This document is also available in these non-normative formats: XML.This document is also available in these non-normative formats: single HTML file, zip archive.
Please refer to the errata
for this document, which may include normative corrections.
See also translations.
Copyright ©2005 W3C® (MIT, ERCIM, Keio), All Rights Reserved. W3C liability, trademark and document use rules apply.
This document specifies the second version of the Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language (SMIL, pronounced "smile"). SMIL 2.1 has the following design goals:
This section describes the status of this document at the time of its publication. Other documents may supersede this document. A list of current W3C publications and the latest revision of this technical report can be found in the W3C technical reports index at http://www.w3.org/TR/.
This document is a Recommendation of the W3C. It has been reviewed by W3C Members and other interested parties and has been endorsed by the Director as a W3C Recommendation. It is a stable document and may be used as reference material or cited as a normative reference from another document. W3C's role in making the Recommendation is to draw attention to the specification and to promote its widespread deployment. This enhances the functionality and interoperability of the Web.
This SMIL 2.1 edition is a new version, it extends the
functionalities contained in SMIL 2.0 [SMIL20], incorporating new features
useful within the mobile industry.
This SMIL 2.1 W3C Recommendation supersedes the 07 January 2005 SMIL 2.0
Recommendation (Second Edition) [SMIL20].
The SMIL 2.1 test suite along with an implementation report are publicly released and are intended solely to be used as proof of SMIL 2.1 implementability. It is only a snapshot of the actual implementation behaviors at one moment of time, as these implementations may not be immediately available to the public. The interoperability data is not intended to be used for assessing or grading the performance of any individual implementation.
This document has been produced by the SYMM Working Group as part of the W3C Synchronized Multimedia Activity, following the procedures set out for the W3C Process. The goals of the SYMM Working Group are discussed in the SYMM Working Group Charter.
The patent policy for this document is the 5 February 2004 W3C Patent Policy. Patent disclosures relevant to this specification may be found on the SYMM Working Group's patent disclosure page.
An individual who has actual knowledge of a patent which the individual believes contains Essential Claim(s) with respect to this specification should disclose the information in accordance with section 6 of the W3C Patent Policy.
The authors of this document are the SYMM Working Group members. Different parts of the document have different editors.
Please report errors in this document to www-smil@w3.org - (public archives)
including the prefix'[SMIL21 REC]'
in the subject line.
This section is informative.
This document specifies the extended 2.1 version of the Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language (SMIL, pronounced "smile"). SMIL 2.1 has the following design goals:
SMIL 2.1 is defined as a set of markup modules, which define the semantics and an XML syntax for certain areas of SMIL functionality.
This section is informative.
This specification is structured as a set of sections, each defining one or more modules:
This specification also defines four Profiles that are built using the above SMIL 2.1 modules.
This section is informative.
SMIL 2.1 is a new version. It is build on top of SMIL 2.0.
A large number of SMIL 2.0 Modules [SMIL20-modules] remain the same in
SMIL2.1.
SMIL 2.1 deprecates only a small number of SMIL 2.0 Modules.
SMIL 2.1 introduces new SMIL 2.1 Modules with extented functionalities.
SMIL 2.1 also defines new profiles that are built using the SMIL 2.0 modules [SMIL20] and SMIL 2.1 modules specified in this specification.
If this specification is approved as a W3C Recommendation, it will supersede the 07 January 2005 version of the SMIL 2.0 Recommendation (Second Edition) [SMIL20].
Note: SMIL document players, those applications that support playback of "application/smil+xml" documents, and host language conformant document profiles must support the deprecated SMIL 2.0 functionalities as well as the new SMIL 2.1 functionalities.
This section is informative.
1- The following sections remain unchanged from SMIL 2.0 [SMIL20].
The modules, elements and attributes semantics in the following sections
remain the same as in SMIL2.0.
The following sections links are the equivalent sections of the SMIL 2.0
Recommendation [SMIL20].
2- The following sections are updated from SMIL 2.0 [SMIL20].
In these sections, updated or new modules are introduced where new and updated elements or attributes semantics are specified. The following two profiles have also been updated:
3- The following sections introduce new Mobile Profiles.
This document has been prepared by the Synchronized Multimedia Working
Group (SYMM-WG) of the World Wide Web Consortium.
The SYMM WG which specified SMIL 2.1 included the following individuals:
The former SYMM WG which specified SMIL 2.0 included the following individuals:
This section is informative.
Since the publication of SMIL 1.0 [SMIL10], interest in the integration of SMIL concepts with the HTML, the HyperText Markup Language [HTML4], and other XML languages, has grown. Likewise, the W3C HTML Working Group has specified XHTML, the Extensible HyperText Markup Language [XHTML10], in preparation to subset, extend, and integrate it with other languages. The strategy considered for integrating respective functionality with other XML-based languages is based on the concepts of modularization and profiling [SMIL-MOD], [XMOD].
Modularization is an approach in which markup functionality is specified as a set of modules that contain semantically-related XML elements, attributes, and attribute values. Profiling is the creation of an XML-based language through combining these modules, in order to provide the functionality required by a particular application.
Profiling introduces the ability to tailor an XML-based language to specific needs, e.g. to optimize presentation and interaction for the client's capabilities. Profiling also adds the ability for integrating functionality from other markup languages, releasing the language designer from specifying that functionality. Moreover, it provides for consistency in markup through the use of the same model to incorporate a function. Identical constructs ease authoring, while at the user agent side there is a potential for re-use of code. For example, a scheduler supporting SMIL timing and synchronization functionality could be used for SMIL documents, XHTML+SMIL documents, and SVG documents.
Modularization enables language designers to specify dedicated markup intended for integration with other, existing, language profiles. Examples of specifications intended for such integration are MathML and XForms [MathML], [XFORMS].
Modularization and profiling use the extensibility properties of XML, and related technology like XML namespaces and XML Schema [XML11], [XML-NS], [XSCHEMA].
This part of the SMIL 2.1 specification describes the framework on which SMIL modularization and profiling is based, and specifies the SMIL 2.1 Modules, their identifiers, and the requirements for conformance within this framework.
This section is informative.
The modularization approach used in this specification derives from that set forth in XHTML Modularization [XMOD]. The framework on which SMIL modularization and profiling is based, is informally described here.
A Module is a collection of semantically-related XML elements, attributes, and attribute values that represents a unit of functionality. Modules are defined in coherent sets. This coherency is expressed in that the elements of these modules are associated with the same namespace.
A Language Profile is a combination of modules. Modules are atomic, i.e. they cannot be subset when included in a language profile. Furthermore, a module specification may include a set of integration requirements, to which language profiles that include the module must comply.
Commonly, there is a main language profile that incorporates nearly all the modules associated with a single namespace. For example, the SMIL 2.1 language profile uses most of the SMIL 2.1 modules. Usually, the same name is used to loosely reference both - "SMIL 2.1" in the example. Also, the name "profile" is used to mean "language profile".
Other language profiles can be specified that are subsets of the larger one, or that incorporate a mixture of modules associated with different namespaces. SMIL 2.1 Basic is an example of the first, XHTML+SMIL of the latter.
A special module in a language profile is the so-called Structure Module, in that it contains the root element of the language profile, e.g. <smil> or <html>. Any language profile that incorporates modules associated with a single namespace will include the Structure module associated with that namespace.
Other modules that require special mention are those that characterize the core of the functionality provided by the namespace. This is expressed by the notions of host language and integration set. Both of them relate to a set of conformance requirements for language profiles, which includes the requirement to incorporate at least the core set of modules. The set may be different for a host language and an integration set. A host language must incorporate the Structure module; an integration set need not. There may be other differences as well.
The main purpose of language profile conformance is to enhance interoperability. Preferably, the mandatory modules for host language conformance are defined in such a way that any document interchanged in a conforming language profile will yield a reasonable presentation when the document renderer, while supporting the associated mandatory module set, would ignore all other (unknown) elements and attributes. Here, "reasonable presentation" is to be understood as something intelligible, which is not necessarily a close reflection of the author's original intentions. To achieve the latter, a negotiation would have to be conducted to agree on the specific language profile to be used for the document interchange.
This section is informative.
SMIL 2.1 specification provides three classes of changes to the SMIL Recommendation, among the ten functional areas;
The following functional areas are affected by SMIL2.1.
Timing
Layout
Media Object
Transitions
This section is normative.
SMIL functionality is partitioned into ten functional areas. Within each functional area a further partitioning is applied into modules. All of these modules, and only these modules, are associated with the SMIL namespace.
The functional areas and their corresponding modules are:
Note: Modules marked with (**) are new Modules added in SMIL2.1. Modules marked with (*) are revised modules from SMIL
Each of these modules introduces a set of semantically-related elements, properties, and attributes. Each functional area has a corresponding section in this specification document. Further details on each of the modules is specified within those sections.
The modules may be independent or complementary. For example, the SyncMaster module requires and builds upon the SyncBehavior module, but the PrefetchControl and SkipContentControl modules are independent from each other. In addition, some modules require modules from other functional areas.
Modules specify their integration requirements. When one module requires another module for basic features and as a prerequisite for integration, a language profile must include the second module in order to include the first. The first module is said to be a dependent of the second module. Dependency may be nested, in that a module may be dependent on a module that is a dependent itself.
Table 1 presents the SMIL 2.1 modules and the modules they depend on.
Module | Dependencies |
AccessKeyTiming | NONE |
AlignmentLayout | BasicLayout |
AudioLayout | BasicLayout |
BackgroundTilingLayout | BasicLayout |
BasicAnimation | BasicInlineTiming |
BasicContentControl | NONE |
BasicInlineTiming | NONE |
BasicExclTimeContainers | NONE |
BasicLayout | NONE |
BasicLinking | NONE |
BasicMedia | NONE |
BasicPriorityClassContainers | BasicExclTimeContiners |
BasicTimeContainers | NONE |
BasicTransitions | NONE |
BrushMedia | NONE |
CustomTestAttributes | BasicContentControl |
EventTiming | NONE |
ExclTimeContainers | former SMIL module REMOVED in SMIL2.1 |
FillDefault | BasicTimeContainers, and/or BasicExclTimeContainers,
BasicPriorityClassContainers,
and/or TimeContainerAttributes |
FullScreenTransitionEffects | BasicTransitions |
HierarchicalLayout | former SMIL module REMOVED in SMIL2.1 |
InlineTransitions | NONE |
LinkingAttributes | NONE |
MediaAccessibility | MediaDescription |
MediaClipMarkers | MediaClipping |
MediaClipping | BasicMedia |
MediaDescription | NONE |
MediaMarkerTiming | NONE |
MediaParam | BasicMedia |
MetaInformation | NONE |
MinMaxTiming | NONE |
MultiArcTiming | AccessKeyTiming, and/or BasicInlineTiming, and/or EventTiming,
and/or MediaMarkerTiming, and/or RepeatValueTiming, and/or SyncbaseTiming, and/or WallclockTiming |
MultiWindowLayout | BasicLayout |
ObjectLinking | BasicLinking |
OverrideLayout | BasicLayout |
PrefetchControl | NONE |
RepeatTiming | NONE |
RepeatValueTiming | NONE |
RestartDefault | RestartTiming |
RestartTiming | NONE |
SkipContentControl | NONE |
SplineAnimation | BasicAnimation |
Structure | BasicContentControl, and BasicInlineTiming, and BasicLayout, and BasicLinking, and BasicMedia, and BasicTimeContainers, and SkipContentControl, and SyncbaseTiming |
SubRegionLayout | BasicLayout |
SyncbaseTiming | NONE |
SyncBehavior | BasicTimeContainers, and/or BasicExclTimeContainers, BasicPriorityClassContainers, and/or TimeContainerAttributes |
SyncBehaviorDefault | SyncBehavior |
SyncMaster | SyncBehavior |
TimeContainerAttributes | NONE |
TimeManipulations | NONE |
TransitionModifiers | BasicTransitions, and/or InlineTransitions |
WallclockTiming | NONE |
This section is informative.
SMIL is an XML-based language and conforms to the (XML) DOM Core [DOM1], [DOM2]. In the future, a SMIL-specific DOM recommendation may specify support for timing and synchronization, media integration, and other synchronized multimedia functionality. A language profile may include DOM support. The granularity of DOM being supported corresponds to the modules being selected in that language profile. As with all modules, required support for the DOM is an option of the language profile.
This section is normative.
This section specifies the identifiers for the SMIL 2.1 namespace and the SMIL 2.1 modules. Each SMIL host language conformant language profile should explicitly state the namespace URI that is to be used to identify it. That namespace URI must comply with the "Requirements on Identifiers for SMIL Host Language Conformant Language Profiles", defined below.
Documents authored in language profiles that include the SMIL Structure
module can be associated with the "application/smil+xml
" mime
type. Documents using the "application/smil+xml
" mime type are
required to be host language conformant. This Recommendation obsoletes the
former "application/smil
" mime type as specified in SMIL 2.0
[SMIL20].
The XML namespace identifier for the complete set of SMIL 2.1 modules, elements and attributes, are contained within the following namespace:
http://www.w3.org/2005/SMIL21/
Each module in this specification has a unique identifier associated with it. They are intended to uniquely and consistently identify each of them. They should be used as values in a test for whether an implementation includes a specific module, as well as in other circumstances where a need to refer to a specific SMIL 2.1 module is necessary.
Table 2 summarizes the identifiers for SMIL 2.1 modules.
Module name | Identifier |
AccessKeyTiming | http://www.w3.org/2005/SMIL21/AccessKeyTiming |
AudioLayout | http://www.w3.org/2005/SMIL21/AudioLayout |
BackgroundTilingLayout | http://www.w3.org/2005/SMIL21/BackgroundTilingLayout |
AlignmentLayout | http://www.w3.org/2005/SMIL21/AlignmentLayout |
BasicAnimation | http://www.w3.org/2005/SMIL21/BasicAnimation |
BasicContentControl | http://www.w3.org/2005/SMIL21/BasicContentControl |
BasicInlineTiming | http://www.w3.org/2005/SMIL21/BasicInlineTiming |
BasicExclTimeContainers | http://www.w3.org/2005/SMIL21/BasicExclTimeContainers |
BasicLayout | http://www.w3.org/2005/SMIL21/BasicLayout |
BasicLinking | http://www.w3.org/2005/SMIL21/BasicLinking |
BasicMedia | http://www.w3.org/2005/SMIL21/BasicMedia |
BasicPriorityClassContainers | http://www.w3.org/2005/SMIL21/BasicPriorityClassContainers |
BasicTimeContainers | http://www.w3.org/2005/SMIL21/BasicTimeContainers |
BasicTransitions | http://www.w3.org/2005/SMIL21/BasicTransitions |
BrushMedia | http://www.w3.org/2005/SMIL21/BrushMedia |
CustomTestAttributes | http://www.w3.org/2005/SMIL21/CustomTestAttributes |
EventTiming | http://www.w3.org/2005/SMIL21/EventTiming |
former SMIL module removed in SMIL21 |
|
FillDefault | http://www.w3.org/2005/SMIL21/FillDefault |
FullScreenTransitionEffects | http://www.w3.org/2005/SMIL21/FullScreenTransitionEffects |
former SMIL module removed in SMIL21 |
|
InlineTransitions | http://www.w3.org/2005/SMIL21/InlineTransitions |
LinkingAttributes | http://www.w3.org/2005/SMIL21/LinkingAttributes |
MediaAccessibility | http://www.w3.org/2005/SMIL21/MediaAccessibility |
MediaClipMarkers | http://www.w3.org/2005/SMIL21/MediaClipMarkers |
MediaClipping | http://www.w3.org/2005/SMIL21/MediaClipping |
MediaDescription | http://www.w3.org/2005/SMIL21/MediaDescription |
MediaMarkerTiming | http://www.w3.org/2005/SMIL21/MediaMarkerTiming |
MediaParam | http://www.w3.org/2005/SMIL21/MediaParam |
Metainformation | http://www.w3.org/2005/SMIL21/Metainformation |
MinMaxTiming | http://www.w3.org/2005/SMIL21/MinMaxTiming |
MultiArcTiming | http://www.w3.org/2005/SMIL21/MultiArcTiming |
MultiWindowLayout | http://www.w3.org/2005/SMIL21/MultiWindowLayout |
ObjectLinking | http://www.w3.org/2005/SMIL21/ObjectLinking |
OverrideLayout | http://www.w3.org/2005/SMIL21/OverrideLayout |
PrefetchControl | http://www.w3.org/2005/SMIL21/PrefetchControl |
RepeatTiming | http://www.w3.org/2005/SMIL21/RepeatTiming |
RepeatValueTiming | http://www.w3.org/2005/SMIL21/RepeatValueTiming |
RestartDefault | http://www.w3.org/2005/SMIL21/RestartDefault |
RestartTiming | http://www.w3.org/2005/SMIL21/RestartTiming |
SkipContentControl | http://www.w3.org/2005/SMIL21/SkipContentControl |
SplineAnimation | http://www.w3.org/2005/SMIL21/SplineAnimation |
Structure | http://www.w3.org/2005/SMIL21/Structure |
SubRegionLayout | http://www.w3.org/2005/SMIL21/SubRegionLayout |
SyncbaseTiming | http://www.w3.org/2005/SMIL21/SyncbaseTiming |
SyncBehavior | http://www.w3.org/2005/SMIL21/SyncBehavior |
SyncBehaviorDefault | http://www.w3.org/2005/SMIL21/SyncBehaviorDefault |
SyncMaster | http://www.w3.org/2005/SMIL21/SyncMaster |
TimeContainerAttributes | http://www.w3.org/2005/SMIL21/TimeContainerAttributes |
TimeManipulations | http://www.w3.org/2005/SMIL21/TimeManipulations |
TransitionModifiers | http://www.w3.org/2005/SMIL21/TransitionModifiers |
WallclockTiming | http://www.w3.org/2005/SMIL21/WallclockTiming |
In addition to the module identifiers above, there may be different features and variances from one language profile to another that may not be expressed as the support or non-support of a particular module. These features may be expressed using the following identifiers:
http://www.w3.org/2005/SMIL21/NestedTimeContainers
http://www.w3.org/2005/SMIL21/SMIL20DeprecatedFeatures
http://www.w3.org/2005/SMIL21/SMIL10DeprecatedFeatures
Implementations that support the SMIL BasicContentControl module must allow these as identifiers for use with the XML namespace mechanism, and must allow the associated namespace identifier to be used with the systemRequired test attribute. Profiles must identify those attributes for which an implementation must return "true" (this is an integration requirement). Implementations must return "false" for modules or features which are not fully supported.
This section is informative.
Modules can also be identified collectively. The following module collections are defined:
http://www.w3.org/2005/SMIL21/
http://www.w3.org/2005/SMIL21/Language
http://www.w3.org/2005/SMIL21/Mobile
http://www.w3.org/2005/SMIL21/ExtendedMobile
http://www.w3.org/2005/SMIL21/HostLanguage
http://www.w3.org/2005/SMIL21/IntegrationSet
This section is informative.
In this section we specify the rules for SMIL host language and SMIL integration set conformance. First, the conformance requirements for host language conformance and integration set conformance are given. The requirements are similar to those set forth for XHTML host language document type conformance and XHTML integration set document type conformance [XMOD]. In a final section the requirements on identifiers for host language conformant language profiles are given.
Currently, there exist four language profiles using SMIL 2.1 Modules. They are the SMIL 2.1 Language Profile, the SMIL 2.1 Extended Mobile Profile, the SMIL 2.1 Mobile Profile and the SMIL 2.1 Basic Language Profile. All four profiles are SMIL host language conformant.
This section is normative.
The following two tables list names used to collectively reference certain sets of SMIL 2.1 elements and attributes. These are used in the definitions of the minimum support in the two sections below on SMIL host language conformance and SMIL integration set conformance. The term "minimum support" is used to refer to the minimum set of elements that an element can contain, and the minimum set of attributes that can be used on an element.
Element Set Name | Elements |
TIMING-ELMS | par, seq |
MEDIA-ELMS | ref, animation, audio, img, video, text, textstream |
EMPTY | no elements are required as a minimum |
Attribute Set Name | Attributes |
TIMING-ATTRS | begin, end, dur, repeatDur, repeatCount, max, min, fill, endsync |
CONTCTRL-ATTRS | systemBitrate, systemCaptions, systemLanguage, systemRequired, systemSize, systemDepth, systemOverdubOrSubtitle, systemAudioDesc, , systemCPU, systemComponent |
MEDIA-ATTRS | src, type |
LINKING-ATTRS | href, sourceLevel, destinationLevel, sourcePlaystate, destinationPlaystate, show, accesskey, tabindex, target, external, actuate, alt |
COMMON-ATTRS | id, class, xml:lang, title |
A language profile is said to be SMIL 2.1 host language conformant if it includes the following modules:
In addition, the following requirements must be satisfied:
Element | Minimum Support | |
Elements | Attributes | |
smil | head, body | COMMON-ATTRS, CONTCTRL-ATTRS, xmlns |
head | layout, switch | COMMON-ATTRS |
body | TIMING-ELMS, MEDIA-ELMS, switch, a | COMMON-ATTRS |
layout | region, root-layout | COMMON-ATTRS, CONTCTRL-ATTRS, type |
root-layout | EMPTY | COMMON-ATTRS, backgroundColor, height, width |
region | EMPTY | COMMON-ATTRS, backgroundColor, bottom, fit, height, left, regionName, right, showBackground, top, width, z-index, skip-content |
ref, animation, audio, img, video, text, textstream | area | COMMON-ATTRS, CONTCTRL-ATTRS, TIMING-ATTRS, repeat, MEDIA-ATTRS, region |
a | MEDIA-ELMS | COMMON-ATTRS, LINKING-ATTRS |
area | EMPTY | COMMON-ATTRS, LINKING-ATTRS, TIMING-ATTRS, repeat, shape, coords, nohref |
par, seq | TIMING-ELMS, MEDIA-ELMS, switch, a | COMMON-ATTRS, CONTCTRL-ATTRS, TIMING-ATTRS, repeat |
switch | TIMING-ELMS, MEDIA-ELMS, a, layout | COMMON-ATTRS, CONTCTRL-ATTRS |
Support of deprecated elements and attributes is no longer required for SMIL 2.1 host language conformance but it is highly recommended for all modules the given language supports. Support of deprecated elements and attributes can only be left out in cases where interoperability with SMIL 1.0 implementations is not an issue. For example, if a SMIL 2.1 host language supports the MultiArcTiming module, it is highly recommended that it support the deprecated syntax defined in the MultiArcTiming module.
Since the SMIL 2.1 Structure module may only be used in a profile that is SMIL host language conformant, this implies that the SMIL 2.1 Structure module must at least be accompanied with the nine other modules required for host language conformance that were named above. Those modules themselves can still be used in other, non SMIL host language conformant, language profiles.
A language profile is said to be SMIL 2.1 integration set conformant if it includes the following modules:
In addition, the following requirements must be satisfied:
Element | Minimum Support | |
Elements | Attributes | |
ref, animation, audio, img, video, text, textstream | CONTCTRL-ATTRS, TIMING-ATTRS, MEDIA-ATTRS | |
par, seq | TIMING-ELMS, MEDIA-ELMS, switch | CONTCTRL-ATTRS, TIMING-ATTRS |
switch | TIMING-ELMS, MEDIA-ELMS | CONTCTRL-ATTRS |
Support of deprecated elements and attributes is not required for SMIL 2.1 integration set conformance. However, when included, the above requirements also apply to these elements and attributes. Also, when supported, it is required that all the deprecated elements and attributes from all the included modules are supported as a whole.
This section is informative.
A language profile is specified through its DTD or XML Schema. The identifier of these can be used to identify the language profile. SMIL 1.0 has specified the default namespace declaration on its root element, smil, as the decisive identifier for distinguishing it from other language profiles [SMIL10]. For that purpose SMIL 1.0 has specified
http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-smil
as the namespace identifier for SMIL 1.0
This section is normative.
For the purpose of identifying the version and the language profile used, SMIL host language conformant documents must satisfy the following requirements:
Syntax errors in a SMIL Host Language conformant document are handled according to the XML rules for well-formed or valid XML [XML11].
Semantic errors can arise at various levels. One is where the declared attribute values are of unknown value. Another is where the assembled presentation is (possibly) conflicting, as in a case where media objects are competing for display space or where they are synchronized ambiguously. These latter types, although maybe an error according to the author's intentions, are not considered an error and the user agent will present according to the resolution rules defined in this specification.
Errors in attribute values might remain undetectable to the parser, because the value type is declared as CDATA, or because the value range is open ended, as in the case of events, for example. However, errors in attribute values can be detected within a given language profile, where that language profile specifies the supported value set. Specifications of language profiles are required to specify the error handling that is required when such an attribute value error occurs.
This section is informative.
