28258 2015-03-22 00:06:19 +0000 [webvtt] more formal grammar? [I18N-ISSUE-424] 2017-08-09 11:56:48 +0000 1 1 1 Unclassified TextTracks CG WebVTT unspecified PC All RESOLVED WONTFIX widereview P2 normal --- 1 silviapfeiffer1 dave.null addison philipj silviapfeiffer1 singer www-international zcorpan public-texttracks oldest_to_newest 118770 0 silviapfeiffer1 2015-03-22 00:06:19 +0000 Feedback by Addison Phillips from W3C I18N group: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-tt/2015Mar/0057.html I18N comment: http://www.w3.org/International/track/issues/424 http://www.w3.org/TR/webvtt1/#webvtt-file-structure The document structure is described as a sequence of prose. Wouldn't it be better to describe it as a grammar using an established syntax such as ABNF, EBNF, or railroad diagrams? Our WG found the document much harder to comprehend that it might otherwise have been. 120809 1 silviapfeiffer1 2015-06-08 12:11:48 +0000 Are you asking for an ABNF for creation of just the file structure or for anything in a WebVTT file? 123408 2 silviapfeiffer1 2015-09-30 23:11:01 +0000 It's almost impossible to write a conformant ABNF for this. I'd regard this as a nice-to-have. I'd be happy to look at a patch for this, though, if you have one. 123472 3 zcorpan 2015-10-04 20:21:11 +0000 I can have a look at creating non-normative railroad diagrams. 127720 4 singer 2016-10-11 17:21:25 +0000 Can we either provide the diagrams, or close as wontfix (as we do not intend to change the way that VTT is specified at this time)? 128171 5 singer 2016-11-14 23:57:07 +0000 Note that if it's helping authors that is desired, we have the guide material at the (admittedly frozen) webplatform docs site. https://docs.webplatform.org/wiki/concepts/VTT_Captioning We need a new place to host this content. 128172 6 singer 2016-11-15 00:02:26 +0000 I moved the page wholesale into the Wiki https://www.w3.org/wiki/VTT_Concepts 128192 7 silviapfeiffer1 2016-11-16 20:39:08 +0000 (In reply to David Singer from comment #6) > I moved the page wholesale into the Wiki > > https://www.w3.org/wiki/VTT_Concepts That's not a formal grammar - that's just an authoring guide. 128205 8 singer 2016-11-17 18:35:32 +0000 (In reply to Silvia Pfeiffer from comment #7) > (In reply to David Singer from comment #6) > > I moved the page wholesale into the Wiki > > > > https://www.w3.org/wiki/VTT_Concepts > > That's not a formal grammar - that's just an authoring guide. Yes, agreed. But railroad diagrams would also be only informative, I hope. I don't think we can have both a formal grammar and formal parsing rules without severe risk that they don't match, so I took the previous discussion as saying that No, we won't have a formal grammar, but we'll try to make life easier for authors by supplying railroad diagrams or an authoring guide. In the lack of diagrams, I suggest we at least point towards the guide. 128517 9 singer 2017-03-30 18:30:53 +0000 Given the existence of an authoring guide, and our desire not to have normative syntax in addition to normative parsing rules, can we close this issue? 128532 10 zcorpan 2017-04-13 11:06:29 +0000 Closing. 128828 11 silviapfeiffer1 2017-08-09 11:56:48 +0000 Addison, would you mind indicating if you're ok with the resolution of this bug? Thanks