W3C

Timed Text Working Group Teleconference

09 October 2025

Attendees

Present
Andreas, Astushi, Atsushi, Chris_Needham, Cyril, Harold, Nigel, Pierre
Regrets
Gary
Chair
Nigel
Scribe
nigel, cpn

Meeting minutes

This meeting

Nigel: (Recaps the agenda) Anything else?

IMSC 1.3

Nigel: I think we need to cover the ja character set changes and issue 524

Improve the ja character set per ARIB feedback w3c/imsc#614

github: w3c/imsc#614

Pierre: [shares screen]
… Liaison from ARIB raises the question at hand.
… ARIB kindly suggested character set changes for ja, which is great.
… There's a note about Ideographic Variation Selector.
… However that is not a defined term.
… Atsushi and I have been discussing how to interpret it.
… We need to figure out what that means, so we don't write something different from
… what they intend.
… From Atsushi's last comment I think "ideographic variation sequence"?

Atsushi: CJK compatibility ideographs are there for compatibility.
… There can be mismapping between character set and what Unicode says.
… For backward compatibility between local character set and unicode some characters
… have both mappings within [scribe missed].
… I believe that is not related to variation sequence or anything else.
… If someone wants to say about the variation selector usually we say
… "ideographic variation selector" or "ideographic variation sequence"
… so they should mean the same as each other. They are terms used interchangeably.
… I believe what the point means is that the ideographic variation sequences shall be used.

Pierre: That's not part of main Unicode, it's part of UCS-37. Does ARIB reference UCS-37?

Atsushi: Variation selector itself is in ISO10646

Pierre: That's a much broader thing though, includes emoji selectors which I think we don't want.

Atsushi: shows [Ideographic variation sequence] in Unicode 17.0.0

Pierre: You have to know how to represent it.

Atsushi: Representation is described in a separate database, not in ISO10646.

Pierre: Before saying you must or should support this I want to know absolutely certainly that
… is what ARIB has in mind. Can we get a sample?
… I don't want to suggest a mandatory thing that's wrong or won't be used.

Atsushi: I wonder if I can ask a "side" way from colleagues in NHK.

Pierre: Please ask informally! I'm interested as an Editor in knowing which part of Unicode
… this "SHALL" exactly means.
… Just to clarify the terminology that doesn't exactly match the spec.

Atsushi: Is it okay to reply to the liaison email by myself?

Nigel: Yes I think that would be good. I'd suggest if you can write informally in response
… that we noticed this small difference in language and want to make sure that we understand
… correctly and ask for guidance or even sample data then that would help clear this up for us.
… I don't want to go around a whole formal liaison/response loop which will take a long time.

Pierre: [drafts the essential request in the GitHub issue]

SUMMARY: @himorin to ask informally for clarification as per the above discussion.

APA WG comment: semantic layers w3c/imsc#524

github: w3c/imsc#524

Nigel: We discussed this back in February and wanted more from APA

Atsushi: I believe APA has closed on the IMSC 1.3 review
… Wasn't there an accessibility review?

Nigel: I don't think I've seen one, or they've closed it but there's an ongoing discussion.

a11y tracking issue for IMSC

Atsushi: We need traction from APA on these issues, I'm not sure if there is discussion or not.
… Maybe I need to make it clear to APA that we're requesting transition to CRS.

Nigel: Would you like to check this offline and get back to us?

Atsushi: Sorry, let me think about it a bit more.
… We could ask for the first CRS but I don't believe we can close everything as review completed.

Nigel: That's what we need to do, get to a point where we can publish CRS.

Pierre: What's the hold up?

<atsushi> w3c/a11y-request#116 (comment)

Atsushi: We need to request a review for CRS but we asked for an early WD review.

<atsushi> > As we see a FPWD Status, we have no objection, but would like to return to the question of what might be said regarding super/subscript before this profile is finalized.

Pierre: We have a review.

Pierre: They closed their horizontal review 3 weeks ago and their only comment is editorial.

Atsushi: There is a different criteria for each stage. Usually we discuss comments on specifications
… in early phases but [scribe missed]

Nigel: I'm really confused about this, I thought it was clear what we wanted.

Pierre: I think we need to determine today if we need further review.
… My understanding is we asked for HR and we got HR. Why do we need to do more?
… Atsushi, this is super urgent, do we need to do more in the Process or are we good to go?

Atsushi: Let me comment on the a11y review request even though it is closed, to state that
… this request was not an early draft review but a transition to CRS review.

Pierre: Would you mind doing this today so we can get clarity on this?

Atushi: I'm writing it now.

SUMMARY: Discussion concerned process not this issue specifically.

DAPT

Include registry data from external files w3c/dapt#326

github: w3c/dapt#326

Nigel: I was implementing validation code and noticed that the registry data was only in HTML
… in the spec, not useful for using programmatically elsewhere.
… [shows the pull request data]
… Any issues with this?
… Different format for example?

Cyril: Thank you for this, it's good to isolate the data from the spec HTML
… Regarding the format, GitHub renders CSV as a table, and makes it easy to edit.

Nigel: Interesting, I haven't thought about CSV.

Cyril: It's good as it is, but it would be easier to prepare pull requests if you can
… see the proposed changes formatted nicely in GitHub. It's minor.
… It's already great to separate the registry from the main spec.

Nigel: In the spirit of agility and iteration we could merge this now and change it in the future
… if we need to.

Cyril: I like that idea.

Nigel: Thank you, any other points?

Atsushi: I somehow wonder about these functions and whether a single JSON file will be dynamically loaded two times.
… Also if we want to include the registry table we may want to include the caption within the JSON
… data. For content using table might it be better to be generic from the JSON file?
… I'm actually not totally sure about this JSON file being used, but having some caption or title
… could have a benefit for the users of the JSON file by itself.

Nigel: That is interesting. At the moment the caption text includes links to other places in the
… specification, and they would not make sense in isolation.
… I'm not worried about loading the data twice. Even if the browser doesn't cache it, the files
… are small, and when we publish to TR the scripts are run in advance to produce the final
… HTML so it's not an issue on /TR.

SUMMARY: Review to continue, early merge okay, further comments or suggestions welcome

Tests don't always set daptm:represents w3c/dapt-tests#41

github: w3c/dapt-tests#41

Nigel: I found a load of valid tests that are not valid because of constraints around daptm:represents
… and it's also an issue with invalid files where you might get them showing as invalid for the wrong reason.
… So firstly I wanted to warn everyone, in case you're using these tests,
… and secondly, I'll propose a fix.

SUMMARY: @nigelmegitt to propose a fix for the affected tests

TPAC 2025 Planning

Nigel: From last meeting Gary had some actions to do offline, I don't think I've seen that yet.
… We really need to know if people have timing constraints, especially if not attending in person,
… for when particular topics get discussed.
… If you are attending, please add yourself to the wiki page.
… We'll have to move to offline discussion of planning because the next call on 23 October
… has no Chair available at the moment. If anyone wants to Chair please let us know.
… Otherwise we'll cancel.
… I also propose that we don't hold a meeting the week after TPAC, to allow people to
… recover and get on with the other things they need to do. Good idea?

Cyril: Yes, agree.

Meeting close

Nigel: Thanks everyone. Looks like our next meeting might be at TPAC, to be confirmed.
… [adjourns meeting]

Minutes manually created (not a transcript), formatted by scribe.perl version 246 (Wed Oct 1 15:02:24 2025 UTC).