This section describes how language profiles could be defined using the SMIL 2.1 modular DTDs. The reader is assumed to be familiar with the mechanisms defined in "Modularization of XHTML" [XMOD], in particular Appendix D [XMOD-APPD] and Appendix E [XMOD-APPE]. In general, the SMIL 2.1 modular DTDs use the same mechanisms as the XHTML modular DTDs use. Exceptions to this are:
Below, we give a short description of the files that are used to define the SMIL 2.1 modular DTDs. See the table and the end of the section for a complete list of the filenames involved.
Following the same mechanisms as the XHTML modular DTDs, the SMIL 2.1 specification places the XML element declarations (e.g. <!ELEMENT...>) and attribute list declarations (e.g. <!ATTLIST...>) of all SMIL 2.1 elements in separate files, the SMIL module files. A SMIL module file is provided for each functional area in the SMIL 2.1 specification (that is, there is a SMIL module file for animation, layout, timing, etc).
The SMIL module files are used in the normative definitions of the specification of the SMIL 2.1 Language Profile. Usage of the same module files for defining other SMIL profiles is recommended, but not required. The requirements that SMIL language profiles must follow are stated in the SMIL 2.1 specification, not in the DTD code.
To make the SMIL module files independent of each other, and independent of the language profiles, the element and attribute declarations make heavy use of XML entities. This provides profiles with the necessary hooks to define the actual content models and attributes of the SMIL elements.
The SMIL 2.1 Language Profile provides examples of how the SMIL module files can be used. Most of the DTD files are reused across the different profiles. Reused are the SMIL module files, the files that define the data types and the common attributes, the "qname" file that takes care of adding namespace prefixes if necessary, and the framework file, which takes care of including files in the appropriate order.
The files that are different for each profile are the driver file and document model file. This would, in general, also apply to new profiles: to define a new language profile, one has to write the extension module(s), the driver file that defines which modules are used, and a document model file that defines the extended document model. The driver file and document model file are described in more detail below.
The driver file.
This is the file that would be referenced by a document's DOCTYPE declaration. Its main job is to define which document model file and which of the SMIL module files the profile is using. It may also define an optional namespace to be used in all namespace prefixes. For example, to prefix all SMIL element names with "foobar", the following can be added to the start of the profile:
<!ENTITY % SMIL.prefixed "INCLUDE" >
<!ENTITY % SMIL.prefix "foobar" >
Elements defined in their modules as, for example, <video> will become parsed as <foobar:video>. This also applies for SMIL attributes that appear on other elements, so, for example, "begin" becomes "foobar:begin". The default is that the qname prefix is empty -- that is, it is effectively turned off by default.
After these definitions, the driver file includes the framework file (which will subsequently include the data type, common attributes, qname and document model file), after which the SMIL module files are included that are used by this profile.
The document model file.
The document model file contains the XML entities that are used by the SMIL module files to define the content models and attribute lists of the elements in that profile.
Content models generally differ from profile to profile, or contain elements from other modules. To avoid these dependencies in the SMIL module files, content models need to be defined in the document model file. The (dummy) default content model as defined in the SMIL module files is "EMPTY" for all SMIL 2.1 elements.
For the same reasons, the SMIL module files only define a default attribute list for their elements. This default list only contains the SMIL 2.1 core attributes and the attributes that are defined in the same SMIL module file. All other attributes need to be added to this default list by defining the appropriate XML entities. For example, the Media Objects Module file only adds the core and media related attributes on the media objects; other attributes, such as the timing attributes, are added to this list by the document model file.
Driver files for the predefined profiles | |
-//W3C//DTD SMIL 2.1 Language //EN | http://www.w3.org/2005/SMIL21/SMIL21.dtd |
-//W3C//DTD SMIL 2.1 Extended Mobile//EN | http://www.w3.org/2005/SMIL21/SMIL21ExtendedMobile.dtd |
-//W3C//DTD SMIL 2.1 Mobile //EN | http://www.w3.org/2005/SMIL21/SMIL21Mobile.dtd |
Document model files for the predefined profiles | |
-//W3C//ENTITIES SMIL 2.1 Language Profile Document Model 1.0//EN | http://www.w3.org/2005/SMIL21/smil-language-profile-model-1.mod |
-//W3C//ENTITIES SMIL 2.1 Extended Mobile Profile Document Model 1.0//EN | http://www.w3.org/2005/SMIL21/smil-extended-mobile-profile-model-1.mod |
-//W3C//ENTITIES SMIL 2.1 Mobile Profile Document Model 1.0//EN | http://www.w3.org/2005/SMIL21/smil-mobile-profile-model-1.mod |
SMIL 2.1 module files | |
-//W3C//ELEMENTS SMIL 2.1 Animation//EN | http://www.w3.org/2005/SMIL21/SMIL-anim.mod |
-//W3C//ELEMENTS SMIL 2.1 Content Control//EN | http://www.w3.org/2005/SMIL21/SMIL-control.mod |
-//W3C//ELEMENTS SMIL 2.1 Layout//EN | http://www.w3.org/2005/SMIL21/SMIL-layout.mod |
-//W3C//ELEMENTS SMIL 2.1 Linking//EN | http://www.w3.org/2005/SMIL21/SMIL-link.mod |
-//W3C//ELEMENTS SMIL 2.1 Media Objects//EN | http://www.w3.org/2005/SMIL21/SMIL-media.mod |
-//W3C//ELEMENTS SMIL 2.1 Document Metainformation//EN | http://www.w3.org/2005/SMIL21/SMIL-metainformation.mod |
-//W3C//ELEMENTS SMIL 2.1 Document Structure//EN | http://www.w3.org/2005/SMIL21/SMIL-struct.mod |
-//W3C//ELEMENTS SMIL 2.1 Timing//EN | http://www.w3.org/2005/SMIL21/SMIL-timing.mod |
-//W3C//ELEMENTS SMIL 2.1 Transition//EN | http://www.w3.org/2005/SMIL21/SMIL-transition.mod |
Other utilities: data types, common attributes, qname and frame work files | |
-//W3C//ENTITIES SMIL 2.1 Datatypes 1.0//EN | http://www.w3.org/2005/SMIL21/smil-datatypes-1.mod |
-//W3C//ENTITIES SMIL 2.1 Common Attributes 1.0//EN | http://www.w3.org/2005/SMIL21/smil-attribs-1.mod |
-//W3C//ENTITIES SMIL 2.1 Qualified Names 1.0//EN | http://www.w3.org/2005/SMIL21/smil-qname-1.mod |
-//W3C//ENTITIES SMIL 2.1 Modular Framework 1.0//EN | http://www.w3.org/2005/SMIL21/smil-framework-1.mod |
This section is informative.
The SMIL 2.1 specification leaves the SMIL 2.0 Animation Modules [SMIL20-animation] unchanged, with the exception that normative text is added that clarifies the ability of a host language designer to override the event base default element.
This section is informative.
This section defines the SMIL 2.1 Animation Modules, which are composed of a BasicAnimation module and a SplineAnimation module. These modules contain elements and attributes for incorporating animation onto a time line, and a mechanism for composing the effects of multiple animations. Since these elements and attributes are defined in modules, designers of other markup languages can choose whether or not to include this functionality in their languages. Language designers incorporating other SMIL modules do not need to include the animation modules if animation functionality is not needed.
The examples in this document that include syntax for a host language use [SMIL10], [SVG], [HTML4] and [CSS2]. These are provided as an indication of possible integrations with various host languages.
While this document defines a base set of animation capabilities, it is assumed that host languages may build upon the support to define additional or more specialized animation elements. Animation only manipulates attributes and properties of the target elements, and so does not require any knowledge of the target element semantics beyond basic type information.
This module depends on the SMIL 2.1 BasicInlineTiming module, using elements and attributes from the Timing module for its time line. The BasicInlineTiming module is a prerequisite for any profile using SMIL Animation. The reader is presumed to have read and be familiar with the SMIL 2.1 Timing modules.
This section first presents the underlying principals of animation in SMIL 2.1, then the elements and attributes of the BasicAnimation module and of the SplineAnimation module.
This section describes the semantics underlying the SMIL 2.1 animation
modules. The specific elements are not described here, but rather the common
concepts and syntax that comprise the model for animation. Document issues
are described, as well as the means to target an element for animation. The
animation model is then defined by building up from the simplest to the most
complex concepts: first the simple duration and simple animation function
f(t)
, and then the overall effect
F(t,u)
.
Animation is defined as a time-based function of a target element
(or more specifically of some attribute of the target element, the
target attribute). The animation defines a mapping of time to values
for the target attribute. This mapping takes into account all aspects of
timing, as well as animation-specific semantics. The overall mapping is
based on a simple animation function
f(t)
which describes the animation over the
simple duration of the element. Every animation defines a simple animation
function which produces a value for the target attribute for any time within
the simple duration.
Normative
A target attribute is the name of a feature of a target element as defined in a host language document.
This may be (e.g.) an XML attribute contained in the element or a CSS property that applies to the element. By default, the target element of an animation will be the parent of the animation element (an animation element is typically a child of the target element). However, the target may be any element in the document, identified either by an XML ID reference or via an XLink [XLINK] locator reference.
As a simple example, the following defines an animation of an SVG rectangle shape. The rectangle will change from being tall and thin to being short and wide.
<rect ...> <animate attributeName="width" from="10px" to="100px" begin="0s" dur="10s" /> <animate attributeName="height" from="100px" to="10px" begin="0s" dur="10s" /> </rect>
The rectangle begins with a width of 10 pixels and increases to a width of 100 pixels over the course of 10 seconds. Over the same ten seconds, the height of the rectangle changes from 100 pixels to 10 pixels.
When an animation is running, it should not actually change the attribute values in the DOM [DOM2]. The animation runtime should maintain a presentation value for each animated attribute, separate from the DOM or CSS Object Model (OM). If an implementation does not support an object model, it should maintain the original value as defined by the document as well as the presentation value. The presentation value is reflected in the displayed form of the document. Animations thus manipulate the presentation value, and should not affect the base value exposed by DOM or CSS OM. This is detailed in The animation sandwich model.
Normative
The base value of a target attributea
at timet
is the value ofa
to which animation is applied at timet
.The presentation value of a target attribute
a
at timet
is the value ofa
resulting from the application of animation at timet
.
The presentation value reflects the effect of animation on the base value. The effect is the change to the base value of the target attribute at any given time. When an animation completes, the effect of the animation is no longer applied, and the presentation value reverts to the base value by default. The animation effect can also be extended to freeze the last value for the length of time determined by the semantics of the fill attribute.
An animation element defines a simple animation function which is evaluated as needed over time by the implementation. The resulting values are applied to the presentation value for the target attribute. Animation functions are continuous in time and can be sampled at whatever frame rate is appropriate for the rendering system. The syntactic representation of the simple animation function is independent of this model, and may be described in a variety of ways. The animation elements in this specification support syntax for a set of discrete or interpolated values, a path syntax for motion based upon SVG paths, keyframe based timing, evenly paced interpolation, and variants on these features.
In the example immediately above, the simple animation function for the
width attribute, specified by 'from="10px" to="100px" ...
dur="10s"'
is
f(t) = (10 + 90*t/10) px
, wheret
is given in seconds.
Simple animation functions may be defined which have additional parameters, or that are purely or partially algorithmic. For example, a "to" animation interpolates from the current value to the "to" value:
<animate attributeName="top" to="10" dur="2.5s" />
The animation function is a function of the current position, as well as of time:
f(t,u) = (u*(2.5s-t)/2.5s) +
10*(t/2.5s)
In all cases, the animation exposes this as a function of time.
Normative
The simple animation function defined by an animation elementis a function of time,
f(t)
, defined for timest
,0<=t<=d
, whered
is the simple duration of the element.The simple animation function may be defined as a function which depends on factors in addition to time. This does not affect the model of animation, beyond the trivial addition of additional parameters to
f(t)
, such asf(t,u)
used in the "to" animation example immediately above.
Animations can be defined to either override or add to the base value of an attribute. In this context, the base value may be the DOM value, or the result of other animations that also target the same attribute. This more general concept of a base value is termed the underlying value. Animations that add to the underlying value are described as additive animations. Animations that override the underlying value are referred to as non-additive animations. The animation effect function of an element is the function which includes the affect of the underlying value and accounts for repeating and freezing of the element. Because the animation effect can be affected by repeating and freezing, it is defined over the active duration of the element rather than its simple duration.
Animations can be combined in ways which produce intermediate values outside of the domain of the target attribute, but where the presentation value produced is valid. The type of a target attribute is this larger set. This is detailed in The animation sandwich model.
Normative
The type of a target attributea
is the base type of which the domain ofa
is a subset.The animation effect function,
F(t,u)
, of an animation element with active durationAD
is a function mapping timest
:0<=t<AD
and valuesu
of the type of the target attributea
into values of the type ofa
.The underlying value
u
of a target attributea
of an animation elementat time
t
is the value ofa
to which the animation effect is applied at timet
.
The animation effect function F(t,u)
is
usually defined as a function of the simple animation function
f(t)
. f(t)
must
be defined in such a manner that F(t,u)
produces values of the correct type.
a
d
AD
t
t
may
be in user-perceived time, an element's active duration, or its simple
duration.u
a
,
generally at a specific time t
.f(t)
Note that while F(t,u)
defines the
mapping for the entire animation, f(t)
has a simplified model that just handles the simple duration.
f(d)
F(t,u)
t
:
0<=t<AD
) and an underlying value to
a value for the target attribute. A time value of 0 corresponds to the
time at which the animation begins.
F(t,u)
combines the simple animation
function f(t)
with all the other aspects
of animation and timing controls.When an animation is running, it does not actually change the attribute values in the DOM. The animation runtime should ideally maintain a presentation value for any target attribute, separate from the DOM, CSS, or other object model (OM) in which the target attribute is defined. The presentation value is reflected in the display form of the document. The effect of animations is to manipulate this presentation value, and not to affect the underlying DOM or CSS OM values.
The remainder of this discussion uses the generic term OM for both the XML DOM [DOM2] as well as the CSS-OM. If an implementation does not support an object model, it should ideally maintain the original value as defined by the document as well as the presentation value; for the purposes of this section, we will consider this original value to be equivalent to the value in the OM.
In some implementations of DOM, it may be difficult or impractical to main a presentation value as described. CSS values should always be supported as described, as the CSS-OM provides a mechanism to do so. In implementations that do not support separate presentation values for general XML DOM properties, the implementation must at least restore the original value when animations no longer have an effect.
The rest of this discussion assumes the recommended approach using a separate presentation value.
The model accounting for the OM and concurrently active or frozen animations for a given attribute is described as a "sandwich", a loose analogy to the layers of meat and cheeses in a "submarine sandwich" (a long sandwich made with many pieces of meats and cheese layered along the length of the bread). In the analogy, time is associated with the length of the sandwich, and each animation has its duration represented by the length of bread that the layer covers. On the bottom of the sandwich is the base value taken from the OM. Each active (or frozen) animation is a layer above this. The layers (i.e. the animations) are placed on the sandwich both in time along the length of the bread, as well as in order according to priority, with higher priority animations placed above (i.e. on top of) lower priority animations. At any given point in time, you can take a slice of the sandwich and see how the animation layers stack up.
Note that animations manipulate the presentation value coming out of the OM in which the attribute is defined, and pass the resulting value on to the next layer of document processing. This does not replace or override any of the normal document OM processing cascade.
Specifically, animating an attribute defined in XML will modify the presentation value before it is passed through the style sheet cascade, using the XML DOM value as its base. Animating an attribute defined in a style sheet language will modify the presentation value passed through the remainder of the cascade.
In CSS2 and the DOM 2 CSS-OM, the terms "specified", "computed" and
"actual" are used to describe the results of evaluating the syntax, the
cascade and the presentation rendering. When animation is applied to CSS
properties of a particular element, the base value to be animated is read
using the (readonly) getComputedStyle()
method on that element.
The values produced by the animation are written into an override stylesheet
for that element, which may be obtained using the
getOverrideStyle()
method. These new values then affect the
cascade and are reflected in a new computed value (and thus, modified
presentation). This means that the effect of animation overrides all style
sheet rules, except for user rules with the !important
property.
This enables !important
user style settings to have priority
over animations, an important requirement for accessibility. Note that the
animation may have side effects upon the document layout. See also section
6.1, "Specified, computed, and actual values," of [CSS2] and
section
5.2.1, "Override and computed style sheet," of [DOM2CSS].
Within an OM, animations are prioritized according to when each begins. The animation first begun has lowest priority and the most recently begun animation has highest priority. When two animations start at the same moment in time, the activation order is resolved as follows:
Note that if an animation is restarted (see also Restarting animations), it will always move to the top of the priority list, as it becomes the most recently activated animation. That is, when an animation restarts, its layer is pulled out of the sandwich, and added back on the very top. In contrast, when an element repeats the priority is not affected (repeat behavior is not defined as restarting).
Each additive animation adds its effect to the result of all sandwich layers below. A non-additive animation simply overrides the result of all lower sandwich layers. The end result at the top of the sandwich is the presentation value that must be reflected in the document view.
Some attributes that support additive animation have a defined legal range for values (e.g. an opacity attribute may allow values between 0 and 1). In some cases, an animation function may yield out of range values. It is recommended that implementations clamp the results to the legal range as late as possible, before applying them to the presentation value. Ideally, the effect of all the animations active or frozen at a given point should be combined, before any clamping is performed. Although individual animation functions may yield out of range values, the combination of additive animations may still be legal. Clamping only the final result and not the effect of the individual animation functions provides support for these cases. Intermediate results may be clamped when necessary although this is not optimal. The host language must define the clamping semantics for each attribute that can be animated. As an example, this is defined for animateColor element.
Initially, before any animations for a given attribute are active, the presentation value will be identical to the original value specified in the document (the OM value).
When all animations for a given attribute have completed and the
associated animation effects are no longer applied, the presentation value
will again be equal to the OM value. Note that if any animation is defined
with fill="freeze"
, the
effect of the animation will be applied as long as the animation element
remains in the frozen state, and so the presentation value will continue to
reflect the animation effect. Refer also to the section "Freezing animations".
Some animations (e.g. animateMotion) will implicitly target an attribute, or possibly several attributes (e.g. the "posX" and "posY" attributes of some layout model). These animations must be combined with any other animations for each attribute that is affected. Thus, e.g. an animateMotion animation may be in more than one animation sandwich (depending upon the layout model of the host language). For animation elements that implicitly target attributes, the host language designer must specify which attributes are implicitly targeted, and the runtime must accordingly combine animations for the respective attributes.
Note that any queries (via DOM interfaces) on the target attribute will reflect the OM value, and will not reflect the effect of animations. Note also that the OM value may still be changed via the OM interfaces (e.g. using script). While it may be useful or desired to provide access to the final presentation value after all animation effects have been applied, such an interface is not provided as part of SMIL Animation. A future version may address this.
Although animation does not manipulate the OM values, the document display must reflect changes to the OM values. Host languages can support script languages that can manipulate attribute values directly in the OM. If an animation is active or frozen while a change to the OM value is made, the behavior is dependent upon whether the animation is defined to be additive or not, as follows: (see also the section Additive animation).
Within the timing model, animation is considered to be "continuous" media. The animation elements defined in SMIL Animation do not have a natural intrinsic duration, so they are assigned an intrinsic duration of indefinite.
This has several consequences, which are noted in various sections below. In particular, most animation elements will have an explicit duration set with the dur attribute, since a finite, known duration is required for interpolation.
As described above, the simple animation function
f(t)
defines the animation for the simple
duration d
. However, SMIL Timing allows the
author to repeat the simple duration. SMIL Timing also allows authors to
specify whether the animation should simply end when the active duration
completes, or whether it should be frozen at the last value. SMIL
Animation specifies what it means for an animation to be frozen. In
addition, the author can specify how each animation should be combined with
other animations and the original DOM value.
This section describes the semantics for the additional functionality, including a detailed model for combining animations. This is presented as a sequence of functions building on the simple animation function:
fr(t)
, defines the effect of
repeating an animation element.fc(t)
, defines the effect of
accumulating values from one iteration to the next of a repeated
animation element.ff(t)
, includes the effect of
freezing an animation element at the end of its active duration.F(t,u)
, defines how a an animation element
depends on the underlying value u
of the
target attribute.Since these functions describe the animation outside of the simple
duration, they are defined for any time t
:
0<=t<AD
. The frozen animation function
ff(t)
,is additionally defined for
t=AD, to account for the case when the element is frozen.
As described in the section Interval timing
of the BasicInlineTiming module, repeating an element causes the element to
be "played" several times in sequence. The repeated period is 0 to the simple
duration of the element. Animation follows this model, where "playing" the
animation means applying the simple animation function
f(t)
repeatedly.
Normative
The repeated animation function,
fr(t)
, for any simple animation functionf(t)
is
fr(t) = f( REMAINDER( t, d ) )
,where
t>=0
,d
is the simple duration , andREMAINDER( t, d )
is defined as(t - d*floor(t/d))
.
This formulation follows the end-point exclusive model described in Interval timing.
As an animation repeats, it starts at f(0)
, is
sampled and applied up to but not including the end-point
f(d)
. At the end of the simple duration, i.e.
at the beginning of the next iteration, it starts back at
f(0)
. f(d)
may
never actually be applied.
In the following example, the 2.5 second animation function will be repeated twice; the active duration will be 5 seconds. The attribute top will go from 0 to (almost) 10, return to 0 at 2.5 seconds, and repeat.
<animate attributeName="top" from="0" to="10"
dur="2.5s"
repeatCount="2" />
In the following example, the animation function will be repeated two full times and then the first half is repeated once more; the active duration will be 7.5 seconds.
<animate attributeName="top" from="0" to="10"
dur="3s"
repeatCount="2.5" />
In the following example, the animation function will repeat for a total of 7 seconds. It will play fully two times, followed by a fractional part of 2 seconds. This is equivalent to a repeatCount of 2.8. The last (partial) iteration will apply values in the range "0" to "8".
<animate attributeName="top" from="0"
to="10" dur="2.5s"
repeatDur="7s" />
In the following example, the simple duration is longer than the duration specified by repeatDur, and so the active duration will effectively cut short the simple duration. However, animation function still uses the specified simple duration. The effect of the animation is to interpolate the value of "top" from 10 to 15, over the course of 5 seconds.
<animate attributeName="top" from="10"
to="20"
dur="10s" repeatDur="5s" />
Note that if the simple duration is not defined (e.g. it is indefinite),
repeat behavior is not defined (but repeatDur still defines the active
duration). In the following example the simple duration is indefinite, and so
the repeatCount is effectively
ignored. Nevertheless, this is not considered an error: the active duration
is also indefinite. The effect of the animation is to to just use the value
for f(0)
, setting the fill color to red for
the remainder of the animate element's duration.
<animate attributeName="fill" from="red" to="blue" repeatCount="2" />
In the following example, the simple duration is indefinite, but the repeatDur still determines the active duration. The effect of the animation is to set the fill color to red for 10 seconds.
<animate attributeName="fill" from="red" to="blue" repeatDur="10s" />
In the following example, the simple duration is longer than the duration specified by repeatDur, and so the active duration will effectively cut short the simple duration. However, the animation function still interpolates using the specified simple duration. The effect of the animation is to interpolate the value of "top" from 10 to 17, over the course of 7 seconds.
<animate attributeName="top" from="10"
to="20"
dur="10s" repeatDur="7s" />
The author may also select whether a repeating animation should repeat the original behavior for each iteration, or whether it should build upon the previous results, accumulating with each iteration. For example, a motion path that describes an arc can repeat by moving along the same arc over and over again, or it can begin each repeat iteration where the last left off, making the animated element bounce across the window. This is called cumulative animation.
Normative
Every animation element must be defined as either cumulative or non-cumulative. An animation element may be defined as cumulative only if addition is defined for the target attribute. The cumulative animation function,
fc(t)
, for any simple animation functionf(t)
is
fc(t) = fr(t)
, if the element is non-cumulative.If the element is cumulative:
Letfi(t)
represent the cumulative animation function for a given iterationi
.The first iteration
f0(t)
is unaffected by accumulate, and so is the same as the original simple animation function definition. Each subsequent iteration adds to the result of the previous iterations:f0(t) = f(t)
fi(t) = (f(d) * i) + f(t - (i*d))
for any integeri > 0
.The cumulative animation function is then
fc(t) = fi(t)
, wherei = floor(t/d)
.
Note that fi+1(t)
starts at
f(d)*i + f(0)
. To avoid jumps, authors will
typically choose animation functions which start at 0.
For example, the path notation for a simple arc (detailed in The animateMotion element) can be used to describe a bouncing motion:
<img ...> <animateMotion path="m 0 0 c 30 50 70 50 100 0 z" dur="5s" accumulate="sum" repeatCount="4" /> </img>
The image moves from the original position along the arc over the course of 5 seconds. As the animation repeats, it builds upon the previous value and begins the second arc where the first one ended, as illustrated in Figure 1, below. In this way, the image "bounces" across the screen. The same animation could be described as a complete path of 4 arcs, but in the general case the path description can get quite large and cumbersome to edit.
