wart.  I can understand that the committee can't be bothered to
> fix it when SMIL has apparently moved on to other things, but this is
> ducking, not fixing.

Again, this is addressed in XHTML+SMIL.  There is currently no SYMM WG
for SMIL, but XHTML+SMIL is currently an activity with the HTML WG, as
are other profiles with potential for this behavior.

> >Thus, if you are interested in actively promoting
> >text as element content in SMIL, I suggest you campaign for promotion
> >of XHTML+SMIL (or an equivalent) to Recommendation so that SMIL text
> >content becomes official. 
> 
> I'd rather just have something small that works.  XHTML+SMIL is huge,
> and there's not a whole lot of evidence that the world is calling for
> it.  I'm not - I just find one tiny piece of SMIL, though an important
> one, to be broken.  Please don't offer me a concrete mixer when I'm
> looking for a bit of plaster.

HTML is also huge, as is SMIL Profile and SVG, but many happily use
only the small pieces they need.  Simple things remain simple in all
these languages and in XHTML+SMIL.

> >Take a look at the Timed Text W3C effort as well
> >(http://www.w3.org/AudioVideo/TT/).  This group is working on,
> >basically, timed captions and subtitles for inclusion in SMIL
> >presentation.  Perhaps you could get involved in this group and
> >promote direct inclusion of such text.
> 
> Again, this misses my point nearly entirely.  I'd like to be able to
> work with text in a natural (<text>This is text.</text>) way within SMIL
> documents without piling on ever more specifications which never quite
> get implemented fully.  Timed Text looks just a tiny bit better than
> putting the captions in separate files, and that's not nearly enough
> better to be interesting to me.

XHTML+SMIL provides exactly this (using more familiar tags) with "<p>This
is text</p>".

-Lloyd

--
Lloyd Rutledge  vox: +31 20 592 40 93       fax: +31 20 592 43 12
CWI             net: Lloyd.Rutledge@cwi.nl  Web: http://www.cwi.nl/~lloyd
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Received on Monday, 25 August 2003 11:22:02 UTC