Figure 1 - Illustration of repeating animation with
accumulate="sum"
.
Figure 1 - A cumulative repeating animation. Each repeat iteration builds upon the previous.
Note that cumulative animation only controls how a single animation accumulates the results of the simple animation function as it repeats. It specifically does not control how one animation interacts with other animations to produce a presentation value. This latter behavior is described in the section Additive animation. Similarly, if an element restarts, the accumulate from the first run is not applied to the second. See Restarting animations.
Any numeric attribute that supports addition can support cumulative
animation. For example, we can define a "pulsing" animation that will grow
the "width" of an SVG <rect>
element by 100 pixels in 50
seconds.
<rect width="20px"...> <animate attributeName="width" dur="5s" values="0; 15; 10" additive="sum" accumulate="sum" repeatCount="10" /> </rect>
Each simple duration causes the rectangle width to bulge by 15 pixels and end up 10 pixels larger. The shape is 20 pixels wide at the beginning, and after 5 seconds is 30 pixels wide. The animation repeats, and builds upon the previous values. The shape will bulge to 45 pixels and then end up 40 pixels wide after 10 seconds, and will eventually end up 120 (20 + 100) pixels wide after all 10 repeats.
Animation elements follow the definition of fill in the Timing module. This section extends that specification to cover animation-specific semantics.
By default when an animation element ends, its effect is no longer applied to the presentation value for the target attribute. For example, if an animation moves an image and the animation element ends, the image will "jump back" to its original position.
<img top="3" ...> <animate begin="5s" dur="10s" attributeName="top" by="100"/> </img>
As shown in Figure 2, the image will appear stationary at the top value of
"3" for 5 seconds, then move 100 pixels down in 10 seconds. 15 seconds after
the document begin, the animation ends, the effect is no longer applied, and
the image jumps back from 103 to 3 where it started (i.e. to the underlying
DOM value of the top
attribute).
Figure 2 - Illustration of animation without freezing.
Figure 2 - Simple animation without freezing. After the animate element ends, the effect of the animation is removed.
The fill attribute can be used to maintain the value of the animation after the active duration of the animation element ends:
<img top="3" ...> <animate begin= "5s" dur="10s" attributeName="top" by="100" fill="freeze" /> </img>
The animation ends 15 seconds after the document begin, but the image remains at the top value of 103 (Figure 3). The attribute freezes the last value of the animation for the duration of the freeze effect. This duration is controlled by the time container (for details, see SMIL Timing and Synchronization).
Figure 3 - Illustration of animation with fill="freeze"
.
Figure 3 - Simple frozen animation. After the
animate element ends, the effect of the animation is retained.
If the active duration cuts short the simple duration (including the case of partial repeats), the effect value of a frozen animation is defined by the shortened simple duration. In the following example, the simple animation function repeats two full times and then again for one-half of the simple duration. In this case, the value while frozen will be 53:
<img top="3" ...> <animate begin= "5s" dur="10s" attributeName="top" by="100" repeatCount="2.5" fill="freeze" /> </img>
Figure 4 - Illustration of animation combining a partial
repeat
and fill="freeze"
.
In the following example, the dur
attribute is missing, and so the simple duration is indefinite. The active
duration is constrained by end to be 10
seconds. Interpolation is not defined, and the value while frozen
will be the from
value,
10:
<animate from="10" to="20" end="10s" fill="freeze" .../>
Stating this formally:
Normative
The frozen animation function,
ff(t)
, for an element with active durationAD
, is given byff(t) = fc(t)
for all timest
:0<=t<AD
(i.e. before it is frozen)When the element is frozen,
t
is effectively equal toAD
.The following equations assume that
t
is set toAD
when the element is frozen.If
AD
is not an even multiple of the simple duration d,ff(t) = fi(t)
, wherei = floor(t/d)
.This is equivalent to
fc(t)
, except thatfc(t)
is not formally defined fort=AD
. In this case, the equations remain consistent, and so the equivalent offc(t)
is used for the frozen valueff(t)
.If
AD
is an even multiple ofd
, i.e.AD = d*i
for some positive integeri
, and the animation is non-cumulative,.
ff(t) = f(d)If
AD
is an even multiple of d, i.e.AD = d*i
for some positive integeri
, and the animation is cumulative,
ff(t) = f(d) * i
.Note that
f(d)
is a shorthand for the "last value defined for the animation function" (e.g., the "to" value or the last value in the "values" list).
In addition to repeating and accumulating values of a single animation, an
animation may be expressed as a delta to an attribute's value, rather than as
an absolute value. This can be used in a single animation to modify the
underlying DOM value, or complex animations can be produced by combining
several simple ones.
For example, a simple "grow" animation can increase the width of an object
by 10 pixels:
<rect width="20px" ...> <animate attributeName="width" from="0px" to="10px" dur="10s" additive="sum"/> </rect>
The width begins at 20 pixels, and increases to 30 pixels over the course of 10 seconds. If the animation were declared to be non-additive, the same from and to values would make the width go from 0 to 10 pixels over 10 seconds.
Many complex animations are best expressed as combinations of simpler animations. A "vibrating" path, for example, can be described as a repeating up and down motion added to any other motion:
<img ...> <animateMotion from="0,0" to="100,0" dur="10s" /> <animateMotion values="0,0; 0,5; 0,0" dur="1s" repeatDur="10s" additive="sum"/> </img>
The animation effect function, captures the
semantics of this for a single animation element:
Normative
Every animation element must be defined as either additive or non-additive. An element may be defined as additive only if addition is defined for type type of the target attribute.
If the animation is additive,
F(t,u) = u + ff(t)
.
If the animation is non-additive,
F(t,u) = ff(t)
.
When there are multiple animations defined for a given attribute that overlap at any moment, the two either add together or one overrides the other. Animations overlap when they are both either active or frozen at the same moment. The ordering of animations (e.g. which animation overrides which) is determined by a priority associated with each animation. The animations are prioritized according to when each begins. The animation first begun has lowest priority and the most recently begun animation has highest priority.
Higher priority animations that are not additive will override all earlier (lower priority) animations, and simply set the attribute value. Animations that are additive apply (i.e. add to) to the result of the earlier-activated animations. For details on how animations are combined, see The animation sandwich model.
Additive animation is defined for numeric attributes and other data types for which an addition function is defined. This includes numeric attributes for concepts such as position, widths and heights, sizes, etc. This also includes color (refer to The animateColor element), and may include other data types as specified by the host language.
It is often useful to combine additive animations and fill behavior, for example when a series of motions are defined that should build upon one another:
<img ...> <animateMotion begin="0" dur="5s" path="[some path]" additive="sum" fill="freeze" /> <animateMotion begin="5s" dur="5s" path="[some path]" additive="sum" fill="freeze" /> <animateMotion begin="10s" dur="5s" path="[some path]" additive="sum" fill="freeze" /> </img>
The image moves along the first path, and then starts the second path from the end of the first, then follows the third path from the end of the second, and stays at the final point.
While many animations of numerical attributes will be additive, this is not always the case. As an example of an animation that is defined to be non-additive, consider a hypothetical extension animation "mouseFollow" that causes an object to track the mouse.
<img ...> <animateMotion dur="10s" repeatDur="indefinite" path="[some nice path]" /> <mouseFollow begin="mouseover" dur="5s" additive="replace" fill="remove" /> </img>
The mouse-tracking animation runs for 5 seconds every time the user mouses
over the image. It cannot be additive, or it will just offset the motion path
in some odd way. The mouseFollow
needs to override the animateMotion while it is active.
When the mouseFollow
completes, its effect is no longer applied
and the animateMotion again
controls the presentation value for position.
In addition, some numeric attributes (e.g. a telephone number attribute) may not sensibly support addition. It is left to the host language to specify which attributes support additive animation. Attribute types for which addition is not defined, such as strings and Booleans, cannot support additive animation.
The accumulate attribute should not be confused with the additive attribute. The additive attribute defines how an animation is combined with other animations and the base value of the attribute. The accumulate attribute defines only how the simple animation function interacts with itself, across repeat iterations.
Typically, authors expect cumulative animations to be additive (as in the examples described for accumulate above), but this is not required. The following example is cumulative but not additive.
<img ...> <animate dur="10s" repeatDur="indefinite" attributeName="top" from="20" by="10" additive="replace" accumulate="sum" /> </img>
The animation overrides whatever original value was set for "top", and begins at the value 20. It moves down by 10 pixels to 30, then repeats. It is cumulative, so the second iteration starts at 50 (the value of 30 from the previous iteration plus the from value, 20) and moves down by another 10 to 60, and so on.
When a cumulative animation is also defined to be additive, the two
features function normally. The accumulated effect for
F(t,u)
is used as the value for the animation,
and is added to the underlying value for the target attribute. For
example:
<img top="10" ... > <animate dur="10s" repeatdur="indefinite" attributename="top" from="20" by="10" additive="sum" accumulate="sum" /> </img>
The animation adds to the original value of 10 that was set for "top", and begins at the value 30. It moves down by 10 pixels to 40, then repeats. It is cumulative, so the second iteration starts at 60 (the value of 40 from the previous iteration plus 20) and moves down by another 10 to 70, and so on.
Refer also to The animation sandwich model.
Animation elements follow the definition of restart in the SMIL Timing module. This section is descriptive.
When an animation restarts, the defining semantic is that it behaves as
though this were the first time the animation had begun, independent of any
earlier behavior. The animation effect function
F(t,u)
is defined independent of the restart
behavior. Any effect of an animation playing earlier is no longer applied,
and only the current animation effect F(t,u)
is
applied.
If an additive animation is restarted while it is active or frozen, the
previous effect of the animation (i.e. before the restart) is no longer
applied to the attribute. Note in particular that cumulative animation is
defined only within the active duration of an animation. When an animation
restarts, all accumulated context is discarded, and the animation effect
F(t,u)
begins accumulating again from the first
iteration of the restarted active duration.
Many animations specify the simple animation function
f(t)
as a sequence of values to be applied over
time. For some types of attributes (e.g. numbers), it is also possible to
describe an interpolation function between values.
As a simple form of describing the values, animation elements can specify a from value and a to value. If the attribute takes values that support interpolation (e.g. a number), the simple animation function can interpolate values in the range defined by from and to, over the course of the simple duration. A variant on this uses a by value in place of the to value, to indicate an additive change to the attribute.
More complex forms specify a list of values, or even a path description for motion. Authors can also control the timing of the values, to describe "keyframe" animations, and even more complex functions.
In all cases, the animation effect function,
F(t,u)
, must yield legal values for the target
attribute. Three classes of values are described:
The animate element can interpolate unitless scalar values, and both animate and set elements can handle String values without any semantic knowledge of the target element or attribute. The animate and set elements must support unitless scalar values and string values. The host language must define which additional language abstract values should be handled by these elements. Note that the animateColor element implicitly handles the abstract values for color values, and that the animateMotion element implicitly handles position and path values.
In order to support interpolation on attributes that define numeric values with some sort of units or qualifiers (e.g. "10px", "2.3feet", "$2.99"), some additional support is required to parse and interpolate these values. One possibility is to require that the animation framework have built-in knowledge of the unit-qualified value types. However, this violates the principle of encapsulation and does not scale beyond CSS to XML languages that define new attribute value types of this form.
The recommended approach is for the animation implementation for a given host environment to support two interfaces that abstract the handling of the language abstract values. These interfaces are not formally specified, but are simply described as follows:
Support for these two interfaces ensures that an animation engine need not replicate the parser and any additional semantic logic associated with language abstract values.
This is not an attempt to specify how an implementation provides this support, but rather a requirement for how values are interpreted. Animation behaviors should not have to understand and be able to convert among all the CSS-length units, for example. In addition, this mechanism allows for application of animation to new XML languages, if the implementation for a language can provide parsing and conversion support for attribute values.
The above recommendations notwithstanding, it is sometimes useful to interpolate values in a specific unit-space, and to apply the result using the specified units rather than canonical units. This is especially true for certain relative units such as those defined by CSS (e.g. em units). If an animation specifies all the values in the same units, an implementation may use knowledge of the associated syntax to interpolate in the unit space, and apply the result within the animation sandwich, in terms of the specified units rather than canonical units. As noted above, this solution does not scale well to the general case. Nevertheless, in certain applications (such as CSS properties), it may be desirable to take this approach.
If the simple duration of an animation is indefinite (e.g. if no dur value is specified), interpolation is not
generally meaningful. While it is possible to define an animation function
that is not based upon a defined simple duration (e.g. some random number
algorithm), most animations define the function in terms of the simple
duration. If an animation function is defined in terms of the simple duration
and the simple duration is indefinite, the first value of the animation
function (i.e. f(0)
) should be used
(effectively as a constant) for the animation function.
The SMIL 2.1 BasicAnimation module provides
The BasicAnimation module defines attributes and elements following the model presented in the Animation Model section.
The elements of the BasicAnimation module have in common the attributes used to identify the target attribute and, less universally, the attributes by which the animation functions are specified.
The animation target is defined as a specific attribute of a particular element. The means of specifying the target attribute and the target element are detailed in this section.
The target attribute to be animated is specified with attributeName. The value of this attribute is a string that specifies the name of the target attribute, as defined in the host language.
The attributes of an element that can be animated are often defined by different languages, and/or in different namespaces. For example, in many XML applications, the position of an element (which is a typical target attribute) is defined as a CSS property rather than as XML attributes. In some cases, the same attribute name is associated with attributes or properties in more than one language, or namespace. To allow the author to disambiguate the name mapping, an additional attribute attributeType is provided that specifies the intended namespace.
The attributeType attribute is optional. By default, the animation runtime will resolve the names according to the following rule: If there is a name conflict and attributeType is not specified, the list of CSS properties supported by the host language is matched first (if CSS is supported in the host language); if no CSS match is made (or CSS does not apply) the per-element-type partition namespace for the target element will be matched.
If a target attribute is defined in an XML Namespace other than the per-element-type partition namespace for the target element, the author must specify the namespace of the target attribute using the associated namespace prefix as defined in the scope of the animation element. The prefix is prepended to the value for attributeName.
For more information on XML namespaces, see [XML-NS].
An animation element can define the target element of the animation either explicitly or implicitly. An explicit definition uses an attribute to specify the target element. The syntax for this is described below.
If no explicit target is specified, the implicit target element is the parent element of the animation element in the document tree. It is expected that the common case will be that an animation element is declared as a child of the element to be animated. In this case, no explicit target need be specified.
If an explicit target element reference cannot be resolved (e.g. if no such element can be found), the animation has no effect. In addition, if the target element (either implicit or explicit) does not support the specified target attribute, the animation has no effect. See also Handling syntax errors.
The following two attributes can be used to identify the target element explicitly:
When integrating animation elements into the host language, the language designer should avoid including both of these attributes. If however, the host language designer chooses to include both attributes in the host language, then when both are specified for a given animation element the XLink href attribute takes precedence over the targetElement attribute.
The advantage of using the targetElement attribute is the simpler syntax of the attribute value compared to the href attribute. The advantage of using the XLink href attribute is that it is extensible to a full linking mechanism in future versions of SMIL Animation, and the animation element can be processed by generic XLink processors. The XLink form is also provided for host languages that are designed to use XLink for all such references. The following two examples illustrate the two approaches.
This example uses the simpler targetElement syntax:
<animate targetElement="foo" attributeName="bar" .../>
This example uses the more flexible XLink locater syntax, with the equivalent target:
<foo xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> ... <animate xlink:href="#foo" attributeName="bar" .../> ... </foo>
When using an XLink href attribute on an animation element, the following additional XLink attributes need to be defined in the host language. These may be defined in a DTD, or the host language may require these in the document syntax to support generic XLink processors. For more information, refer to [XLINK].
The following XLink attributes are required by the XLink specification. The values are fixed, and so may be specified as such in a DTD. All other XLink attributes are optional, and do not affect SMIL Animation semantics.
Additional details on the target element specification as relates to the host document and language are described in Required definitions and constraints on animation targets.
Every animation function defines the value of the attribute at a particular moment in time. The time range for which the animation function is defined is the simple duration. The animation function does not produce defined results for times outside the range of 0 to the simple duration.
An animation is described either as a list of values, or in a simplified form that describes the from, to and by values. The from/to/by form is defined in Simple animation functions defined by from, to and by.
If any values are not legal, the animation will have no effect (see also Handling Syntax Errors).
The animation will apply the values in order over the course of the animation. For discrete and linear animations, values in the values attribute are equally spaced through the animation duration. For paced animations, the values are spaced so that a uniform rate of change is obtained.
The following example using the values syntax animates the width of an SVG shape over the course of 10 seconds, interpolating from a width of 40 to a width of 100 and back to 40.
<rect ...> <animate attributeName="width" values="40;100;40" dur="10s"/> </rect>
The simple animation function for this example (with time in seconds) is
f(t) = 40 + 60*t/5, 0 <= t < 5,
and
f(t) = 100 - 60*(t-5)/5, 5 <= t <= 10
.
The simple animation function defined by the values and calcMode attributes can be formally specified:
Normative
Let i =
floor((t*n)/d)
, d
be the simple
duration of the animation element, n
be the
number of entries in the values attribute,
value[i]
be the
ith
entry (counting from 0),
di
be the duration of the the
ith
time period, and
ti
be the time at which the the
ith
time period begins.
n
equal time periods, one per value. With a
keyTimes attribute, the time periods are specified by the keyTimes
values. The animation function takes on the values in order, one value
for each time period:
f(t) = value[i]
n-1
equal periods, and
di = d/(n-1)
for any value of
i
. The animation function is a linear
interpolation between the values at the associated times:
f(t) = value[i] +
(value[i+1]-value[i]) *
(t-ti)/di
.
With a keyTimes attribute, the time periods are specified by the
keyTimes values and so di
is the
duration of the ith
period as
defined by the keyTimes values:
di = (keyTimes[i+1] - keyTimes[i]) *
d
dist(v1,v2)
, the
total distance traversed D(i)
up to and
including value[i]
is
D(0) = 0
, and
D(i) = dist(value[0],value[1]) + dist(value[1],value[2]) +...+ dist(value[i-1],value[i])
, for integersi
with0<i<=n
.
The animation function takes on the values in the values attribute at times determined by these distances:
ti = (D(i)/D(n)) *
d, for integers
i
with
0<=i<=n
.
di = ti+1 - ti =
((D(i+1) - D(i)) / D(n)) * d = (dist(value[i],value[i+1]) / D(n)) *
d
f(t) = value[i] +
(value[i+1]-value[i]) * (t-ti)/
di
where i
is the largest
non-negative integer such that
ti<=t
.
Note that a linear or paced animation will be a smoothly closed loop if the first value is repeated as the last. The keyTimes attribute is described in the SplineAnimation section.
The three figures 5a, 5b and 5c below show how the same basic animation will change a value over time, given different interpolation modes. All examples are based upon the following example, but with different values for calcMode:
<animate dur="30s" values="0; 6; 5; 11; 10; 16" calcMode="[as specified]" />
Figure 5 - Discrete, linear and paced animation
![]() |
Figure 5a: Default discrete animation. |
![]() |
Figure 5b: Default linear animation. |
![]() |
Figure 5c: Default paced animation. |
The following example describes a simple discrete animation:
<animate attributeName="foo" dur="8s" values="bar; fun; far; boo" />
The value of the attribute "foo" will be set to each of the four strings for 2 seconds each. Because the string values cannot be interpolated, only discrete animation is possible; any calcMode attribute would be ignored.
The following example describes a simple linear animation:
<animate attributeName="x" dur="10s" values="0; 10; 100" calcMode="linear"/>
The value of "x" will change from 0 to 10 in the first 5 seconds, and then from 10 to 100 in the second 5 seconds. Note that the values in the values attribute are spaced evenly in time; in this case the result is a much larger actual change in the value during the second half of the animation. Contrast this with the same example changed to use "paced" interpolation:
<animate attributeName="x" dur="10s" values="0; 10; 100" calcMode="paced"/>
To produce an even pace of change to the attribute "x", the second segment defined by the values list gets most of the simple duration: The value of "x" will change from 0 to 10 in the first second, and then from 10 to 100 in the next 9 seconds. While this example could be easily authored as a from-to animation without paced interpolation, many examples (such as motion paths) are much harder to author without the paced value for calcMode.
As described in The animation effect function F(t,u), the simple animation function may be
The animation effect function F(t,u) defines the semantics of these attributes, and give examples. This section gives only the syntax.
See the BasicInlineTiming module for definitions of the attributes repeatCount, repeatDur and fill.
The additive and cumulative behavior of repeating animations is controlled with the additive and accumulate attributes, respectively:
f(t)
. An animation is described either as a list of values, as described earlier, or in a simplified form that uses from, to and by values.
The simpler from/to/by syntax provides for several variants. To use one of these variants, one of by or to must be specified; a from value is optional. It is not legal to specify both by and to attributes; if both are specified, only the to attribute will be used (the by will be ignored). The combinations of attributes yield the following classes of animation.
from
value and a to
value
defines a simple animation. The animation function is defined to start
with the from
value, and to finish with the
to
value.from
value vf
and a
to
value vt
is equivalent to the
same animation with a values
list with 2 values,
vf
and vt
.from
value and a by
value
defines a simple animation in which the animation function is defined
to start with the from
value, and to change this over the
course of the simple duration by a delta specified with the
by
attribute. This may only be used with attributes that
support addition (e.g. most numeric attributes).from
value vf
and a
by
value vb
is equivalent to the
same animation with a values
list with 2 values,
vf
and
(vf+vb)
.by
attribute. This may only be used
with attributes that support additive animation.by
value vb
is equivalent to the same animation
with a values
list with 2 values,
0
and vb
, and
additive="sum"
. Any other specification of the
additive
attribute in a by animation is
ignored.to
attribute.
Using this form, an author can describe an animation that will start
with any current value for the attribute, and will end up at the
desired to
value. Examples
The following "from-to animation" example animates the width of an SVG shape over the course of 10 seconds from a width of 50 to a width of 100.
<rect ...> <animate attributeName="width" from="50" to="100" dur="10s"/> </rect>
The following "from-by animation" example animates the width of an SVG shape over the course of 10 seconds from a width of 50 to a width of 75.
<rect ...> <animate attributeName="width" from="50" by="25" dur="10s"/> </rect>
The following "by animation" example animates the width of an SVG shape over the course of 10 seconds from the original width of 40 to a width of 70.
<rect width="40"...> <animate attributeName="width" by="30" dur="10s"/> </rect>
From-to and from-by animations also support cumulative animation, as in the following example:
<rect width="20px"...> <animate attributeName="width" dur="5s" from="10px" to="20px" accumulate="sum" repeatCount="10" /> </rect>
The rectangle will grow from 10 to 20 pixels in the first 5 seconds, and then from 20 to 30 in the next 5 seconds, and so on up to 110 pixels after 10 repeats. Note that since the default value for additive is replace, the original value is ignored. The following example makes the animation explicitly additive:
<rect width="20px"...> <animate attributeName="width" dur="5s" from="10px" to="20px" accumulate="sum" additive="sum" repeatCount="10" /> </rect>
The results are the same as before, except that all the values are shifted up by the original value of 20. The rectangle is 30 pixels wide after 5 seconds, and 130 pixels wide after 10 repeats.
A to animation of an attribute which supports addition is a kind of mix of additive and non-additive animation. The underlying value is used as a starting point as with additive animation, however the ending value specified by the to attribute overrides the underlying value as though the animation was non-additive.
The following "to animation" example animates the width of an SVG shape over the course of 10 seconds from the original width of 40 to a width of 100.
<rect width="40"...> <animate attributeName="width" to="100" dur="10s"/> </rect>
Since a to animation has only 1 value, a discrete to animation will simply set the to value for the simple duration. In the following example, the rect will be blue for the 10 second duration of the animate element.
<rect color="red"...> <animate attributeName="color" to="blue" dur="10s" calcMode="discrete"/> </rect>
The semantics of to animation fit into the general animation model, but with a few special cases. The normative definition given here parallels the definition for other types of animation presented in the Animation Model section.
Normative
The simple animation function
f(t,u)
for a to animation withto
valuevt
is a linear interpolation between the underlying value,u
, and theto
value:
f(t,u) = (u * (d-t)/d) + (vt * t/d)
, fort
:0<=t<=d
whered
is the simple duration.
If no other (lower priority) animations are active or frozen, this defines
simple interpolation. However if another animation is manipulating the
underlying value, the to animation will initially add to the effect
of the lower priority animation, and increasingly dominate it as it nears the
end of the simple duration, eventually overriding it completely. The value
for f(t,u)
at the end of the simple duration is
just the to
value.
Repeating to animations is the same as repeating other animations:
Normative
The repeated animation function,fr(t,u)
, has the standard definition:fr(t,u) = f( REMAINDER(t,d), u )
.
Because to animation is defined in terms of absolute values of the target attribute, cumulative animation is not defined:
Normative
The cumulative animation function,fc(t)
, for a to animation isfc(t,u) =
fr(t,u)
.
A frozen to animation takes on the value at the time it is
frozen, masking further changes in the underlying value. This matches the
dominance of the to
value at the end of the simple duration.
Even if other, lower priority animations are active while a to
animation is frozen, the value does not change.
Normative
The frozen animation function,ff(t)
, for a to animation isff(t,u)
= fc(t,u)
, if the animation is not frozen at timet
, and
ff(t,u)
= vf
, if the animation is frozen at timet
, wherevf
is the value offf(t,u)
at the moment the animation was frozen.
For example, consider
<rect width="40"...> <animate attributeName="width" to="100" dur="10s" repeatCount="2.5" fill="freeze"/> </rect>
The width will animate from 40 to 100 pixels in the first 10 seconds, repeat 40 to 100 in the second 10 seconds, go from 40 to 70 in the final 5 seconds, and freeze at 70.
To animation defines its own kind of additive semantics, so the additive attribute is ignored.
Normative
The animation effect function,F(t,u)
for a to animation isF(t,u)
=
ff(t,u)
.
Multiple to animations will also combine according to these semantics. As the animation progresses, the higher-priority animation will have greater and greater effect, and the end result will be to set the attribute to the final value of the higher-priority to animation.
For an example of additive to animation, consider the following two additive animations. The first, a by-animation applies a delta to attribute "x" from 0 to -10. The second, a to animation animates to a final value of 10.
<foo x="0" ...> <animate id="A1" attributeName="x" by="-10" dur="10s" fill="freeze" /> <animate id="A2" attributeName="x" to="10" dur="10s" fill="freeze" /> </foo>
The presentation value for "x" in the example above, over the course of
the 10 seconds is presented in Figure 6 below. These values are simply
computed using the formula described above. Note that the value for
F(t,u)
for A2 is the presentation value for
"x", since A2 is the higher-priority animation.
Figure 6 - Effect of Additive to animation example
Time F(t,u)
for A1F(t,u)
for A20 0 0 1 -1 0.1 2 -2 0.4 3 -3 0.9 4 -4 1.6 5 -5 2.5 6 -6 3.6 7 -7 4.9 8 -8 6.4 9 -9 8.1 10 -10 10
The SMIL BasicAnimation module defines four elements, animate, set, animateMotion and animateColor.
The animate element introduces a generic attribute animation that requires little or no semantic understanding of the attribute being animated. It can animate numeric scalars as well as numeric vectors. It can also animate a single non-numeric attribute through a discrete set of values. The animate element is an empty element; it cannot have child elements.
This element supports from/to/by and values descriptions for the animation function, as well as all of the calculation modes. It supports all the described timing attributes. These are all described in respective sections above.
Numerous examples are provided above, as are normative definitions of the semantics of all attributes supported by animate.
The set element provides a simple means of just setting the value of an attribute for a specified duration. As with all animation elements, this only manipulates the presentation value, and when the animation completes, the effect is no longer applied. That is, set does not permanently set the value of the attribute.
The set element supports all attribute types, including those that cannot reasonably be interpolated and that more sensibly support semantics of simply setting a value (e.g. strings and Boolean values). The set element is non-additive. The additive and accumulate attributes are not allowed, and will be ignored if specified.
The set element supports all the
timing attributes to specify the simple and active durations. However, the
repeatCount and repeatDur attributes will just affect
the active duration of the set,
extending the effect of the set (since
it is not really meaningful to "repeat" a static operation). Note that using
fill="freeze"
with set will have the same effect as defining the
timing so that the active duration is indefinite.
The set element supports a more restricted set of attributes than the animate element. Only one value is specified, and neither interpolation control nor additive or cumulative animation is supported:
Normative
The simple animation function defined by a set element isf(t) = v
were
v
is the value of theto
attribute.The set element is non-cumulative and non-additive.
Examples
The following changes the stroke-width of an SVG rectangle from the original value to 5 pixels wide. The effect begins at 5 seconds and lasts for 10 seconds, after which the original value is again used.
<rect ...> <set attributeName="stroke-width" to="5px" begin="5s" dur="10s" fill="remove" /> </rect>
The following example sets the class
attribute of the text
element to the string "highlight" when the mouse moves over the element, and
removes the effect when the mouse moves off the element.
<text>This will highlight if you mouse over it... <set attributeName="class" to="highlight" begin="mouseover" end="mouseout" /> </text>
The animateMotion element will move an element along a path. The element abstracts the notion of motion and position across a variety of layout mechanisms - the host language defines the layout model and must specify the precise semantics of position and motion. The path can be described in either of two ways:
All values must be x, y value pairs. Each x and y value may specify any units supported for element positioning by the host language. The host language defines the default units. In addition, the host language defines the reference point for positioning an element. This is the point within the element that is aligned to the position described by the motion animation. The reference point defaults in some languages to the upper left corner of the element bounding box; in other languages the reference point may be implicit, or may be specified for an element.
The syntax for the x, y value pairs is:
coordinate-pair ::= "("coordinate comma-wsp coordinate")" coordinate ::= num num ::= Number
Coordinate values are separated by at least one white space character or a
comma. Additional white space around the separator is allowed. The values of
coordinate
must be defined as some sort of number in the host
language.
The attributeName and attributeType attributes are not used with animateMotion, as the manipulated position attribute(s) are defined by the host language. If the position is exposed as an attribute or attributes that can also be animated (e.g. as "top" and "left", or "posX" and "posY"), implementations must combine animateMotion animations with other animations that manipulate individual position attributes. See also The animation sandwich model.
If none of the from, to, by and values attributes are specified, the animation will have no effect.
The default calculation mode (calcMode) for animateMotion is paced. This will produce constant velocity motion along the specified path. Note that while animateMotion elements can be additive, the addition of two or more paced (constant velocity) animations may not result in a combined motion animation with constant velocity.
The use of linear for the calcMode with more than 2 points described in the values attribute may result in motion with varying velocity. The linear calcMode specifies that time is evenly divided among the segments defined by the values. The use of linear does not specify that time is divided evenly according to the distance described by each segment.
For motion with constant velocity, calcMode should be set to paced.
from="(-100,0)"
and to="(0,0)"
. Authors must be able
to describe motion both in this manner, as well as relative to the
container block. The origin
attribute supports this distinction. Nevertheless, because the host
language defines the layout model, the host language must also specify
the "default" behavior, as well as any additional attribute values that
are supported.The animateColor element specifies an animation of a color attribute. The host language must specify those attributes that describe color values and can support color animation.
All values must represent [sRGB] color values. Legal value syntax for attribute values is defined by the host language.
Interpolation is defined on a per-color-channel basis.
The values in the from/to/by and values attributes may specify negative and out of gamut values for colors. The function defined by an individual animateColor may yield negative or out of gamut values. The implementation must correct the resulting presentation value, to be legal for the destination (display) colorspace. However, as described in The animation sandwich model, the implementation should only correct the final combined result of all animations for a given attribute, and should not correct the effect of individual animations.
Values are corrected by "clamping" the values to the correct range. Values less than the minimum allowed value are clamped to the minimum value (commonly 0, but not necessarily so for some color profiles). Values greater than the defined maximum are clamped to the maximum value (defined by the host language) .
Note that color values are corrected by clamping them to the gamut of the destination (display) colorspace. Some implementations may be unable to process values which are outside the source (sRGB) colorspace and must thus perform clamping to the source colorspace, then convert to the destination colorspace and clamp to its gamut. The point is to distinguish between the source and destination gamuts; to clamp as late as possible, and to realize that some devices, such as inkjet printers which appear to be RGB devices, have non-cubical gamuts.
Note to implementers: When animateColor is specified as a to animation, the animation function should assume Euclidean RGB-cube distance where deltas must be computed. See also Specifying the simple animation function f(t) and Simple animation functions specified by from, to and by. Similarly, when the calcMode attribute for animateColor is set to paced, the animation function should assume Euclidean RGB-cube distance to compute the distance and pacing.
This section describes what a language designer must actually do to specify the integration of SMIL Animation into a host language. This includes basic definitions and constraints upon animation.
In addition to the requirements listed in this section, those listed in Common animation integration requirements must be satisfied.
The host language designer must choose whether to support the targetElement attribute or the XLink attributes for specifying the target element. Note that if the XLink syntax is used, the host language designer must decide how to denote the XLink namespace for the associated attributes. The namespace can be fixed in a DTD, or the language designer can require colonized attribute names (qnames) to denote the XLink namespace for the attributes. The required XLink attributes have fixed values, and so may also be specified in a DTD, or can be required on the animation elements. Host language designers may require that the optional XLink attributes be specified. These decisions are left to the host language designer - the syntax details for XLink attributes do not affect the semantics of SMIL Animation.
In general, target elements may be any element in the document. Host language designers must specify any exceptions to this. Host language designers are discouraged from allowing animation elements to target elements outside of the document in which the animation element is defined. The XLink syntax for the target element could allow this, but the SMIL timing and animation semantics of this are not defined in this version of SMIL Animation.
The definitions in this module can be used to animate any attribute of any
element in a host document. However, it is expected that host language
designers integrating SMIL Animation may choose to constrain which elements
and attributes can support animation. For example, a host language may choose
not to support animation of the language
attribute of a
script
element. A host language which included a specification
for DOM functionality might limit animation to the attributes which may
legally be modified through the DOM.
Any attribute of any element not specifically excluded from animation by the host language may be animated, as long as the underlying data type (as defined by the host language for the attribute) supports discrete values (for discrete animation) and/or addition (for interpolated, additive and cumulative animation).
All constraints upon animation must be described in the host language specification or in an appropriate schema, as the DTD alone cannot reasonably express this.
The host language must define which language abstract values should be handled for animated attributes. For example, a host language that incorporates CSS may require that CSS length values be supported. This is further detailed in Animation function value details.
The host language must specify the interpretation of relative values. For example, if a value is specified as a percentage of the size of a container, the host language must specify whether this value will be dynamically interpreted as the container size is animated.
The host language must specify the semantics of clamping values for attributes. The language must specify any defined ranges for values, and how out of range values will be handled.
The host language must specify the formats supported for numeric attribute values. This includes both integer values and floating point values. As a reasonable minimum, host language designers are encouraged to support the format described in section 4.3.1, "Integers and real numbers," of [CSS2].
The host language specification must define which elements can be the target of animateMotion. In addition, the host language specification must describe the positioning model for elements, and must describe the model for animateMotion in this context (i.e. the semantics of the default value for the origin attribute must be defined). If there are different ways to describe position, additional attribute values for the origin attribute should be defined to allow authors control over the positioning model.
See the full DTD for the SMIL Animation Modules.
This section defines the functionality of the SMIL 2.1 SplineAnimation module. This module adds attributes for spline interpolation and for uneven spacing of points in time. These attributes may be used in animate, animateMotion and animateColor elements.
The SplineAnimation module extends the discrete, linear and paced calculation modes of the BasicAnimation module, providing additional control over interpolation and timing:
The use of discrete for the calcMode together with a path specification is allowed, but will simply jump the target element from point to point. The times are derived from the points in the path specification, as described in the path attribute, immediately below.
If a list of keyTimes is specified, there must be exactly as many values in the keyTimes list as in the values list.
If no keyTimes attribute is specified, the simple duration is divided into equal segments as described in The simple animation function f(t).
Each successive time value must be greater than or equal to the preceding time value.
The keyTimes list semantics depends upon the interpolation mode:
If the interpolation mode is paced, the keyTimes attribute is ignored.
If there are any errors in the keyTimes specification (bad values, too many or too few values), the animation will have no effect.
If the simple duration is indefinite and the interpolation mode is
linear or spline, any keyTimes specification will be
ignored.
x1 y1
x2 y2
, describing the Bezier control points for one time
segment. The keyTimes values
that define the associated segment are the Bezier "anchor points", and
the keySplines values are
the control points. Thus, there must be one fewer sets of control
points the keySplines
attribute than there are keyTimes.
The values must all be in the range 0 to 1.
This attribute is ignored unless the calcMode is set to spline.
This semantic (the duration is divided into n-1
even periods)
applies as well when the keySplines attribute is specified, but
keyTimes is not. The times
associated to the keySplines
values are determined as described above.
The syntax for the control point sets in keySplines lists is:
control-pt-set ::= ( fpval comma-wsp fpval comma-wsp fpval comma-wsp fpval )
Using:
fpval ::= Floating point number S ::= spacechar* comma-wsp ::= S (spacechar|",") S spacechar ::= (#x20 | #x9 | #xD | #xA)
Control point values are separated by at least one white space character or a comma. Additional white space around the separator is allowed. The allowed syntax for floating point numbers must be defined in the host language.
If the argument values for keyTimes or keySplines are not legal (including too few or too many values for either attribute), the animation will have no effect (see also Handling syntax errors).
In the calcMode, keyTimes and keySplines attribute values, leading and trailing white space and white space before and after semicolon separators will be ignored.
Discrete animation can be used with keyTimes, as in the following example:
<animateColor attributeName="color" dur="10s" calcMode="discrete" values="green; yellow; red" keyTimes="0.0; 0.8;" />
This example also shows how keyTimes values can interact with an indefinite duration. The value of the "color" attribute will be set to green for 5 seconds, and then to yellow for 5 seconds, and then will remain red for the remainder of the document, since the (unspecified) duration defaults to "indefinite".
The following example illustrates the use of keyTimes:
<animate attributeName="x" dur="10s" values="0; 50; 100" keyTimes="0; .8; 1" calcMode="linear"/>
The keyTimes values cause the "x" attribute to have a value of "0" at the start of the animation, "50" after 8 seconds (at 80% into the simple duration) and "100" at the end of the animation. The value will change more slowly in the first half of the animation, and more quickly in the second half.
For some attributes, the pace of change may not be easily discernable by viewers. However for animations like motion, the ability to make the speed of the motion change gradually, and not in abrupt steps, can be important. The keySplines attribute provides this control.
Extending the above example to use keySplines:
<animate attributeName="x" dur="10s" values="0; 50; 100" keyTimes="0; .8; 1" calcMode="spline" keySplines=".5 0 .5 1; 0 0 1 1" />
The keyTimes still cause the "x" attribute to have a value of "0" at the start of the animation, "50" after 8 seconds and "100" at the end of the animation. However, the keySplines values define a curve for pacing the interpolation between values. In the example above, the spline causes an ease-in and ease-out effect between time 0 and 8 seconds (i.e. between keyTimes 0 and .8, and values "0" and "50"), but a strict linear interpolation between 8 seconds and the end (i.e. between keyTimes .8 and 1, and values "50" and "100"). Figure 7 shows the curves that these keySplines values define.
Figure 7 - Illustration of keySplines effect
![]()
keySplines="0 0 1 1"
(the default) |
![]()
keySplines=".5 0 .5 1"
|
||
![]()
keySplines="0 .75 .25 1"
|
![]()
keySplines="1 0 .25 .25"
|
Each diagram in Figure 7 illustrates the effect of keySplines settings for a single interval (i.e. between the associated pairs of values in the keyTimes and values lists.). The horizontal axis can be thought of as the input value for the unit progress of interpolation within the interval - i.e. the pace with which interpolation proceeds along the given interval. The vertical axis is the resulting value for the unit progress, yielded by the keySplines function. Another way of describing this is that the horizontal axis is the input unit time for the interval, and the vertical axis is the output unit time. See also the section Timing and real-world clock times.
To illustrate the calculations, consider the simple example:
<animate dur="4s" values="10; 20" keyTimes="0; 1" calcMode="spline" keySplines={as in table} />
Using the keySplines values for each of the four cases above, the approximate interpolated values as the animation proceeds are:
keySplines values | Initial value | After 1s | After 2s | After 3s | Final value |
0 0 1 1 | 10.0 | 12.5 | 15.0 | 17.5 | 20.0 |
.5 0 .5 1 | 10.0 | 11.0 | 15.0 | 19.0 | 20.0 |
0 .75 .25 1 | 10.0 | 18.0 | 19.3 | 19.8 | 20.0 |
1 0 .25 .25 | 10.0 | 10.1 | 10.6 | 16.9 | 20.0 |
For a formal definition of Bezier spline calculation, see [COMP-GRAPHICS], pages 488-491.
The keyTimes and keySplines attributes can also be used with the from/to/by shorthand forms for specifying values, as in the following example:
<animate attributeName="foo" from="10" to="20" dur="10s" keyTimes="0.0; 0.7" calcMode="spline" keySplines=".5 0 .5 1" />
The value will change from 10 to 20, using an "ease-in/ease-out" curve specified by the keySplines values. The keyTimes values cause the value of 20 to be reached at 7 seconds, and to hold there for the remainder of the 10 second simple duration.
The following example describes a somewhat unusual usage, a
from-to animation with discrete animation. The
stroke-linecap
attribute of SVG elements takes a string, and so
implies a calcMode of discrete. The animation will set the
stroke-linecap
attribute to round
for 5 seconds (half the simple duration) and then set the
stroke-linecap
to square for 5
seconds.
<rect stroke-linecap="butt"...> <animate attributeName="stroke-linecap" from="round" to="square" dur="10s"/> </rect>
The SplineAnimation module extends the BasicAnimation elements animate, animateMotion and animateColor, adding the attributes keyTimes and keySplines, and the value spline for the caclMode attribute.
The SplineAnimation module extends the animate element defined by the BasicAnimation module, adding the following attributes and values.
Examples are provided above, as are normative definitions of the semantics of all attributes supported by animate.
The SplineAnimation module extends the animateMotion element defined by the BasicAnimation module, adding the following attributes and values.
A path data segment must begin with either one of the "moveto" commands.
For all calcMode settings,
the definition of the simple animation function,
f(t)
, uses the number of values in the
values attribute to determine
how the simple duration is d
is divided
into segments. When a path
attribute is used, the number of values is defined to be the number of
points defined by the path, unless there are "move to" commands within
the path. A "move to" command does not define an additional "segment"
for the purposes of timing or interpolation. A "move to" command does
not count as an additional point when dividing up the duration. When a
path is combined with a paced calcMode setting, all "move to"
commands are considered to have 0 duration (i.e. they always happen
instantaneously), and should not be considered in computing the
pacing.
If the path attribute is is specified, any from/to/by or values attribute values will be ignored.
Examples are provided above, as are normative definitions of the semantics of all attributes supported by animate.
For complete velocity control, calcMode can be set to spline and the author can specify a velocity control spline with keyTimes and keySplines.
The SplineAnimation module extends the animateColor element defined by the BasicAnimation module, adding the following attributes and values.
To specify the integration of the SMIL 2.1 SplineAnimation module into a host language, the language designer must integrate SMIL 2.1 BasicAnimation into the language, satisfying all the requirements listed in BasicAnimation integration requirements.
In addition to integrating BasicAnimation, the requirements listed in Common animation integration requirements must be satisfied for the SplineAnimation module.
See the full DTD for the SMIL Animation Modules.
This section presents host-language-integration issues which are the same for the BasicAnimation and SplineAnimation modules.
The host language profile must integrate the SMIL 2.1 BasicInlineTiming module into the host language, satisfying all requirements of that module. In addition, all modules of the SMIL 2.1 Timing and Synchronization modules and of the SMIL 2.1 Time Manipulation modules which are integrated into the host language must be available on BasicAnimation elements.
In particular, the fill attribute is supported on animation elements only if the host language integrates the SMIL 2.1 BasicTimeContainers module in addition to the BasicInlineTiming module.
normative section
If the Eventbase-element term is missing, the event-base element is defined to be the target element of the animation.
The host langauge profile may add additional attributes to Animation elements. Attributes added to any Animation element must be added to all Animation elements. In particular, this module does not define an XML ID attribute. It is expected that the host language profile will add an XML ID attribute to the Animation elements.
Language designers integrating SMIL Animation are encouraged to define new animation elements where such additions will be of convenience to authors. The new elements must be based on SMIL Animation and SMIL Timing and Synchronization, and must stay within the framework provided by SMIL Timing and Synchronization and SMIL Animation.
Language designers are also encouraged to define support for additive and cumulative animation for non-numeric data types where addition can sensibly be defined.
Language designers integrating SMIL Animation are encouraged to disallow
manipulation of attributes of the animation elements after the document has
begun. This includes both the attributes specifying targets and values, as
well as the timing attributes. In particular, the id
attribute
(of type ID) on all animation elements must not be mutable (i.e. should be
read-only). Requiring animation runtimes to track changes to id
values introduces considerable complexity, for what is at best a questionable
feature.
It is recommended that language specifications disallow manipulation of animation element attributes through DOM interfaces after the document has begun. It is also recommended that language specifications disallow the use of animation elements to target other animation elements.
Note in particular that if the attributeName attribute can be changed (either by animation or script), problems may arise if the target attribute has a namespace qualified name. Current DOM specifications do not include a mechanism to handle this binding.
Dynamically changing the attribute values of animation elements introduces semantic complications to the model that are not yet sufficiently resolved. This constraint may be lifted in a future version of SMIL Animation.
The specific error handling mechanisms for each attribute are described with the individual syntax descriptions. Some of these specifications describe the behavior of an animation with syntax errors as "having no effect". This means that the animation will continue to behave normally with respect to timing, but will not manipulate any presentation value, and so will have no visible impact upon the presentation.
In particular, this means that if other animation elements are defined to begin or end relative to an animation that "has no effect", the other animation elements will begin and end as though there were no syntax errors. The presentation runtime may indicate an error, but need not halt presentation or animation of the document.
Some host languages and/or runtimes may choose to impose stricter error handling (see also Error handling semantics for a discussion of host language issues with error handling). Authoring environments may also choose to be more intrusive when errors are detected.
The host language designer may impose stricter constraints upon the error handling semantics. That is, in the case of syntax errors, the host language may specify additional or stricter mechanisms to be used to indicate an error. An example would be to stop all processing of the document, or to halt all animation.
Host language designers may not relax the error handling specifications, or the error handling response (as described in Handling syntax errors). For example, host language designers may not define error recovery semantics for missing or erroneous values in the values or keyTimes attribute values.
This section is informative.
The SMIL 2.1 specification leaves the SMIL 2.0 Content Control Modules [SMIL20-content-control] unchanged.
This section is informative.
This section defines the SMIL 2.1 content control modules. These modules contain elements and attributes which provide for runtime content choices and optimized content delivery. SMIL content control functionality is partitioned across four modules:
Since all of the content control elements and attributes are defined in modules, designers of other markup languages can reuse this functionality on a module by module basis when they need to include media content control in their language.
The functionality in the CustomTestAttributes module builds on the functionality of the BasicContentControl module; profiles implementing the CustomTestAttributes module must also implement the BasicContentControl module. The PrefetchControl and SkipContentControl modules have no prerequisites.
In some of the module descriptions for content control, the concept of "user preference" may be present. User preferences are usually set by the playback engine using a preferences dialog box, but this specification does not place any restrictions on how such preferences are communicated from the user to the SMIL player.
It is implementation dependent when content control attributes are evaluated. Attributes may be evaluated multiple times. Dynamic reevaluation is allowed but not required.
SMIL 1.0 provides a "test-attribute" mechanism to process an element only when certain conditions are true, for example when the language preference specified by the user matches that of a media object. One or more test attributes may appear on media object references or timing structure elements; if the attribute evaluates to true, the containing element is played, and if the attribute evaluates to false the containing element is ignored. SMIL 1.0 also provides the switch element for expressing that a set of document parts are alternatives, and that the first one fulfilling certain conditions should be chosen. This is useful to express that different language versions of an audio file are available, and that the client may select one of them.
The SMIL 2.1 BasicContent module includes the test attribute functionality from SMIL 1.0 and extends it by supporting new system test attributes. This section will describe the use of the predefined system test attributes, the switch element and test attribute in-line placement. A mechanism for extending test attributes is presented in the CustomTestAttributes module.
This specification defines a list of test attributes that can be added to language elements, as allowed by the language designer. In SMIL 1.0, these elements are synchronization and media elements. Conceptually, these attributes represent Boolean tests. When any of the test attributes specified for an element evaluates to false, the element carrying this attribute is ignored.
SMIL 2.1 supports the full set of SMIL 1.0 system attributes. The SMIL 1.0 compatible system test attributes are:
- systemBitrate
- systemCaptions
- systemLanguage
- system-overdub-or-caption (note: this attribute has been deprecated in favor of systemCaptions or systemOverdubOrSubtitle)
- systemRequired
- systemScreenDepth
- systemScreenSize
Note that, with the exception of system-overdub-or-caption, the names of these attributes have been changed to reflect SMIL 2.1's camelCase conventions. The SMIL 1.0 hyphenated names are deprecated in this release.
New to SMIL 2.1 are system test attributes that define additional characteristics of the system environment. These are:
The complete definition of each attribute is given in the attributes definition section.
The switch element allows an author to specify a set of alternative elements from which only the first acceptable element is chosen.
An example of the use of the switch is:
... <par> <video src="anchor.mpg" ... /> <switch> <audio src="dutchHQ.aiff" systemBitrate="56000" ... /> <audio src="dutchMQ.aiff" systemBitrate="28800" ... /> <audio src="dutchLQ.aiff" ... /> </switch> </par> ...
In this example, one audio object is selected to accompany the video object. If the system bitrate is 56000 or higher, the object dutchHQ.aiff is selected. If the system bitrate is at least 28800 but less than 56000, the object dutchMQ.aiff is selected. If no other objects are selected, the alternative dutchLQ.aiff is selected, since it has no test attribute (thus is always acceptable) and no other test attributes evaluated to true.
Authors should order the alternatives from the most desirable to the least desirable. Furthermore, authors may wish to place a relatively fail-safe alternative as the last item in the switch so that at least one item within the switch is chosen (unless this is explicitly not desired).
Note that some network protocols, e.g. HTTP and RTSP, support content-negotiation, which may be an alternative to using the switch element in some cases.
It is the responsibility of the SMIL 2.1 player to determine the setting for system test attribute values. Such settings may be determined statically based on configuration settings, or they may be determined (and re-evaluated) dynamically, depending on the player implementation. Players may not select members of a switch at random.
To allow more flexibility in element selection, test attributes may also be used outside of the switch element.
In the following example of in-line test attribute use, captions are shown only if the user wants captions on.
... <par> <audio src="audio.rm"/> <video src="video.rm"/> <textstream src="stockticker.rt"/> <textstream src="closed-caps.rt" systemCaptions="on"/> </par> ...
The alternatives indicated by the in-line construct could be represented as a set of switch statements, although the resulting switch could become explosive in size. Use of an in-line test mechanism significantly simplifies the specification of adaptive content, especially in those cases where many independent alternatives exist. Note, however, that there is no fail-safe alternative mechanism (such as defining an element without a test attribute inside of a switch) when using test attributes in-line.
In a common scenario, implementations may wish to allow for selection via a systemBitrate attribute on elements. The SMIL 2.1 player evaluates each of the elements within the switch one at a time, looking for an acceptable bitrate value.
... <par> <text .../> <switch> <par systemBitrate="40000"> ... </par> <par systemBitrate="24000"> ... </par> <par systemBitrate="10000"> ... </par> </switch> </par> ...
In this example, if the system bitrate has been determined to be less than 10000 (in mobile telephone cases, for example), then none of the par constructs would be included.
The elements within the switch may be any combination of elements. For instance, one could specify an alternate audio track:
... <switch> <audio src="joe-audio-better-quality" systemBitrate="16000" /> <audio src="joe-audio" /> </switch> ...
If the system bitrate was less than 16000, the standard-quality audio would be presented by default.
In the following example, an audio resource is available both in Dutch and in English. Based on the user's preferred language, the player can choose one of these audio resources.
... <switch> <audio src="joe-audio-nederlands" systemLanguage="nl"/> <audio src="joe-audio-english" systemLanguage="en"/> </switch> ...
In this example, if the system language setting was anything other than Dutch or English, no audio would be presented. To make a choice the default, it should appear as the last item in the list and not contain a test attribute. In the following fragment, English is used as the default:
... <switch> <audio src="joe-audio-nederlands" systemLanguage="nl"/> <audio src="joe-audio-english" /> </switch> ...
In the following example, the presentation contains alternative parts designed for screens with different resolutions and bit-depths. Depending on the particular characteristics of the screen, the player must use the first alternative in which all of the test attributes evaluate to true.
... <par> <text .../> <switch> <par systemScreenSize="1024X1280" systemScreenDepth="16"> ... </par> <par systemScreenSize="480X640" systemScreenDepth="32"> ... </par> <par systemScreenSize="480X640" systemScreenDepth="16"> ... </par> </switch> </par> ...
This example shows a video that is accompanied by zero or more media objects. If the system language has been set to either Dutch or English, then the appropriate audio object will play. In addition, if the system language has been set to either Dutch or English and systemCaptions has also been set to on, the appropriate text files will also be displayed.
... <par> <video src="anchor.mpg" ... /> <audio src="dutch.aiff" systemLanguage="nl" ... /> <audio src="english.aiff" systemLanguage="en" ... /> <text src="dutch.html" systemLanguage="nl" systemCaption="on"... /> <text src="english.html" systemLanguage="en" systemCaption="on"... /> </par> ...
If system language is set to something other than Dutch or English, no objects will be rendered (except the video). Note that there is no catch-all default mechanism when using test attributes for in-line evaluation.
In the following example, a French-language movie is available with English, German, and Dutch overdub and subtitle tracks. The following SMIL segment expresses this, and switches on the alternatives that the user prefers.
... <par> <switch> <audio src="movie-aud-en.rm" systemLanguage="en" systemOverdubOrSubtitle="overdub"/> <audio src="movie-aud-de.rm" systemLanguage="de" systemOverdubOrSubtitle="overdub"/> <audio src="movie-aud-nl.rm" systemLanguage="nl" systemOverdubOrSubtitle="overdub"/> <!-- French for everyone else --> <audio src="movie-aud-fr.rm"/> </switch> <video src="movie-vid.rm"/> <switch> <textstream src="movie-sub-en.rt" systemLanguage="en" systemOverdubOrSubtitle="subtitle"/> <textstream src="movie-sub-de.rt" systemLanguage="de" systemOverdubOrSubtitle="subtitle"/> <textstream src="movie-sub-nl.rt" systemLanguage="nl" systemOverdubOrSubtitle="subtitle"/> <!-- French captions for those that really want them --> <textstream src="movie-caps-fr.rt" systemCaptions="on"/> </switch> </par> ...
SMIL 2.1 BasicContentControl defines the switch element and a set of predefined system test attributes.
The switch element allows an author to specify a set of alternative elements. An element is selected as follows: the player evaluates the elements in the order in which they occur in the switch element. The first acceptable element is selected at the exclusion of all other elements within the switch. Implementations must NOT arbitrarily pick an object within a switch when test attributes for all child elements fail.
This element does not have attributes beyond those required of all elements in the profile.
The content of the element is language implementation dependent.
In the SMIL 2.1 language profile, if the switch is used as a direct or indirect child of a body element, it may contain any media object or timing structure container, or it may contain nested switch elements. All of these elements may appear multiple times inside the switch. If the switch is used as a direct or indirect child of a head element, it may contain one or more layout elements.
SMIL 2.1 defines the following system test attributes. When any of the test attributes specified for an element evaluates to false, the element carrying this attribute is ignored. Note that most hyphenated test attribute names from SMIL 1.0 have been deprecated in favor of names using the current SMIL camelCase convention. For these, the deprecated SMIL 1.0 name is shown in parentheses after the preferred name.
These values come from the _PR_SI_ARCHITECTURE constants defined by the mozilla project.
The syntax of the systemLanguage and the deprecated system-language attributes are defined using EBNF notation (as defined in [XML11]) as list of XML namespace prefixes [XML-NS], separated by the ',' character:
systemLanguageArgumentValue ::= (languageTag (S? ',' S? languageTag)*)?
Where allowed white space is indicated as "S", defined as follows (taken from the [XML11] definition for 'S'):
S ::= (#x20 | #x9 | #xD | #xA)+
Implementation: When making the choice of linguistic preference available to the user, implementers should take into account the fact that most users are not familiar with the details of language matching as described above, and should provide appropriate guidance. As an example, users may mistakenly assume that on selecting "en-gb", they will be served any kind of English document if British English is not available. The user interface for setting user preferences should guide the user to add "en" to get the best matching behavior.
These values come from the _PR_SI_SYSNAME constants defined by the mozilla project.
systemRequiredArgumentValue := NMTOKEN (S? '+' S? NMTOKEN)*
Where allowed white space is indicated as "S", defined as follows (taken from the [XML11] definition for 'S'):
S ::= (#x20 | #x9 | #xD | #xA)+
It is the responsibility of the SMIL 2.1 Player to determine the settings for each predefined test variable. These values may be determined by static configuration settings, or they may be evaluated dynamically during runtime. Such setting and (re)evaluation behavior is implementation dependent.
For this version of SMIL elements with specified test attributes that evaluate to false, or elements within a switch that are not selected, are considered to be ignored and will behave as though they were not specified in the document. Any references to these elements will be as if the elements were not in the document. In particular, any ID references to the element will act as if there was no element with that ID. Languages that integrate this module must specify any additional behavior related to these ignored elements. In the SMIL 2.1 Language profile, timing attributes that reference invalid IDs are treated as being indefinite.
Authors should be aware that this model for handling ignored elements may be revised in a future version of SMIL, and the related semantics may well change. These changes should not affect implementations that only support parse-time (or equivalent) evaluation of test attributes and/or the switch element. However, the semantics of dynamic re-evaluation (i.e. re-evaluation during document presentation) of test attributes and/or switch elements are not defined in this version of SMIL; this will be addressed in a future version.
Authors should realize that if several alternative elements are enclosed in a switch, and none of them evaluate to true, this may lead to situations such as a media object being shown without one or more companion objects. It is thus recommended to include a "catch-all" choice at the end of a switch which is acceptable in all cases.
The functionality in this module does not build on functionality defined in other SMIL 2.1 modules.
See the full DTD for the SMIL Content Control modules.
The use of predefined system test attributes in the SMIL BasicContentControl module provides a selection mechanism based on attributes that are fixed within the module's definition. The CustomTestAttribute module extends this facility with the definition of author-defined custom test attributes. Custom test attributes allow presentation authors to define their own test attributes for use in a specific document. Custom test attributes may be shared among application documents using the uid attribute.
As with system test attributes, custom test attributes can be used within timing structure and media object elements; if they evaluate to true, the containing element is activated and if they evaluate to false, the containing element is ignored. In this version of SMIL, an ignored element will be treated as if it were not part of the source document. As a result, any element referencing the ID of the ignored node will, in effect, reference an invalid ID. Languages that integrate this module must specify any additional behavior related to these ignored elements.
Since custom test attributes are application/document specific, they need a mechanism to allow attribute definition and attribute setting. Attribute definition is done via the customAttributes and customTest elements. The initial state of any custom test attribute can be set at author-time with the defaultState attribute, which takes a value of either true or false. This module provides an override attribute with a value hidden that gives an author the ability to discourage runtime resetting of any attributes using these mechanisms.
The state of the attribute can be changed in one of three ways:
The exact rules for setting and modifying the values associated with custom test attributes are given below.
An implementation may support either, both, or none of methods 2 and 3. If method 2 is supported, the URI value in uid is simply a unique identifier and does not imply that the runtime value must be fetched over the Web. The value may be stored and retrieved locally, and simply identified by the uid. The precise manner in which this is done is implementation dependent. If method 3 is supported, the custom test attribute facility does not require any specific UI support for direct user manipulation of the custom test attributes.
The following example shows one way in which custom test attributes can be applied within a SMIL 2.1 Language profile document:
<smil> <head> <layout> <!-- define projection regions --> </layout> <customAttributes> <customTest id="west-coast" title="West Coast Edition" defaultState="false" override="visible" uid="http://defs.example.org/user-settings/west-coast" /> <customTest id="east-coast" title="East Coast Edition" defaultState="false" override="visible" uid="http://defs.example.org/user-settings/east-coast" /> <customTest id="far-north" title="Northern Edition" defaultState="false" override="visible" uid="http://defs.example.org/user-settings/far-north" /> <customTest id="the-rest" title="National Edition" defaultState="true" override="hidden" /> </customAttributes> </head> <body> ... <par> <img src="background.png" region="a"/> <video src="story_1v.rm" region="b" /> <switch> <audio src="story_1w.rm" region="c" customTest="west-coast"/> <audio src="story_1e.rm" region="c" customTest="east-coast"/> <audio src="story_1n.rm" region="c" customTest="far-north"/> <audio src="story_1r.rm" region="c" customTest="the-rest"/> </switch> </par> ... </body> </smil>
The customAttributes element in the header contains the definition of the available custom test attributes. Each custom test attribute, defined by the customTest element, contains an identifier and a title (which can be used by a user agent, if available, to label the attribute), as well as an (optional) initial state definition, a UID that contains a unique identifier for the value setting for this attribute and an override flag.
The custom test variables named "west-coast", "east-coast" and "far-north" are defined with a default rendering state of false. They each contain a reference to a URI which is used to define local settings for the respective variables.
The custom test variable "the-rest" is defined with a default rendering setting of true.
Inside the body, a SMIL switch construct is used to select media objects for inclusion in a presentation depending on the values of the various custom test attributes. The first object that contains a value of true will be rendered, and since in this example the last option will always resolve true, it will be rendered if no other objects resolve to true.
While this example shows switch-based use of custom test attributes, the facility could also be applied as test attributes in in-line use.
The setting of the value associated with a custom test attribute proceeds as follows:
Note that a user setting of the custom test attribute will take precedence over a URI setting. If the user has not specified a value for the attribute then the URI setting takes precedence. As with predefined system test attributes, this evaluation will occur in an implementation-defined manner. The value may be (re)evaluated dynamically, but this is not required. Note also that not all implementations need support uid or UI setting of attributes.
This section defines the elements and attributes that make up the functionality in the SMIL CustomTestAttributes module. The customAttributes and customTest elements are used to define custom test attribute variables and the customTest attribute is used in-line on media object and timing structure references to control evaluation of the containing elements.
The customAttributes element contains definitions of each of the custom test attributes. The contained elements define a collection of author-specified test attributes that can be used in switch statements or as in-line test attributes in the document.
This element does not have attributes beyond those required of all elements in the profile.
The customAttributes element may contain one or more customTest elements.
The customTest element defines an author-specified name that will be used as the test argument in the switch element or in-line on media object and timing structure elements. The customTest elements are defined within the section delineated by the customAttributes elements that make up part of the document header.
The actual evaluation mechanism associated with the URI is implementation dependent. It can vary from a simple lookup in a local file or registry, to a secure reference via a capabilities database, and may be influenced by other configuration settings provided by the implementation.
None.
In addition to the customAttributes and customTest elements, this module provides a customTest attribute that can be applied by language designers to media objects and timing structure elements requiring selection. In all operational aspects, the custom test attribute is similar to the predefined system test attribute facility of the Basic Content Control module.
The syntax of the customTest is defined using EBNF notation (as defined in [XML11]) as list of customTest element identifier references, separated by the '+' character:
CustomTestArgumentValue := IDREF (S? '+' S? IDREF)*
Where allowed white space is indicated as "S", defined as follows (taken from the [XML11] definition for 'S'):
S ::= (#x20 | #x9 | #xD | #xA)+
The functionality in this module builds on functionality defined in the BasicContentControl module, which is a required prerequisite for inclusion of the CustomTestAttribute module.
The profile implementing the custom test elements and attributes must provide a means of associating a unique XML identifier with a customTest element, so that it can be used by the customTest attribute. And the profile should provide a means of associating descriptive text with a customTest element, which may be used in a GUI or other selection mechanism that may be presented to the user. For the SMIL 2.1 Language Profile, the element's id and title attributes serve this purpose.
See the full DTD for the SMIL Content Control modules.
This module defines an element and attributes that can be used to control the fetching of content from a server in a manner that will improve the rendering performance of the document.
This element will give a suggestion or hint to a user agent that a media resource will be used in the future and the author would like part or all of the resource fetched ahead of time to make the document playback smoother. User-agents can ignore prefetch elements, though doing so may cause an interruption in the document playback when the resource is needed. It gives authoring tools or savvy authors the ability to schedule retrieval of resources when they think that there is available bandwidth or time to do it. A prefetch element is contained within the body of an XML document, and its scheduling is based on its lexical order unless explicit timing is present.
Prefetching data from a URL that changes the content dynamically is potentially dangerous: if the entire resource isn't prefetched, a subsequent request for the remaining data may yield data from a newer resource. A user agent should respect any appropriate caching directives applied to the content, e.g. no-cache 822 headers in HTTP. More specifically, content marked as non-cacheable would have to be refetched each time it was played, where content that is cacheable could be prefetched once, with the results of the prefetch cached for future use.
<smil xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/SMIL21/Language"> <body> <seq> <par> <prefetch id="endimage" src="http://www.example.org/logo.gif"/> <text id="interlude" src="http://www.example.org/pleasewait.html" fill="freeze"/> </par> <video id="main-event" src="rtsp://www.example.org/video.mpg"/> <img src="http://www.example.org/logo.gif" dur="5s"/> </seq> </body> </smil>
The example starts with a prefetch in parallel with the rendering of a text object. The text is discrete media so it ends immediately, the prefetch is defaulted to prefetch the entire image at full available bandwidth and the prefetch element ends when the image is downloaded. That ends the <par> and the video begins playing. When the video ends the image is shown.
<html> <body> <prefetch id="upimage" src="http://www.example.org/up.gif"/> <prefetch id="downimage" src="http://www.example.org/down.gif"/> .... <!-- script will change the graphic on rollover --> <img src="http://www.example.org/up.gif"/> </body> </html>
The prefetch gives authors a mechanism to influence the scheduling of media object transfers from a server to the player.
Documents must still playback even when the prefetch elements are ignored, although rebuffering or pauses in presentation of the document may occur. If the prefetch for a prefetch element is ignored, any timing on the element is still respected, e.g. if a prefetch element has a dur="5s", elements that depend on the prefetch element's timing behave as if the prefetch took 5 seconds.
The intrinsic duration of a prefetch element is either the duration of the media fetch, if the prefetch operation is supported by the implementation, or zero if prefetch is not supported.
If a prefetch element is repeated, due to restart or repeat on a parent element the prefetch operation should occur again. This insures appropriately "fresh" data is displayed if, for example, the prefetch is for a banner ad to a URL whose content changes with each request.
The prefetch element supports the following attributes:
Any attribute with a value of "0%" is ignored and treated as if the attribute wasn't specified.
If both mediaSize and mediaTime are specified, mediaSize is used and mediaTime is ignored.
If the clipBegin or clipEnd in the media object are different from the prefetch, an implementation can use any data that was fetched but the result may not be optimal.
bytes-value ::= Digit+; any positive number
percent-value ::= Digit+ "%"; any positive number in the range
0 to 100
Clock-val ::= ( Hms-val | Smpte-val )
Smpte-val ::= ( Smpte-type )? Hours ":" Minutes ":" Seconds
( ":" Frames ( "." Subframes )? )?
Smpte-type ::= "smpte" | "smpte-30-drop" | "smpte-25"
Hms-val ::= ( "npt=" )? (Full-clock-val | Partial-clock-val
| Timecount-val)
Full-clock-val ::= Hours ":" Minutes ":" Seconds ("." Fraction)?
Partial-clock-val ::= Minutes ":" Seconds ("." Fraction)?
Timecount-val ::= Timecount ("." Fraction)? (Metric)?
Metric ::= "h" | "min" | "s" | "ms"
Hours ::= DIGIT+; any positive number
Minutes ::= 2DIGIT; range from 00 to 59
Seconds ::= 2DIGIT; range from 00 to 59
Frames ::= 2DIGIT; smpte range = 00-29, smpte-30-drop range = 00-29, smpte-25 range = 00-24
Subframes ::= 2DIGIT; smpte range = 00-01, smpte-30-drop range = 00-01, smpte-25 range = 00-01
Fraction ::= DIGIT+
Timecount ::= DIGIT+
2DIGIT ::= DIGIT DIGIT
DIGIT ::= [0-9]
For Timecount values, the default metric suffix is "s" (for seconds).
bitrate-value ::= Digit+; any positive number
A profile integrating the PrefetchControl module must add the attributes necessary to specify the media to be fetched. In general, these will be the same resource specifying attributes as those on the media elements themselves. In addition, the profile must add any necessary attributes to control the timing of the prefetch element.
See the full DTD for the SMIL Content Control modules.
This module contains one attribute, skip-content attribute, that can be used to selectively control the evaluation of the element on which this attribute appears. This attribute is introduced for future extensibility of SMIL. The functionality is unchanged from SMIL 1.0.
The SkipContentControl module does not contain any element definitions.
It is the responsibility of the language profile to specify which elements have skip-content attributes to enable this expansion mechanism.
This section is informative.
SMIL 2.1 Layout provides four classes of changes to SMIL 2.0 layout. First, the SMIL 2.0 HierarchicalLayout module has been replaced by the SubRegionLayout, AlignmentLayout, and OverrideLayout modules; this allows differentiated features to be implemented in profiles without necessarily requiring support for all of the functionality in the HierarchicalLayout module. Second, several new elements and attributes have been added to SMIL 2.1 Layout to express common layout functions in an authoring-efficient manner; these functions include the short-cut notations for media positioning now available in the AlignmentLayout module and support for background image tiling in the BackgroundTilingLayout. Third, new support for simple audio positioning has been added that allows audio placement to be supported by those players that allow audio 2-D imaging. Fourth, a more consistent definition of the default behavior and default values used by the backgroundColor, fit, regAlign, regPoint, soundAlign, and mediaAlign attributes has been specified that allows the expected behavior to be achieved when using validating parsers.
This section is informative.
This section defines the SMIL 2.1 Layout Modules, which contain elements and attributes that allow positioning of media elements on visual and audio rendering surfaces and to control of audio volume. Since these elements and attributes are defined in modules, designers of other markup languages can choose the appropriate level of functionality to be included in their languages. Language designers incorporating other SMIL modules may include all, some or none of the modules described in this section.
This section is normative.
SMIL 2.1 Layout functionality is partitioned across the following seven modules:
The SMIL 2.0 HierarchicalLayout module has been deprecated and is not longer part of SMIL 2.1 Layout.
This section is informative.
The SMIL 2.1 layout architecture allows support for multiple layout models within a presentation. Media layout may be described using the SMIL layout syntax described in this chapter or by using another layout mechanism, such as CSS2 syntax [CSS2]. Other layout types are possible as well.
Support for multiple layout models is implementation profile dependent. A given profile may support multiple layout models simultaneously (with selection performed using the SMIL switch element), or it may dictate that only a single layout model is supported (such as the use of CSS2 layout within the XHTML+SMIL candidate profile[XHTMLplusSMIL].
The remainder of this chapter will focus solely on the use of SMIL 2.1 layout semantics.
This section is informative.
The functionality in this module is essentially identical to the layout functionality in [SMIL20], which in turn was essentially identical to the layout functionality of [SMIL10]. The only exceptions are that SMIL 2.1 BasicLayout defines a new meetBest value for the fit attribute which limits the amount of scaling applied to a media object to 100% (that is, only downward scaling is allowed), and it defines revised default behavior and default values for the backgroundColor and fit attributes.
This section is informative.
SMIL 2.1 BasicLayout module includes a layout model for organizing media elements into regions on the visual rendering surface. The layout element is used in the document head to declare a set of regions on which media elements are rendered. Media elements declare which region they are to be rendered into with the region attribute.
Each region has a set of CSS2 compatible properties such as top, left, height, width, and backgroundColor. These properties can be declared using a syntax defined by the type attribute of the layout element. In this way, media layout can be described using the either SMIL basic layout syntax or CSS2 syntax (note that these are not functionally identical). Other layout types are possible as well.
For example, to describe a region with the id "r" at location 15,20 that is 100 pixels wide by 50 pixels tall using the SMIL BasicLayout module:
<layout>
<region id="r" top="15px" left="20px" width="100px" height="50px"/>
</layout>
To display a media element in the region declared above, specify the region's id as the region attribute of the media element:
<ref region="r" src="http://..." />
This section is normative.
This section defines the elements and attributes that make up the functionality in the SMIL BasicLayout module.
The layout element defines a collection of rendering regions that determine how the elements in the document's body are positioned on an abstract rendering surface (either visual or acoustic).
The layout element must appear before any of the declared layout is used in the document. If present, the layout element must appear in the head section of the document. SMIL-defined default layout values can be assigned to all renderable elements by selecting the empty layout element <layout></layout>. If a document contains no layout element, no SMIL-defined default values are assigned and the positioning of the body elements is totally implementation-dependent.
If the type attribute of the layout element has the value "text/smil-basic-layout", it may contain the following elements:
Profiles incorporating the BasicLayout module may define additional elements that are allowed as children of the layout element. If the type attribute of the layout element has a value other than "text/smil-basic-layout", the element contains character data.
The region element controls the position, size and scaling of media object elements that are placed within it rendering space.
The position of a region, as specified by its top, bottom, left, and right attributes, is always relative to the parent geometry, which is defined by the parent element. For the SMIL BasicLayout module, all region elements must have as their immediate parent a layout element, and the region position is defined relative to the root window declared in the sibling root-layout element. The root-layout element is considered to be the logical parent of all region elements in SMIL BasicLayout. The intrinsic size of a region is equal to the size of the logical parent's geometry.
When region sizes, as specified by width and height attributes are declared relative with the "%" notation, the size of a region is relative to the size of the parent geometry. Sizes declared as absolute pixel values maintain those absolute values.
Conflicts between the region size and position attributes width, height, bottom, left, right, and top are resolved according to the rules for placeholder elements as detailed below. The default values of region position and size attributes is specified as auto. This attribute value has the same meaning here that it does in [CSS2], when there is no distinction drawn between replaced and non-replaced element.
A placeholder element is one which has no intrinsic width or height, but does have a bounding-box which has a width and height. SMIL BasicLayout regions are placeholder elements. Placeholder elements are clipped to the bounding box.
The governing equation for the horizontal dimension is:
bbw (bounding-box-width) = left + width + right
Given that each of these three parameters can have either a value of "auto" or a defined value not "auto", then there are 8 possibilities:
Attribute values |
Result before clipping to the bounding box |
||||
left | width | right | left | width | right |
auto | auto | auto | 0 | bbw | 0 |
auto | auto | defined | 0 | bbw - right | right |
auto | defined | auto | 0 | width | bbw - width |
auto | defined | defined | bbw - right - width | width | right |
defined | auto | auto | left | bbw - left | 0 |
defined | auto | defined | left | bbw - right - left | right |
defined | defined | auto | left | width | bbw - left - width |
defined | defined | defined | left | width | bbw - left - width |
The vertical attributes height, bottom, and top are resolved similarly. The governing equation for the vertical dimension is:
bbh (bounding-box-height) = top + height + bottom
Given that each of these three parameters can have either a value of "auto" or a defined value not "auto", then there are 8 possibilities:
Attribute values |
Result before clipping to the bounding box |
||||
top | height | bottom | top | height | bottom |
auto | auto | auto | 0 | bbh | 0 |
auto | auto | defined | 0 | bbh - bottom | bottom |
auto | defined | auto | 0 | height | bbh - height |
auto | defined | defined | bbh - bottom - height | height | bottom |
defined | auto | auto | top | bbh - top | 0 |
defined | auto | defined | top | bbh - bottom - top | bottom |
defined | defined | auto | top | height | bbh - top - height |
defined | defined | defined | top | height | bbh - top - height |
The region element can have the following visual attributes:
The default value of fit is hidden.
Note that the fit attribute applies to visual media once it has an intrinsic two-dimensional size, such as images and video. It does not apply to visual media that is rendered and adapted to varying circumstances, such as the visual display of HTML, until its two-dimensional spatial dimensions have been determined, such as after an HTML page has been laid out to specific size.
A profile integrating the SMIL 2.1 BasicLayout module must provide a means of declaring an XML identifier on region elements.
In the following example fragment, the position of a text element is set to a 5 pixel distance from the top border of the rendering window:
<smil xmlns="...">
<head>
...
<layout>
...
<region id="a" top="5" />
...
</layout>
</head>
<body>
...
<text region="a" src="text.html" dur="10s" />
...
</body>
</smil>
The root-layout element determines the value of the layout properties of the root element, which in turn determines the size of the window in which the SMIL presentation is rendered.
If more than one root-layout element is parsed within a single layout element, this is an error, and the document should not be displayed. This does not include root-layout elements skipped by the user agent (e.g. because the enclosing layout element was skipped due to an unrecognized type or because a test attribute evaluated to false).
The semantics of the root-layout element are as in SMIL 1.0: the attributes of the root-layout element determine the size of the top level presentation window, and the declared sibling regions are arranged within this top level window. If either the height or width of the root-layout element is not specified, the value of the attribute is implementation-dependent.
The root-layout element is an empty element. This element supports the SMIL 1.0 syntax where the root-layout element is an empty sibling of the top level region elements.
The following example extends the fragment above with a specification of the root-layout element:
<smil xmlns="...">
<head>
<layout>
<root-layout width="320" height="480" />
<region id="a" top="5" />
</layout>
</head>
<body>
<text region="a" src="text.html" dur="10s" />
</body>
</smil>
Note that the root-layout element is placed at a peer-level within the layout section. SMIL Layout also supports a nested containment model using the topLayout element defined in the MultiWindowLayout module.
The region attribute is added to the ref element (and its synonyms). The target of this attribute will be one or more regions with a regionName declared that matches the value of this attribute, or a single region element with a region attribute that matches this value. For processing rules, see the section Implementation details.
This section is normative.
SMIL 2.1 BasicLayout module is consistent with the visual rendering model defined in CSS2, it reuses the formatting properties defined by the CSS2 specification, and newly introduces the fit attribute [CSS2]. The reader is expected to be familiar with the concepts and terms defined in CSS2.
SMIL 2.1 layout regions influence the propagation of user interface events (such as a mouse click, or hyperlink activation) to underlying visible elements. When the location of an event corresponds to the background of a region rather than the media that is displayed in that region, a region background color of transparent allows user interface events to pass through to elements lower in the display stacking order. Conversely, regions with non-transparent background colors will capture user interface events, not allowing the event to pass through to elements lower in the display stacking order. This behavior is separate from that of a language profile's ability to make use of user interface events captured by region elements.
An element that does not refer to a valid region element will display in the default region. If not otherwise specified by the profile, the default region is defined as filling and aligned to the upper-left corner of the presentation window. This default region takes on default values for all other region attributes.
The region attribute is applied to an element in order to specify which rendering region is assigned to the element. The attribute refers to the abstract rendering region (either visual or acoustic) defined within the layout section of the document. The referenced abstract rendering region is determined by applying the following rules, in order:
If this process selects no rendering surface defined in the layout section, the values of the formatting properties of this element are defined by the default layout values, which is described in the section on integration requirements for this module.
A profile integrating the SMIL 2.1 BasicLayout module must define the content models for the layout element if any elements beyond those specified here are to be allowed as children.
A profile integrating the SMIL 2.1 BasicLayout module must provide a means of declaring an XML identifier on region elements if the profile intends on referring to region elements by XML identifier. This value is used as the argument value to the region attribute. This is not required if the profile will only use the regionName method of referring to a region element.
A profile integrating the SMIL 2.1 BasicLayout module must specify which elements have a region attribute and any inheritance of the attribute.
If not otherwise defined by the profile, the default values of the layout attributes listed in the SMIL 2.1 layout modules will apply to presented elements not otherwise specifying layout semantics.
This section is normative.
See the full DTD for the SMIL Layout modules.
This section is informative.
The functionality in this module is identical to the layout functionality in the [SMIL20] SMIL 2.0 AudioLayout module. The SMIL 2.1 text contains minor editorial changes.
This section is informative.
In SMIL 2.1 AudioLayout, one attribute is supported that allows the sound intensity of an audio object to be specified via the soundLevel attribute.
The following region defines an audio sound level that is set to 50% of its normal recorded value:
<layout>
...
<region id="a" soundLevel="50%"/>
...
</layout>
When used in conjuction with SMIL 2.1 Animation (and if supported by the profile), the value of the attribute may be varied over time.
This section is normative.
SMIL 2.1 AudioLayout module supports control of aural media volumes via a new property on the region element, soundLevel. Multimedia assigned to a region with an explicit soundLevel attribute will have its audio rendered at the given relative sound intensity.
This section is normative.
This section defines the soundLevel attribute that makes up the SMIL 2.1 AudioLayout module.
The region element defined in the BasicLayout module is extended with the addition of the soundLevel attribute.
The region element can have the following aural attribute:
Valid values are non-negative CSS2 percentage values. Percentage values are interpreted relative to the recorded volume of the media. The percentages are interpreted as a ratio of output to input signal level, and is defined in terms of dB:
dB change in signal level = 20
log10(percentage-value / 100)
A setting of '0%' plays the media silently. A value of '100%' will play the media at its recorded volume (0 dB). Similarly, a value of '200%' will play the media nearly twice as loud (6 dB) as its recorded volume (subject to hardware limitations). The default value is '100%'. The absolute sound level of media perceived is further subject to system volume settings, which cannot be controlled with this attribute.
This section is normative.
The functionality in this module builds on top of the functionality in the BasicLayout module, which is a required prerequisite for inclusion of the AudioLayout module.
This section is normative.
See the full DTD for the SMIL Layout modules.
This section is informative.
The functionality in this module is identical to the layout functionality in the [SMIL20] SMIL 2.0 MultiWindowLayout module. The SMIL 2.1 text contains minor editorial changes to descriptions and examples.
This section is informative.
This section defines the functionality in the SMIL 2.1 MultiWindowLayout module. This level contains elements and attributes providing for creation and control of multiple top level windows on the rendering device.
In the architecture of the SMIL 2.1 BasicLayout module, each presentation is rendered into a single root window of a specific size/shape. The root window contains all of the regions used to manage the rendering of specific media objects and is defined by a peer-level root-layout element.
The SMIL 2.1 Layout specification extends the root container level with the notion of a top-level rendering window, called a topLayout window. A SMIL 2.1 layout section may support one or more topLayout windows. The assignment of the regions to individual top level windows allows independent placement and resizing of each top-level window, if supported by the including profile and implementation. The initial placement of the top level windows on the display device and any available means of relocating the top level windows is implementation-dependent.
The top-level windows function as rendering containers only, that is, they do not carry temporal significance. In other words, each window does not define a separate timeline or any other time-container properties. There is still a single master timeline for the SMIL presentation, no matter how many top-level windows have been created. This is important to allow synchronization between media displayed in separate top-level windows.
The display of top level windows can be controlled automatically by the player, or manually by the user of the application. If a window is closed (by the user) while any of the elements displayed in that window are active, there is no effect on the timeline (if any) of those elements. However, a player may choose not to decode content as a performance improvement. The means provided to a user to close top level windows is implementation-dependent.
For SMIL 1.0 compatibility, the root-layout element will continue to support SMIL 1.0 layout semantics. The new topLayout element will support the extension semantics and the improved, nested syntax.
Note also that any one region may belong to at most one top-level (or root-level) window. Regions not declared as children of a topLayout element belong to the root-layout window. If no root-layout element has been declared, the region is assigned to an additional window according to the semantics in the BasicLayout module.
This section is normative.
This section defines the elements and attributes that make up the SMIL 2.1 MultiWindowLayout module.
The topLayout element determines the size of the a window in which the SMIL presentation is rendered, as well as serving as a top level window in which to place child region elements.
Multiple topLayout elements may appear within a single layout element, each declaring an independent top-level window.
Each instance of a topLayout element determines the size of a separate top-level presentation window, and the descendant regions are arranged within this top-level window and relative to the coordinate system of this window.
This module also provides control over when topLayout windows open and close in a presentation. Note that the precise mapping of topLayout windows on to the host environment is implementation-dependent. It is expected that implementations will "pop up" independent desktop windows if they can, but other means of supporting multiple topLayouts, such as by using frames, are allowed. When automatically opening and closing windows, applications should try to comply with the WAI User Agent Guidelines [UAAG] and allow the user to choose whether to be warned that windows are being opened and closed, and give a method for disabling automatic opening and closing of windows.
The topLayout element may contain any number of region elements, or be empty.
The following example provides a restatement of the root-layout example:
<smil xmlns="..."> <head> <layout> <topLayout width="320" height="480" /> <region id="a" top="5" /> </topLayout/> </layout> </head> <body> <text region="a" src="text.html" dur="10s" /> </body> </smil>
Multiple instances of the topLayout element may occur within a single layout element:
<layout> <topLayout id="WinV" title="Video" width="320" height="240"/> <region id="pictures" title="pictures" height="100%" fit="meet"/> </topLayout> <topLayout id="WinC" title="Captions" width="320" height="60"> <region id="captions" title="caption text" top="90%" fit="meet"/> </topLayout> </layout>
In this example, two top-level windows are defined ("WinV" and "WinC"), and two regions are defined with one region ("pictures") assigned to WinV and the other ("captions") to WinC. These windows may be opened and closed independently by the presentation or by a user.
The MultiWindowLayout module does not redefine the BasicLayout layout element. Instead, it simply extends the content model for that element, as described in the following subsection.
The layout element defined in the SMIL BasicLayout module is extended by adding topLayout element to the content model of the layout element if the type attribute of the layout element has the value "text/smil-basic-layout".
This section is normative.
This module includes two events that may be included in the integrating language profile.
This section is normative.
Allowing multiple topLayout elements within a single layout element implies support for multiple top level windows. If an implementation does not support multiple top level windows (because of device or processing restrictions), only content in the first top-level window defined in the layout will be rendered. Non-rendered objects will still participate in all SMIL timing and scheduling operations.
If used together with the root-layout element, any direct peer-level regions to the root-layout will be contained within the extents of the root-layout.
This section is normative.
The functionality in this module builds on top of the functionality in the BasicLayout module, which is a required prerequisite for inclusion of the MultiWindowLayout module.
The language profile must specify the declarative names for binding the topLayoutOpenEvent and topLayoutCloseEvent events described in the MultiWindowLayout Module Events section, as well as the bubbling behavior of the events.
See the full DTD for the SMIL Layout modules.
This section is informative.
The functionality in this module is a subset of the layout functionality in the [SMIL20] HierarchicalLayout module. The SubRegionLayout module for SMIL 2.1 does not introduce any new elements, attributes or attribute values beyond those available in SMIL 2.0. Unlike SMIL 2.0 HierarchicalLayout, SMIL 2.1 SubRegionLayout no longer defines elements and attributes for the registration element or the registration attributes. These are now defined in the AlginmentLayout module. Also unlike SMIL 2.0 HierarchicalLayout, the SMIL 2.1 SubRegionLayout module no longer provides support for an object in a (sub-)region to alter various non-positioning region attributes. This facility is now supported in the OverrideLayout module. Note that all functionality provided by the SMIL 2.0 HierarchicalLayout module is still supported in the SMIL2.1 Layout modules; only the organization of the modules has changed.
This section is informative.
In SMIL 2.1, the SubRegionLayout module defines two mechanisms for defining regions that are logically contained within a parent region (these are SMIL's sub-regions). First, the SubRegionLayout module extends the definition of the region element to allow for the specification of sub-regions within the layout section as hierarchical content of regions. Second, the SubRegionLayout module extends the attributes allowed on (media) object references to allow a dynamic sub-region to be defined in-line by that object instance only. All values given for placement within sub-regions are defined in terms of the parent region's placement attributes. The ability to define sub-regions can be exploited for authoring convenience or when changing the location of a group of related regions using SMIL 2.1 Animation.
In the following fragment, a parent region (CaptionedVideo) is defined that contains two hierarchical sub-regions: image and captions. The placement of the image and caption content is specified as relative to the dimensions of the parent region. This is an example of a statically-defined hierarchy of sub-regions.
<layout> ... <region id="CaptionedVideo" top="10px" left="20px" width="320" height="300"> <region id="image" title="image content" width="100%" height="240px" fit="meet"/> <region id="captions" title="caption text" top="240px" height="60px" fit="meet"/> </region> ... </layout>
A presentation using the above layout specification could also create a dynamic sub-region that is defined for use by this single object:
<body> ... <img id="Title" region="image" top="5%" left="3" bottom="10%" right="15%" src="TitleImage.png"/> ... </body>
This statement creates a sub-region with the named region "image" with the
given extents. In the example above, the effective boundaries of the
sub-region for the placement of this object are defined by declaring the top,
bottom, left and right edges of the region to the values shown, and then
filling the resulting sub-region with the specified image as directed by the
fit attribute. If the size of the media
object being displayed is smaller than that of the resulting sub-region, the
display will be similar to:
The use of in-line sub-region placement is intended as a light-weight alternative to defining a large number of single-use regions. Often, the dimensions used for the sub-region will match the dimensions of the media object being placed, but in all cases the values of the fit attribute will govern rendering of the object in the sub-region. The other attributes on the media element that would have been applied to a referenced region are applied to the sub-region instead. Note that the default values for the sub-region attributes are all 'auto', meaning that, by default, a sub-region is created having the same size and position as the parent region.
The use of sub-region positioning leads to authoring convenience and SMIL file compactness, since many separate regions do not need to be defined to handle incidental layout needs. The support for a hierarchy of sub-regions also allows multiple layout objects to be animated in concert by moving the parent region using SMIL 2.1 Animation facilities.
This section is normative.
This section defines extensions to the region and ref elements (and its synonyms) to support sub-region functionality.
This module extends the definition of the region element to include the definition of hierarchical sub-regions.
In the SubRegionLayout module, the region element has no additional attributes beyond that provided in the other included layout modules. However, the semantics of the z-index attribute are extended to support hierarchical sub-regions.
Just as with simple non-hierarchical regions, the stacking order of hierarchical regions may be affected by temporal activation. A region becomes active either when media begins rendering into it, or when one of its child regions becomes active. If two sibling regions have the same z-index, the region most recently made active is in front of the other region.
The SMIL 2.1 SubRegionLayout module extends the region element content model to include region elements.
The SubRegionLayout module extends the ref element to allow a separate, unnamed sub-region to be defined for the media object reference containing the sub-region positioning attributes.
The ref element defined in the MediaObject module and its synonyms are extended to include the following positioning attributes.
Conflicts between the region size attributes bottom, height, left, right, top, and width are resolved according to the rules for placeholder elements described in the section on the region element.
The sub-region positioning attributes will be ignored if they are used on an element without a region attribute (or, if supported, the regionName attribute) that resolves to a region element in the layout section.
This section is normative.
This module does not define any SMIL 2.1 events.
This section is normative.
The position of a region, as specified by its top and left attributes, is always relative to the parent geometry, which is defined by the parent element. For the SMIL 2.1 SubRegionLayout module, all hierarchical region elements must have as their immediate parent a region or topLayout element. The position of the hierarchical region is defined relative to that parent element. The intrinsic size of a region is equal to the size of the parent geometry.
When region sizes, as specified by width and height attributes are declared relative with the "%" notation, the size of the hierarchical region is relative to the size of the parent region. Sizes declared as absolute pixel values are absolute values even when used with a child region.
Note that a (hierarchical) region may be defined in such a way as to extend beyond the limits of its parent. In this case the child region must be clipped to the parent boundaries.
If a z-index attribute is defined on the hierarchical region, it is evaluated as a local index within that of the parent.
If the fit attribute and alignment attributes regPoint and regAlign are relevant to the placement of a particular media object, the interaction is the same as described in the definition of regPoint. If sub-region positioning attributes are used on a media object along with fit or the alignment attributes regPoint and regAlign, these attributes apply to the sub-region. In this case the fit setting on the referenced region element does not apply to the sub-region.
For both sub-region positioning and registration point use (as defined in the module), the value of the z-index attribute on the associated region is used. If media objects overlap spatially, existing rules for resolving z-index conflicts are applied.
Note that placement within the region may be defined in such a way as to extend the media object beyond the limits of the region. In this case the media object must be clipped to the region boundaries.
If two hierarchical regions with the same z-index attribute value overlap, the existing rules for z-index processing defined in the BasicLayout module are applied. Specifically, the rule concerning time priority is maintained, meaning that in the case of a z-index conflict, the media visible in the overlap will be determined by the region that is rendering the media that has most recently begun in time. If the conflicting media began at the same time, then the rule using the textual order of the media elements in the SMIL document is applied.
For example:
<layout> <root-layout width="640px" height="480px" /> <region id="whole" top="0px" left="0px" width="640px" height="480px" z-index="5"/> <region id="right" top="0px" left="320px" width="320px" height="480px" z-index="4"> <region id="inset" top="140px" left="80" width="160px" height="200px" z-index="6"/> <region id="inset2" top="140px" left="80" width="160px" height="200px" z-index="6"/> <region id="inset3" top="140px" left="80" width="160px" height="200px" z-index="7"/> </region> </layout> ... <par> <img id="A" region="whole" src="imageA.jpg" dur="10s"/> <img id="B" region="inset" src="imageB.jpg" dur="10s"/> </par> <par> <img id="D" region="inset2" src="imageD.jpg" begin="1s" dur="10s"/> <img id="C" region="inset" src="imageC.jpg" begin="0s" dur="10s"/> </par> <par> <img id="E" region="inset2" src="imageE.jpg" dur="10s"/> <img id="F" region="inset3" src="imageF.jpg" dur="10s"/> </par>
The functionality in this module builds on top of the functionality in the BasicLayout module and the MediaObject module, which are required prerequisites for inclusion of the SubRegionLayout module. If the functionality in this module is to be used with the topLayout construct, the MultiWindowLayout module is a prerequisite.
This section is normative.
See the full DTD for the SMIL Layout modules.
This section is informative.
This is a new module for SMIL 2.1. It contains the alignment functionality from [SMIL20] and adds the mediaAlign attribute to simplify the specification of object alignment and the soundAlign attribute to support audio 2-D placement.
This section is informative.
A registration element is an element defined within this module that is used to define a point within a region and a default object alignment algorithm about that point. The element can be used in a media object element, where it is associated with a region and an optional override alignment algorithm. The placement values within registration elements can be either percentages or pixels.
The use of registration points allows for consistent relative placement across regions. As such, registration points are defined outside of any single region.
For example, the following code describes two registration points (with id values "midPoint" and "topMargin"), one of which is defined as a relative location and one at a fixed pixel location, using the SMIL 2.1 AlignmentLayout syntax:
<layout>
<regPoint id="midPoint" top="50%" left="50%" regAlign="center" />
<regPoint id="topMargin" top="10" left="15" regAlign="topLeft" />
<region id="a" ... />
<region id="b" ... />
</layout>
In this example, the registration point with the id value "midPoint" has a default alignment algorithm that centers the media object about the defined point, while the registration point with the id value "topMargin" has a default alignment algorithm that places the top-left point of the media object at the registration point.
Various media elements could be displayed in the regions using the alignment points as follows:
<ref region="a" src="rtsp://..." dur="2s" regPoint="midPoint" />
<ref region="b" src="http://..." dur="2s"
regPoint="midPoint" regAlign="bottomRight"/>
<ref region="a" src="http://..." dur="2s" regPoint="topMargin" />
<ref region="b" src="http://..." dur="2s"
regPoint="topMargin" regAlign="center"/>
In the first example, a media object is centered in the middle of region a. In the second example, a media object has its bottom right corner centered in the middle of region b. Similarly, in the third example, a media object has its top left corner placed at a point 10,15 within region a, and in the fourth example, an object is centered around the point 10,15 in region b.
Registration points can be used to coordinate the placement of a set of media objects that do not share the same sizes. (For example, a set of images can be aligned to the center of a region.) They can also be used to coordinate the display of images about a particular point in a region, as in:
<layout>
<regPoint id="middle" top="50%" left="50%" regAlign="center" />
<region id="a" ... />
</layout>
...
<seq>
<ref region="a" src="rtsp://..." dur="2s" regPoint="middle"
regAlign="bottomRight"/>
<ref region="a" src="http://..." dur="2s" regPoint="middle"
regAlign="bottomLeft"/>
<ref region="a" src="http://..." dur="2s" regPoint="middle"
regAlign="topLeft"/>
<ref region="a" src="http://..." dur="2s" regPoint="middle"
regAlign="topRight"/>
</seq>
In this example, four objects are aligned over time to the middle of region. If any media element extends outside the bounds of a region, it will be clipped to the region.
Note that registration points are global within the context of a layout, and are not tied to a particular region, but can be reused across regions. As such, pixel-based offsets should be used with care.
For authoring convenience, SMIL AlignmentLayout module provides several pre-defined region registration points including topLeft, topMid, topRight, midLeft, center, midRight, bottomLeft, bottomMid, and bottomRight.
For example, media objects can be centered in any region like this:
<ref ... regPoint="center" regAlign="center" />
As a further convenience, SMIL AlignmentLayout module provides the mediaAlign attribute, which defines a combination of regAlign and regPoint attributes. For example, media objects can be centered in any region using mediaAlign as follows:
<ref ... mediaAlign="center" />
If the mediaAlign attribute and either (or both) of the regPoint and regAlign attributes are used together, the regPoint and/or regAlign value(s) will override the corresponding effective regPoint/regAlign value(s) defined by the mediaAlign value.
The default value of regAlign for a region is topLeft. If the regAlign attribute is used without a regPoint attribute, the alignment operation is relative to the upper left point of the region containing this object, that is, the behavior is the same as if the regPoint were to be specified as topLeft.
Rules for handling clipping of objects within regions based on the regPoint and regAlign attributes are defined below.
This section is normative.
This section defines the elements and attributes that make up the SMIL 2.1 AlignmentLayout module.
This element extends the content model of the layout element to support the registration point functionality described in this section.
If the type attribute of the layout element has the value "text/smil-basic-layout", it is extended to contain the following elements:
The regPoint element determines the (x, y) coordinates of a point relative to a region upper-left corner for use in aligning elements in the document's body on regions within a visual rendering surface. A regPoint may be defined using absolute (pixel) or relative (percentage) based values. The regPoint functionality is not defined and may not be used for media without intrinsic size.
For the purposes of regPoint functionality, media and regions are defined to be rectangular, with perpendicular sides, with the sides ordered clockwise top, right, bottom, and left. The top side is the edge closest to the point or edge of the display device considered "up".
None.
This module extends the definition of the region element to include the definition of default alignment policies for content in that region.
SMIL 2.1 AlignmentLayout module does not extend the region element content model.
The AlignmentLayout module extends the ref element to allow the positioning of media content within a region based on the an alignment registration point and an alignment policy.
The ref element defined in the MediaObject module is extended to include the regPoint attribute conjunction with the regPoint element. If a regPoint attribute is missing or refers to a non-existent regPoint element the value of the regAlign attributes are applied to the top-left point of the region containing the media object.
SMIL 2.1 AlignmentLayout module does not extend the ref element content model.
This section is normative.
This module does not define any SMIL 2.1 events.
This section is normative.
If an implementation cannot support the soundLevel attribute, it may be ignored. Even when processing is ignored, the attribute must be correctly parsed.
The regPoint element may only appear as an immediate child of a layout element.
If the registration point functionality is used on a media object that also uses sub-region positioning, the registration point applies to the subregion.
For registration point use, the value of the z-index attribute on the associated region is used. If media objects overlap spatially, existing rules for resolving z-index conflicts are applied.
Note that placement within the region may be defined in such a way as to extend the media object beyond the limits of the region. In this case the media object must be clipped to the region boundaries.
The default value of regAlign for a region is topLeft. If the regAlign attribute is used without a regPoint attribute, the alignment operation is relative to the upper left point of the region containing this object, that is, the behavior is the same as if the regPoint were to be specified as topLeft.
If the registration point or alignment functionality is used on a media object, the interaction between the regPoint attribute value, the regAlign attribute value, and the fit attribute value of the region in which the media object is displayed is as follows:
For example, a wide-screen video can be made to play in "letterbox" mode in a region, whose width-to-height ratio is smaller, by using regPoint ="center" and regAlign="center" and setting the region's fit value to "meet". The result is the video will touch the left and right edges of the region and will be centered vertically with the gaps above and below filled in with the region's background color.
The functionality in this module builds on top of the functionality in the BasicLayout module and the MediaObject module, which are required prerequisites for inclusion of the AlignmentLayout module.
This section is normative.
See the full DTD for the SMIL Layout modules.
This section is informative.
This Layout module is new for SMIL 2.1. It provides functionality that was not supported in previous versions of the SMIL language or its profiles.
This section is informative.
The SMIL 2.1 BackgroundTilingLayout module defines a backgroundImage attribute that allows an image to be placed onto the background of a layout region. It also provides the same capability for the root-layout and any of the topLayout element(s), if supported by the language profile. This module also defines the backgroundRepeat attribute to control tiling of the background image. These facilities are provided as a convenience extension to SMIL's use of a background color in a region. Although similar functionality can be defined by using a combination of the image media object, the z-index attribute and subregions positioning, this would require substantially more authoring effort.
The BackgroundTilingLayout module allows simple convenience tiling support in a manner that is consistent with CSS2 [CSS2]. For more complex background image operations such as support for animated images or non-image background content, users are expected to use the standard media placement and alignment facilities available in SMIL 2.1 Layout.
This section is normative.
This section defines the backgroundImage and backgroundRepeat attributes that make up the SMIL 2.1 BackgroundTilingLayout module.
This module extends the attribute set for the region, root-layout and topLayout elements.
The SMIL 2.1 BackgrondFillLayout module does not extend the content model for elements integrating these attributes.
This section is normative.
This module does not define any SMIL 2.1 events.
This section is normative.
For purposes of establishing an inheritance default value, the root-layout element defined in SMIL 2.1 BasicLayout is considered the root of the background image inheritance tree. In this case, both backgroundImage and backgroundRepeat may be used with the root-layout and region elements.
For profiles implementing the SMIL 2.1 MultiWindowLayout module, each top-level layout element is considered to define a separate root of the background image inheritance tree. In this case, both backgroundImage and backgroundRepeat may be used with any topLayout elements.
The functionality in this module builds on top of the functionality in the BasicLayout module, which is a required prerequisite for inclusion of the BackgroundTilingLayout module. If this functionality is to be applied to multiple top-level windows, the MultiWindowLayout module must be included.
This section is normative.
See the full DTD for the SMIL Layout modules.
This section is informative.
The OverrideLayout module contains attributes which were defined as part of the SMIL 2.0 HierarchicalLayout module for allowing placement values in regions to be overridden by attributes on media object references. While the OverrideLayout module is new, the functionality it describes was also available in SMIL 2.0. The only difference in functionality is that certain attributes from the AlignmentLayout module are also support in the SMIL 2.1 version.
This section is informative.
The SMIL 2.1 OverrideLayout module includes the ability to use the fit, z-index, and backgroundColor attributes on objects displayed in a region in order to declare different behavior from that on the region element.
For languages and profiles integrating the AlignmentLayout module, the ability to specify override behavior for the regAlign, regPoint, mediaAlign, and soundAlign, attributes are defined as part of that module's specification and do not need to be explicitly specified in the OverrideLayout module.
This section is normative.
This module does not define any new elements. It provides extensions to the ref element (and its synonyms).
The fit, z-index, and backgroundColor attributes are added to media object references.
The SMIL 2.1 OverrideLayout module does not extend the content model for the ref element integrating these attributes.
This section is normative.
This module does not define any SMIL 2.1 events.
This section is normative.
The OverrideLayout module allows individual media object references to override the default values for certain attributes. In all cases, the attributes will apply only to the (sub-)region referenced by the media object. Changes will not propagate to child sub-regions or to parent regions.
The functionality in this module builds on top of the functionality in the BasicLayout module, which is a required prerequisite for inclusion of the OverrideLayout module.
This section is normative.
See the full DTD for the SMIL Layout modules.
This section is informative.
The SMIL 2.1 specification leaves the SMIL 2.0 Linking Modules [SMIL20-linking] unchanged.
This section is informative.
The SMIL 2.1 Linking Modules define the SMIL 2.1 document attributes and elements for navigational hyperlinking. These are navigations through the SMIL presentation that can be triggered by user interaction or other triggering events, such as temporal events. SMIL 2.1 provides only for in-line link elements. Links are limited to uni-directional single-headed links (i.e. all links have exactly one source and one destination resource).
The SMIL 2.1 Linking Modules are named LinkingAttributes, BasicLinking and ObjectLinking. The LinkingAttributes module includes a set of attributes used to provide SMIL linking semantics to linking elements. The BasicLinking module includes the SMIL 2.1 linking elements themselves. The ObjectLinking module includes additional optional linking features that a language profile may wish to include. Note that the BasicLinking module explicitly includes the attributes from the LinkingAttributes module on its elements.
XPointer [XPTR] allows components of XML documents to be addressed in terms of their placement in the XML structure rather than on their unique identifiers. This allows referencing of any portion of an XML document without having to modify that document. Without XPointer, pointing within a document may require adding unique identifiers to it, or inserting specific elements into the document, such as a named anchor in HTML. XPointers are put within the fragment identifier part of a URI [URI] attribute value. The SMIL 2.1 specification allows but does not require that user agents be able to process XPointers in SMIL 2.1 URI attribute values.
Where possible, SMIL linking constructs have the same names as constructs from XLink [XLINK]. This makes it easier to learn to write linking in code in both formats: authors familiar with XLink can more quickly learn SMIL linking, and vice versa. It also makes it easier for SMIL code to be processed into and recognized as XLink code when the appropriate transform mechanisms become available. However, the SMIL linking attributes are distinct from the XLink constructs and are part of a separate namespace. Using SMIL's modularization mechanism, these constructs are not in the XLink namespace but in the namespaces defined in the SMIL 2.1 specification.
SMIL profiles may use XML Base [XMLBase]. The SMIL 2.1 Language Profile, for example, includes support for XML Base. When XML Base is incorporated into a profile, XML Base declarations apply to the URI attribute values of SMIL used in that profile's documents. These attributes include the href attribute of the SMIL BasicLinking Module and the src attribute of the SMIL BasicMedia Module.
The elements names, attributes names and attribute values of SMIL linking constructs are, where possible, the same as constructs in XHTML [XHTML11] with corresponding linking behavior. This facilitates learning and writing in both languages and avoids confusion. It may also facilitate the processibility of both languages' linking constructs as XLink once the format is released. The linking constructs in SMIL, however, fall under the namespaces defined in SMIL 2.1, and not under any XHTML-related namespace.
The SMIL 2.1 Linking Modules support name fragment identifiers and the '#' connector. The fragment part is an id value that identifies one of the elements within the referenced SMIL document. With this construct, SMIL 2.1 supports locators as currently used in HTML (that is, it uses locators of the form "http://www.example.org/some/path#anchor1"), with the difference that the values are of unique identifiers and not the values of "name" attributes. Of course, this type of link can only target elements that have an attribute of type ID.
Links using fragment identifiers enable authors to encode links to a SMIL 2.1 presentation at the start time of a particular element rather than at the beginning of its presentation. If a link containing a fragment part is followed, the presentation should start as if the user had fast-forwarded the presentation represented by the destination document to the effective begin of the element designated by the fragment. See the discussion of linking to timing constructs in the SMIL 2.1 Timing and Synchronization Modules for more information.
There are special semantics defined for following a link containing a fragment part into a document containing SMIL timing. These semantics are defined in the SMIL 2.1 Timing and Synchronization Modules.
Due to its integrating nature, the presentation of a SMIL 2.1 document may involve other (non-SMIL) applications or plug-ins. For example, a SMIL 2.1 user agent may use an HTML plug-in to display an embedded HTML page. Vice versa, an HTML user agent may use a SMIL plug-in to display a SMIL 2.1 document embedded in an HTML page. Note that this is only one of the supported methods of integrating SMIL 2.1 and HTML. Another alternative is to use the merged language approach. See the SMIL 2.1 Modules for further details.
In embedded presentations, links may be defined by documents at different levels and conflicts may arise. In this case, the link defined by the containing document should take precedence over the link defined by the embedded object. Note that since this might require communication between the user agent and the plug-in, SMIL 2.1 implementations may choose not to comply with this recommendation.
If a link is defined in an embedded SMIL 2.1 document, traversal of the link affects only the embedded SMIL 2.1 document.
If a link is defined in a non-SMIL document which is embedded in a SMIL 2.1 document, link traversal can only affect the presentation of the embedded document and not the presentation of the containing SMIL 2.1 document. This restriction may be relaxed in future versions of SMIL.
When a link into a SMIL 2.1 document contains an un-resolvable fragment identifier ("dangling link") because it identifies an element that is not actually part of the document, SMIL 2.1 software should ignore the fragment identifier, and start playback from the beginning of the document.
When a link into a SMIL 2.1 document contains a fragment identifier which identifies an element that is the content of a switch element, SMIL 2.1 software should interpret this link as going to the outermost ancestor switch element instead. In other words, the link should be considered as accessing the switch ancestor element that is not itself contained within a switch.
The SMIL 2.1 LinkingAttribues module defines several attributes that a language profile can include on linking elements to add SMIL linking semantics to those elements. The elements in the BasicLinking Module explicitly include these attributes. These attributes can be applied to linking elements from other namespaces if allowed by the language profile.
The default value is play.
The default value of show is replace.
Each of the following attributes has the same syntax as the attributes of the same name in HTML [HTML4] and, where applicable, the same semantics:
Examples
These examples are encoded in the SMIL 2.1 Language Profile.
Example 1
This examples shows the use of the target and accesskey attributes. The upper half of the display shows an image. If the user clicks on the image, a SMIL presentation is played in the lower half of the display. The same thing happens if the user hits the 'a' key.
<smil xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/SMIL21/Language"> <head> <layout> <region id="source" height="50%"/> <region id="destination" top ="50%"/> </layout> </head> <body> <a href="embeddedSMIL.smil" target="destination" accesskey="a"> <img region="source" src="source.jpg" dur="indefinite"/> </a> </body> </smil>
Example 2
This example shows the use of the tabindex attribute on media object elements. The HTML file "caption1.html" has 3 links, so the first 3 tabs focus on those links in turn. The file caption2.html has 4 links, so tabs 4-7 focus on them in turn. Tabs 8 and 9 focus the two links inside v1.mpg. Tab 10 focuses on the whole presentation of graph.imf. If any of the first 9 tabbed foci is activated, then a link inside one of the embedded presentations caption1.html, caption2.rtx or v1.mpg is triggered, affecting only that presentation. If the 10th tabbed focus is activated, then the SMIL presentation itself is affected, loading http://www.example.org/presentation into the same presentation space.
<smil xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/SMIL21/Language"> ... <seq> <video src="http://www.example.org/graph.imf"/> <par> <a tabindex="4" href="http://www.example.org/presentation"> <video src="http://www.example.org/graph.imf" ... /> </a> <video tabindex="3" src="http://www.example.org/v1.mpg" ... /> <text tabindex="1" src="http://www.example.org/caption1.html" ... /> <text tabindex="2" src="http://www.example.org/caption2.html" ... /> </par> </seq>
The link elements allows the description of navigational links between objects. SMIL 2.1 linking provides only uni-directional, single-headed, in-line link elements.
The functionality of the a element is very similar to the functionality of the a element in HTML [HTML4]. For synchronization purposes, the a element is transparent. That is, it does not influence the synchronization of its child elements. a elements may not be nested. An a element must have an href attribute.
An a element can specify several triggers for its traversal simultaneously. For example, the element's content visual media can be selected by the user or the key specified by the accesskey attribute can be typed to trigger a traversal. In cases where multiple triggers are specified, any of them can activate the link's traversal. That is, a logical OR is applied to the list of triggering conditions to determine if traversal occurs.
Traversal occurs if one of the conditions for traversal is met during the time that the a element is active. An a element is sensitive if the media or elements that it contains are active or frozen. See the SMIL 2.1 Timing and Synchronization Modules for further details. For timing purposes an a element is considered to be discrete media, that is, the intrinsic duration is 0. Note that an a element is not a time container and does not constrain the timing of its child elements.
The a element also includes the attributes defined in the SMIL 2.1 LinkingAttributes Module:
Element Content
The content of the a element must be defined by the language profile. In general, it is expected that a elements may contain the media and timing elements present in the language profile as children.
Other Integration Requirements
Language profiles that apply SMIL 2.1 timing to the a element must specify the default and allowed values of the fill attribute on the a element. Languages applying SMIL 2.1 timing to the a element wishing to remain compatible with SMIL 1.0, such as the SMIL 2.1 language profile, must default the value of the fill attribute on the a element to auto, and should consider fixing the value to auto. In all other cases, for compatibility, it is recommended to use a default value of auto.
If not otherwise specified by the profile, the value of the fill attribute on the a element is fixed to auto.
Examples
These examples are encoded in the SMIL 2.1 Language Profile.
Example 1
The link starts up the new presentation replacing the presentation that was playing.
<smil xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/SMIL21/Language"> ... <a href="http://www.example.org/somewhereelse.smi"> <video src="rtsp://www.example.org/graph.imf" region="l_window"/> </a>
Example 2
The link starts up the new presentation in addition to the presentation that was playing.
<smil xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/SMIL21/Language"> ... <a href="http://www.example.org/somewhereelse.smi" show="new"> <video src="rtsp://www.example.org/graph.imf" region="l_window"/> </a>
This could allow a SMIL 2.1 player to spawn off an HTML user agent:
<smil xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/SMIL21/Language"> ... <a href="http://www.example.org/somewebpage.html" show="new"> <video src="rtsp://www.example.org/graph.imf" region="l_window"/> </a>
Example 3
The link starts up the new presentation and pauses the presentation that was playing.
<smil xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/SMIL21/Language"> ... <a href="http://www.example.org/somewhereelse.smi" show="new" sourcePlaystate="pause"> <video src="rtsp://www.example.org/graph.imf" region="l_window"/> </a>
Example 4
The following example contains a link from an element in one presentation A to the middle of another presentation B. This would play presentation B starting from the effective begin of the element with id "next".
Presentation A: <smil xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/SMIL21/Language"> ... <a href="http://www.example.org/presentationB#next"> <video src="rtsp://www.example.org/graph.imf"/> </a> Presentation B (http://www.example.org/presentation): <smil xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/SMIL21/Language"> ... <seq> <video src="rtsp://www.example.org/graph.imf"/> <par> <video src="rtsp://www.example.org/timbl.rm" region="l_window"/> <video id="next" src="rtsp://www.example.org/v1.rm" region="r_window"/> ^^^^^^^^^ <text src="rtsp://www.example.org/caption1.html" region="l_2_title"/> <text src="rtsp://www.example.org/caption2.rtx" region="r_2_title"/> </par> </seq>
The functionality of the a element is restricted in that it only allows associating a link with a complete media object. The HTML area element [HTML4] has demonstrated that it is useful to associate links with spatial portions of an object's visual display.
The semantics of the area element in SMIL 2.1 is the same as it is for HTML in that it can specify that a spatial portion of a visual object can be selected to trigger the appearance of the link's destination. The coords attribute specifies this spatial portion. In contrast, if an a element is applied to a visual object, then it specifies that any visual portion of that object can be selected to trigger the link traversal.
The area element also extends the syntax and semantics of the HTML area element by providing for linking from non-spatial portions of the media object's display. When used in profiles that include SMIL 2.1 Timing and Synchronization Modules, the area element allows breaking up an object into temporal subparts, using attributes such as the begin and end attributes. The values of the begin and end attributes are relative to the beginning of the containing media object. The area element can allow to make a subpart of the media object the destination of a link, using these timing attributes and the id attribute.
The anchor element of SMIL 1.0 [SMIL10] is deprecated in favor of area. For purposes of this specification of SMIL 2.1, the anchor element should be treated as a synonym for area
The area element can have the attributes listed below, with the same syntax as in HTML [HTML4] and, where applicable, the same semantics:
The following attributes of the area element are unique to SMIL and not found in HTML. They are defined above in the section on LinkingAttributes module attributes:
Element Content
The area element is empty.
Examples
These examples are encoded in the SMIL 2.1 Language Profile.
1) Decomposing a video into temporal segments
In the following example, the temporal structure of an interview in a newscast (camera shot on interviewer asking a question followed by shot on interviewed person answering) is exposed by fragmentation:
<smil xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/SMIL21/Language"> <body> <video src="video" title="Interview" > <area id="firstQ" begin="0s" dur="20s" title="first question" /> <area id="firstA" begin="first0.end" dur="50s" title="first answer" /> </video> </body> </smil>
2) Associating links with spatial segments In the following example, the screen space taken up by a video clip is split into two sections. A different link is associated with each of these sections.
<smil xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/SMIL21/Language"> <body> <video src="video" title="Interview" > <area shape="rect" coords="5,5,50,50" title="Journalist" href="http://www.example.org/journalist"/> <area shape="rect" coords="60,5,100,50" title="Subject" href="http://www.example.org/subject"/> </video> </body> </smil>
3) Associating links with temporal segments
In the following example, the duration of a video clip is split into two sub-intervals. A different link is associated with each of these sub-intervals.
<smil xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/SMIL21/Language"> <body> <video src="video" title="Interview" > <area begin="0s" dur="20s" title="first question" href="http://www.example.org/question"/> <area begin="20s" dur="50s" title="first answer" href="http://www.example.org/answer"/> </video> </body> </smil>
4) Associating links with spatial subparts
In the following example, two areas are assigned in the screen space taken up by a video clip. A different link is associated with each of these areas.
<smil xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/SMIL21/Language"> ... <video src="http://www.example.org/CoolStuff"> <area href="http://www.example.org/AudioVideo" coords="0%,0%,50%,50%"/> <area href="http://www.example.org/Style" coords="50%,50%,100%,100%"/> </video>
5) Associating links with temporal subparts
In the following example, the duration of a video clip is split into two subintervals. A different link is associated with each of these subintervals.
<smil xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/SMIL21/Language"> ... <video src="http://www.example.org/CoolStuff"> <area href="http://www.example.org/AudioVideo" begin="0s" end="5s"/> <area href="http://www.example.org/Style" begin="5s" end="10s"/> </video>
6) Jumping to a subpart of an object
The following example contains a link from an element in one presentation A to the middle of a video object contained in another presentation B. This would play presentation B starting from second 5 in the video. That is, the presentation would start as if the user had fast-forwarded the whole presentation to the point at which the designated fragment in the "CoolStuff" video begins.
Presentation A: <smil xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/SMIL21/Language"> ... <a href="http://www.example.org/mm/presentationB#tim"> <video id="graph" src="rtsp://www.example.org/graph.imf" region="l_window"/> </a> Presentation B: <smil xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/SMIL21/Language"> ... <video src="http://www.example.org/CoolStuff"> <area id="joe" begin="0s" end="5s"/> <area id="tim" begin="5s" end="10s"/> </video>
7) Combining different uses of links
The following example shows how the different uses of associated links can be used in combination.
Presentation A: <smil xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/SMIL21/Language"> ... <a href="http://www.example.org/mm/presentationB#tim"> <video id="graph" src="rtsp://www.example.org/graph.imf" region="l_window"/> </a> Presentation B: <smil xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/SMIL21/Language"> ... <video src="http://www.example.org/CoolStuff"> <area id="joe" begin="0s" end="5s" coords="0%,0%,50%,50%" href="http://www.example.org/"/> <area id="tim" begin="5s" end="10s" coords="0%,0%,50%,50%" href="http://www.example.org/Tim"/> </video>
8) The coords attribute and re-sized images
The following example shows the image file "example.jpg", which has the dimensions of 100x100 pixels. The active area for "example1.smil" is the entire display space, which is the cropped upper-left quarter of the original image. The active area for "example2.smil" cannot be triggered because the image area corresponding to it was cropped.
<smil xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/SMIL21/Language"> <head> <layout> <region id="region" right="50" bottom="50"/> </layout> </head> <body> <img src="example.jpg" region="region"> <area shape="rect" coords="0%,0%,50%,50%" href="example1.smil"/> <area shape="rect" coords="50%,50%,100%,100%" href="example2.smil"/> </img> </body </smil>
The contents of this section represent capabilities that can be optionally included in the document profile. These features may or may not be included in a language profile, but they should not be optional features within a profile. This module requires support of the BasicLinking Module.
A profile may choose to include the fragment attribute as part of the area element. It provides for a host document to externally include a link in a contained media object that will be processed at the level of the host document.
The value of the fragment attribute must be recognizable by the process managing the media object as an activate-able portion of the object. If the referenced media object is an HTML file, then the value of the fragment attribute is a named anchor within the HTML file. If the referenced media object is an XML file, then the value of the fragment attribute is a fragment identifier (the part that comes after a '#' in a URI [URI]).
Take for example the following SMIL code. It establishes a portion of the display as a formatted text menu. Clicking on an item in this menu triggers a link to elsewhere within the presentation.
<smil xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/SMIL21/Language"> ... <ref src="menu.html" region="menubar"> <area fragment="menuitem1" href="#selection1"/> </ref>
In the rendered HTML display, there is a portion of displayed text that is marked-up as an area with the name "menuitem1". If the user clicks on this during the SMIL presentation, a SMIL-activated link is triggered, navigating to the portion of the SMIL document with the ID "selection1". If the HTML area named "menuitem1" has an href attribute itself, then this hyperlink is overridden - only the SMIL hyperlink is processed. HTML area with href attributes and no associated SMIL fragment attributes are not overridden. This HTML area activates links within the embedded HTML presentation when clicked upon.
Use of the fragment attribute can override linking in the embedded media. If the attribute refers to a portion of the embedded media that is a link within that media, activating that link will trigger navigation in the SMIL presentation only, and not in the embedded presentation. For example, suppose a fragment attribute refers to a named anchor in an embedded HTML document. This named area has an href attribute, making it the starting point of a potential navigation within the HTML presentation itself. When embedded in the SMIL presentation, activation of this part of the HTML display triggers the SMIL link and not the HTML link. Links in embedded media that are not overridden in this manner, on the other hand, continue to trigger navigation within the embedded display when activated. All functionality defined for the SMIL link will override any equivalent functionality defined for the link in the embedded media. With the above example, the alt attribute of the SMIL area element would override the alt tag of the embedded HTML anchor.
The referencing performed by the fragment attribute only applies to one level of depth of embedded media. It only applies to directly embedded media; it does not apply to media embedded in turn within media embedded in a SMIL presentation. For example, consider a SMIL presentation that embeds a second SMIL presentation within it. The media object element of the first that embeds the second has within it an area element with a fragment attribute. The value of this attribute applies only to the embedded SMIL document itself. It does not apply to any media embedded within this second SMIL presentation.
Examples
These examples are encoded in the SMIL 2.1 Language Profile.
Associating links with syntactic subparts
Below is an example with an integrated HTML file that displays a menu of
link one link two
The user can click on one of the menu items, and the matching HTML file is displayed. That is, if user clicks on "link one", the "Link1.html" file is displayed in the "LinkText" region. Note that the links defined inside the embedded HTML presentation, those to "overridden1.html" and "overridden2.html" are not active when embedded here because they are overridden by the fragments.
The "menu.html" file contains the code:
<html> ... <A NAME="link1" HREF="overridden1.html">link one</A><BR/> <A NAME="link2" HREF="overridden2.html">link two</A>
The SMIL 2.1 file is:
<smil xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/SMIL21/Language"> <head> <layout> <region id="HTML" width="100" height="100"/> <region id="LinkText" width="100" top ="100"/> </layout> </head> <body> <par> <text region="HTML" src="menu.html" dur="indefinite"> <area fragment="link1" href="#LinkOne"/> <area fragment="link2" href="#LinkTwo"/> </text> <excl dur="indefinite" > <text id="LinkOne" region="LinkText" src="Link1.html" dur="indefinite"/> <text id="LinkTwo" region="LinkText" src="Link2.html" dur="indefinite"/> </excl> </par> </body> </smil>
This section is informative.
The only changes to the Media Object Modules for SMIL 2.1 are :
This section is informative.
This section defines the SMIL media object modules, which are composed of a BasicMedia module and five modules with additional functionality that build on top of the BasicMedia module: the MediaClipping, MediaClipMarkers, MediaParam, MediaAccessibility, and MediaDescription modules. These modules contain elements and attributes used to describe media objects. Additionally, a BrushMedia element is provided which can be used as a media object. Since these elements and attributes are defined in a series of modules, designers of other markup languages can reuse the SMIL media module when they need to include media objects into their language.
Changes with respect to the media object elements in SMIL 1.0 provide additional functionality that was brought up as requirements of the Working Group, and those differences are explained in Appendix A and Appendix B.
This section is normative.
SMIL provides a number of timing-related concepts that are used to determine activation, duration and termination of media objects in a presentation. The temporal semantics of these concepts are discussed in the SMIL 2.1 Timing and Synchronization module.
The distinction between continuous and discrete media is sometimes arbitrary and may be SMIL renderer dependent. For example, animated images that do not have a well-defined duration (simply a repeating collection of frames) are classified for SMIL scheduling purposes as being discrete media; such objects have an intrinsic scheduling duration of zero seconds.
This module defines the baseline functionality of a SMIL player. It is very close in functionality to the media object specification in SMIL 1.0.
This section is normative.
This section is normative.
SMIL defines a single generic media object element that allows the inclusion of media objects into a SMIL presentation. Media objects are included by reference (using a URI).
In addition to the ref element, SMIL allows the use of the following set of synonyms:
All of these media elements are semantically identical. When playing back a media object, the player must not derive the exact type of the media object from the name of the media object element. Instead, it must rely solely on other sources about the type, such as the type information communicated by a server or the operating system, or by using type information contained in the typeattribute.
Authors, however, should make sure that the group into which of the media object falls (animation, audio, img, video, text or textstream) is reflected in the element name. This is in order to increase the readability of the SMIL document. Some SMIL implementations may require the use of an element type that matches the information type of the object. When in doubt about the group of a media object, authors should use the generic "ref" element.
The animation element defined here should not be confused with the elements defined in the SMIL 2.1 Animation Module. The animation element defined in this module is used to include an animation (such as a vector graphics animation) by reference. This is in contrast to the elements defined in the Animation module, which provide an in-line syntax for the animation of attributes and properties of other elements.
Anchors and links can be attached to visual media objects, i.e. media objects rendered on a visual abstract rendering surface.
Languages implementing the SMIL BasicMedia Module must define which attributes may be attached to media object elements. In all languages implementing the SMIL BasicMedia module, media object elements can have the following attributes:
Content type of the media object referenced by the src attribute. The usage of this attribute depends on the protocol of the src attribute.
When the content represented by a URL is available in many data formats, implementations MAY use the type value to influence which of the multiple formats is used. For instance, on a server implementing HTTP content negotiation, the client may use the type attribute to order the preferences in the negotiation. The type attribute is not intended for use in media sub-stream selection.
For protocols not enumerated in this specification, implementations should use the following rules: When the media is encapsulated in a media file and delivered intact to the SMIL user agent via a protocol designed for delivery as a complete file, the media type as provided by this protocol should take precedence over the type attribute value. For protocols which deliver the media in a media-aware fashion, such as those delivering media in a manner using or dependent upon the specific type of media, the application of the type attribute is not defined by this specification.
Element Content
Languages utilizing the SMIL BasicMedia module must define the complete set of elements which may act as children of media object elements. There are currently no required children of a media object defined in the BasicMedia Module, but languages utilizing the BasicMedia module may impose requirements beyond this specification.
This section is normative.
If the including profile supports the XMLBase functionality [XMLBase] , the values of the src and longdesc attributes on the media object elements must be interpreted in the context of the relevant XMLBase URI prefix.
This section is normative.
This section defines the elements and attributes that make up the SMIL MediaParam Module definition. Languages implementing elements and attributes found in the MediaParam module must implement all elements and attributes defined below, as well as BasicMedia.
This section is normative.
The param element allows a general parameter value to be sent to a media object renderer as a name/value pair. This parameter is sent to the renderer at the time that the media object is processed by the scheduler. Any number of param elements may appear (in any order) in the content of a media object element or in a paramGroup element. If a given parameter is defined multiple times, the lexically last version of that parameter value should be used.
The syntax of names and values is assumed to be understood by the object's implementation. This document does not specify how user agents should retrieve name/value pairs nor how they should interpret parameter names that appear multiple times within the same paramGroup element or as children of a media object.
Example
This section is informative.
<ref src="http://www.example.com/herbert.face"> <param name="mood" value="surly" valuetype="data"/> <param name="accessories" value="baseball-cap,nose-ring" valuetype="data"/> </ref>
This section is normative.
The paramGroup element provides a convenience mechanism for defining a group of media parameters that may be used with several different media objects. If present, the paramGroup element must appear in the head section of the document. The content of the paramGroup element consists of zero or more param elements. The paramGroup element may not contain nested paramGroup element definitions.
Element attributes
Examples
This section is informative.
This section contains several fragments that illustrate uses of the paramGroup element.
In the following fragment, a paramGroup is created to define parameters that are passed to several different media objects:
<smil ... > <head> ... <paramGroup id="clown"> <param name="mood" value="upBeat" valuetype="data"/> <param name="accessories" value="flowers,dunceCap"/> </paramGroup> ... </head> <body> ... <ref src="http://www.example.com/andy.face" paramGroup="clown"/> ... <ref src="http://www.example.com/sally.face" paramGroup="clown"/> ... </body> </smil>
In the following example, a media object provides an additional param value:
<smil ... > <head> ... <paramGroup id="clown"> <param name="mood" value="upBeat" valuetype="data"/> <param name="accessories" value="flowers,dunceCap"/> </paramGroup> ... </head> <body> ... <ref src="http://www.example.com/andy.face" paramGroup="clown"> <param name="gender" value="male"/> </ref> ... </body> </smil>
In this final example, a media object provides a duplicate param value. The behavior in this case depends on the media renderer; all param values are passed to the renderer in the lexical order of the SMIL source file. It is expected that the lexically last value for any parameter sent to the renderer be used, if possible.
<smil ... > <head> ... <paramGroup id="clown"> <param name="mood" value="upBeat" valuetype="data"/> <param name="accessories" value="flowers,dunceCap"/> </paramGroup> ... </head> <body> ... <ref src="http://www.example.com/andy.face" paramGroup="clown"> <param name="gender" value="male"/> <param name="mood" value="depressed" valuetype="data"/> </ref> ... </body> </smil>
This section is normative.
In addition to the element attributes defined in BasicMedia, media object elements can have the attributes and attribute extensions defined below. The inclusion or exclusion of these elements is left as an option in the language profile.
Values:
Example:
<par> <seq> <par> <img src="image1.jpg" region="foo1" fill="freeze" erase="never" .../> <audio src="audio1.au"/> </par> <par> <img src="image2.jpg" region="foo2" fill="freeze" erase="never" .../> <audio src="audio2.au"/> </par> ... <par> <img src="imageN.jpg" region="fooN" fill="freeze" erase="never" .../> <audio src="audioN.au"/> </par> </seq> </par>
In this example, each image is successively displayed and remains displayed until the end of the presentation.
Values:
As an example of how this would be used, many animated GIFs intrinsically repeat indefinitely. The application of mediaRepeat= "strip" allows an author to remove the intrinsic repeat behavior of an animated GIF on a per-reference basis, causing the animation to display only once, regardless of the repeat value embedded in the GIF.
When mediaRepeat is used in conjunction with SMIL Timing Module attributes, this attribute is applied first, so that the repeat behavior can then be controlled with the SMIL Timing Module attributes such as repeatCount and repeatDur.
Values:
This section is normative.
Any profile that integrates the erase attribute must define what is meant by "display area" and further define the interaction. See the definition of erase for more details.
The supported uses of the type and valuetype attributes on the param element must be specified by the integrating profile. If a profile does not specify this, the type and valuetype attributes will be ignored in that profile.
This section is normative.
This section defines the attributes that make up the SMIL MediaClipping Module definition. Languages implementing the attributes found in the MediaClipping module must implement the attributes defined below, as well as BasicMedia.
This section is normative.
Clip-value-MediaClipping ::= [ Metric "=" ] ( Clock-val | Smpte-val ) Metric ::= Smpte-type | "npt" Smpte-type ::= "smpte" | "smpte-30-drop" | "smpte-25" Smpte-val ::= Hours ":" Minutes ":" Seconds [ ":" Frames [ "." Subframes ]] Hours ::= Digit+ /* see XML 1.0 for a definition of ´Digit´*/ Minutes ::= Digit Digit; range from 00 to 59 Seconds ::= Digit Digit; range from 00 to 59 Frames ::= Digit Digit; smpte range = 00-29, smpte-30-drop range = 00-29, smpte-25 range = 00-24 Subframes ::= Digit Digit; smpte range = 00-01, smpte-30-drop range = 00-01, smpte-25 range = 00-01
Informative Note: The definition of Subframe value in
timecode introduces an inconsistency between SMIL 1.0 and SMIL 2.1.
At this time of revision, as some documents may have already been
written using this Subframe value we have decided not to delete it from
the Recommendation.
User agent should ignore subframe. Subframe should not be used as it is
deprecated.The value of this attribute consists of a metric specifier,
followed by a time value whose syntax and semantics depend on the
metric specifier.
The value of this attribute consists of a metric specifier, followed by a time value whose syntax and semantics depend on the metric specifier. The following formats are allowed:
The time value has the format
hours:minutes:seconds:frames.subframes. If the subframe value is
zero, it may be omitted. Subframes are measured in one-hundredths
of a frame.
Examples:
clipBegin="smpte=10:12:33"
clipBegin="npt=123.45s"
clipBegin="npt=12:05:35.3
"If no metric specifier is given, then a default of "npt=" is presumed.
When used in conjunction with the timing attributes from the SMIL Timing Module, this attribute is applied before any SMIL Timing Module attributes.
clipBegin may also be expressed as clip-begin for compatibility with SMIL 1.0. Software supporting the SMIL 2.1 Language Profile must be able to handle both clipBegin and clip-begin, whereas software supporting only the SMIL MediaClipping module only needs to support clipBegin. If an element contains both a clipBegin and a clip-begin attribute, then clipBegin takes precedence over clip-begin.
Example:
<audio src="radio.wav" clip-begin="5s" clipBegin="10s" />
The clip begins at second 10 of the audio, and not at second 5, since the clip-begin attribute is ignored. A strict SMIL 1.0 implementation will start the clip at second 5 of the audio, since the clipBegin attribute will not be recognized by that implementation. See Changes to SMIL 1.0 Media Object Attributes for more discussion on this topic.
See Changes to SMIL 1.0 Media Object Attributes for more discussion on this topic.
This section is normative.
This section defines the attribute extensions that make up the SMIL MediaClipMarkers Module definition. Languages implementing elements and attributes found in the MediaClipMarkers module must implement all elements and attributes defined below, as well as BasicMedia and MediaClipping.
This section is normative.
Clip-value-MediaClipMarkers ::= Clip-value-MediaClipping |
"marker" "=" URI-reference
/* "URI-reference" is defined in [URI] */
Example: Assume that a recorded radio transmission consists of a sequence of songs, which are separated by announcements by a disk jockey. The audio format supports marked time points, and the begin of each song or announcement with number X is marked as songX or djX respectively. To extract the first song using the "marker" metric, the following audio media element can be used:
<audio clipBegin="marker=#song1" clipEnd="marker=#dj1" />
This section is normative.
This section defines the elements and attributes that make up the SMIL BrushMedia Module definition. Languages implementing elements and attributes found in the BrushMedia module must implement all elements and attributes defined below.
This section is normative.
The brush element is a lightweight media object element which allows an author to paint a solid color or other pattern in place of a media object. Thus, all attributes associated with media objects may also be applied to brush. Since all information about the media object is specified in the attributes of the element itself, the src attribute is ignored, and thus is not required.
This section is normative.
Profiles including the BrushMedia module must provide semantics for using a color attribute value of inherit on the brush element. Because inherit doesn't make sense in all contexts, a profile may choose to prohibit the use of this value. The value of inherit is prohibited on the color attribute of the brush element for profiles that do not otherwise define these semantics.
This section is normative.
This section defines the elements and attributes that make up the SMIL MediaAccessibility Module definition. Languages implementing elements and attributes found in the MediaAccessibility module must implement all elements and attributes defined below, as well as MediaDescription.
This section is normative.
It is strongly recommended that all media object elements have an "alt" attribute with a brief, meaningful description. Authoring tools should ensure that no element can be introduced into a SMIL document without this attribute.
The value of this attribute is a CDATA text string.
Elements that contain alt, title or longdesc attributes are read by the assistive technology according to the following rules:
Example
<par> <video id="carvideo" src="car.rm" region="videoregion" title="Car video" alt="Illustration of relativistic time dilation and length contraction." longdesc="carvideodesc.html" readIndex="3"/> <audio id="caraudio" src="caraudio.rm" region="videoregion" title="Car presentation voiceover" begin="bar.begin"/> <animation id="cardiagram" src="car.svg" region="animregion" title="Diagram of the car" readIndex="2"/> <img id="scvad" src="scv.png" region="videoregion" title="Advertisement for Sugar Coated Vegetables" readIndex="1"/> </par>
In this example, an assistive device that is presenting titles should present the "scvad" element title first (having the lowest readIndex value of "1"), followed by the "cardiagram" title, followed by the "carvideo" element title, and finally present the "caraudio" element title (having an implicit readIndex value of "0").
This section is normative.
This section defines the elements and attributes that make up the SMIL MediaDescription Module definition. Languages implementing elements and attributes found in the MediaDescription module must implement all elements and attributes defined below.
This section is normative.
This attribute is deprecated in favor of using appropriate SMIL metadata markup in RDF. For example, this attribute maps well to the "description" attribute as defined by the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative [DC] .
The value of this attribute is a CDATA text string.
The value of this attribute is a CDATA text string.
xml:lang differs from the system-language test attribute in one important respect. xml:lang provides information about the content's language independent of what implementations do with the information, whereas system-language is a test attribute with specific associated behavior (see system-language in SMIL Content Control Module for details)
This section is informative.
With regards to the clipBegin/clip-begin and clipEnd/clip-end elements, SMIL 2.1 defines the following changes to the syntax defined in SMIL 1.0:
Using attribute names with hyphens such as clip-begin and clip-end is problematic when using a scripting language and the DOM to manipulate these attributes. Therefore, this specification adds the attribute names clipBegin and clipEnd as an equivalent alternative to the SMIL 1.0 clip-begin and clip-end attributes. The attribute names with hyphens are deprecated.
Authors can use two approaches for writing SMIL 2.1 presentations that use the new clipping syntax and functionality ("marker", default metric) defined in this specification, but can still can be handled by SMIL 1.0 software. First, authors can use non-hyphenated versions of the new attributes that use the new functionality, and add SMIL 1.0 conformant clipping attributes later in the text.
Example:
<audio src="radio.wav" clipBegin="marker=song1" clipEnd="marker=moderator1" clip-begin="npt=0s" clip-end="npt=3:50" />
SMIL 1.0 players implementing the recommended extensibility rules of SMIL 1.0 [SMIL10] will ignore the clip attributes using the new functionality, since they are not part of SMIL 1.0. SMIL 2.1 players, in contrast, will ignore the clip attributes using SMIL 1.0 syntax, because the SMIL 2.1 syntax takes precedence over the SMIL 1.0 syntax.
The second approach is to use the following steps:
Example:
<smil xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/SMIL21/Language"> ... <switch> <audio src="radio.wav" clipBegin="marker=song1" clipEnd="marker=moderator1" system-required="smil2" /> <audio src="radio.wav" clip-begin="npt=0s" clip-end="npt=3:50" /> </switch>
SMIL 1.0 only allowed anchor as a child element of a media element. In addition to anchor (now defined in the Linking module), the param is now allowed as children of a SMIL media object. Additionally, other new children may also be defined by the host language.
The param element provides a generalized mechanism to attach media-specific attributes to media objects. The paramGroup element provides a convenience grouping mechanism to collect commonly used param element definitions into a single unit that may be referenced by multiple media objects.
A new brush element allows the specification of solid color media objects with no associated media.
This section is informative.
The SMIL 2.1 specification leaves the SMIL 2.0 Metainformation Module [SMIL20-meta] unchanged.
This section is informative.
This section defines the SMIL 2.1 Metainformation Module composed of a
single module. This module contains elements and attributes that allow
description of SMIL documents.
Since these elements and attributes are defined in a module, designers of
other markup languages can choose whether or not to include this
functionality in their languages.
The World Wide Web was originally built for human consumption, and
although everything on it is machine-readable, this data is not
machine-understandable. It is very hard to automate anything on the Web, and
because of the volume of information the Web contains, it is not possible to
manage it manually. Metadata is "data about data" (for example, a library
catalog is metadata, since it describes publications) or specifically in the
context of this specification "data describing Web resources".
The solution proposed here is to use metadata information to describe SMIL
documents published on the Web.
The earlier SMIL 1.0 specification allowed authors to describe documents
with a very basic vocabulary using the element.
The SMIL 2.1 Metainformation module defined in this specification fully
supports the use of this
element from SMIL 1.0 but it also introduces new capabilities for describing
metadata using the Resource Description Framework Model and Syntax [RDFsyntax], a powerful meta information language
for providing information about resources.
This section is informative.
To insure backward compatibility with SMIL 1.0, the element as specified in the SMIL 1.0 [SMIL10] Recommendation can be used to define properties of a document (e.g., author/creator, expiration date, a list of key words, etc.) and assign values to those properties.
SMIL 2.1 extends SMIL 1.0 meta information functionalities with the new
element to host RDF
statements as RDF provides a more general treatment of metadata.
RDF is a declarative language and provides a standard way for using XML to
represent metadata in the form of statements about properties and
relationships of items on the Web. Such items, known as resources, can be
almost anything, provided it has a Web address. This means that you can
associate metadata information with a SMIL document, but also a graphic, an
audio file, a movie clip, and so on.
RDF is the appropriate language for metadata. The specifications for RDF can be found at:
Metadata information within an SMIL 2.1 document should be expressed in the appropriate RDF namespaces [XML-NS] and should be placed within the element. (See example below.)
RDF appears to be the ideal approach for supporting descriptors from multiple description schemes simultaneously.
Here are some suggestions for content creators regarding metadata:
Note: Individual industries or individual content creators are free to define their own metadata RDF Schema, but everyone is encouraged to follow existing metadata standards and use standard metadata schemas wherever possible to promote interchange and interoperability. If a particular standard metadata schema does not meet your needs, then it is usually better to define an additional metadata schema in RDF that is used in combination with the given standard metadata schema than to totally avoid the standard schema.
This section defines the elements and attributes that make up the functionality in the SMIL Metainformation module.
Element definition
The element is an empty
element.
Each element specifies a single
property/value pair in the name and content attributes, respectively.
Element definition
The element contains information that is also related to meta information of the document. It acts as the root element of the RDF tree. The element can contain the following child elements:
RDF element and its sub-elements (refer to W3C metadata Recommendations [RDFsyntax]).
This section is informative.
Here is an example of how metadata can be included in an SMIL document. The example uses the Dublin Core version 1.0 RDF schema [DC] and an hypothetic SMIL metadata RDF Schema:
<?xml version="1.1" ?> <smil xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/SMIL21/Language"> <head> <meta id="meta-smil1.0-a" name="Publisher" content="W3C" /> <meta id="meta-smil1.0-b" name="Date" content="1999-10-12" /> <meta id="meta-smil1.0-c" name="Rights" content="Copyright 1999 John Smith" /> <meta id="meta-smil1.0-d" http-equiv="Expires" content=" 31 Dec 2001 12:00:00 GMT"/> <metadata id="meta-rdf"> <rdf:RDF xmlns:rdf = "http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#" xmlns:rdfs = "http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#" xmlns:dc = "http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:smilmetadata = "http://www.example.org/AudioVideo/.../smil-ns#" > <!-- Metadata about the SMIL presentation --> <rdf:Description rdf:about="http://www.example.com/meta.smi" dc:Title="An Introduction to the Resource Description Framework" dc:Description="The Resource Description Framework (RDF) enables the encoding, exchange and reuse of structured metadata" dc:Publisher="W3C" dc:Date="1999-10-12" dc:Rights="Copyright 1999 John Smith" dc:Format="text/smil" > <dc:Creator> <rdf:Seq rdf:ID="CreatorsAlphabeticalBySurname"> <rdf:li>Mary Andrew</rdf:li> <rdf:li>Jacky Crystal</rdf:li> </rdf:Seq> </dc:Creator> <smilmetadata:ListOfVideoUsed> <rdf:Seq rdf:ID="VideoAlphabeticalByFormatname"> <rdf:li rdf:resource="http://www.example.com/videos/meta-1999.mpg"/> <rdf:li rdf:resource="http://www.example.com/videos/meta2-1999.mpg"/> </rdf:Seq> </smilmetadata:ListOfVideoUsed> <smilmetadata:Access smilmetadata:LevelAccessibilityGuidelines="AAA"/> </rdf:Description> <!-- Metadata about the video --> <rdf:Description rdf:about="http://www.example.com/videos/meta-1999.mpg" dc:Title="RDF part one" dc:Creator="John Smith" dc:Subject="Metadata,RDF" dc:Description="RDF basic functionalities" dc:Publisher="W3C Press Service" dc:Format="video/mpg" dc:Language="en" dc:Date="1999-10-12" smilmetadata:Duration="60 secs" smilmetadata:VideoCodec="MPEG2" > <smilmetadata:ContainsSequences> <rdf:Seq rdf:ID="ChronologicalSequences"> <rdf:li rdf:resource="http://www.example.com/videos/meta-1999.mpg#scene1"/> <rdf:li rdf:resource="http://www.example.com/videos/meta-1999.mpg#scene2"/> </rdf:Seq> </smilmetadata:ContainsSequences> </rdf:Description> <!-- Metadata about a scene of the video --> <rdf:Description rdf:about="#scene1" dc:Title="RDF intro" dc:Description="Introduction to RDF functionalities" dc:Language="en" smilmetadata:Duration="30 secs" smilmetadata:Presenter="David Jones" > <smilmetadata:ContainsShots> <rdf:Seq rdf:ID="ChronologicalShots"> <rdf:li>Panorama-shot</rdf:li> <rdf:li>Closeup-shot</rdf:li> </rdf:Seq> </smilmetadata:ContainsShots> </rdf:Description> </rdf:RDF> </metadata> <!-- SMIL presentation --> <layout> <region id="a" top="5" /> </layout> </head> <body> <video region="a" src="/videos/meta-1999.mpg" > <area id="scene1" begin="0s" end ="30s"/> <area id="scene2" begin="30s" end ="60s"/> </video> <video region="a" src="/videos/meta2-1999.mpg"/> </body> </smil>
This section is informative.
The SMIL 2.1 specification leaves the SMIL 2.0 Structure Module [SMIL20-structure] unchanged.
This section is informative.
This Section defines the SMIL structure module. The Structure module provides the base elements for structuring SMIL content. These elements act as the root in the content model of all SMIL Host Language conformant language profiles. The Structure module is a mandatory module for SMIL Host Language conformant language profiles.
The SMIL Structure module is composed of the smil, head, and body elements, and is compatible with SMIL 1.0 [SMIL10]. The corresponding SMIL 1.0 elements form a subset of the Structure module, both in syntax and semantics, as their attributes and content model is also exposed by the Structure module. Thus, the Structure module is backwards compatible with SMIL 1.0.
This section defines the elements and attributes that make up the SMIL 2.1 Structure module.
The smil element acts as the root element for all SMIL Host Language conformant language profiles.
The smil element can have the following attributes:
The smil element can contain the following elements:
The head element contains information that is not related to the temporal behavior of the presentation. Three types of information may be contained by head. These are meta information, layout information, and author-defined content control.
The head element can have the following attributes:
The head element contains elements depending on the other modules and specific syntax included in the language profile integrating this module.
The body element contains information that is related to the temporal and linking behavior of the document. It acts as the root element of the timing tree.
The body element has the timing semantics of a time container equal to that of the seq element [BasicTimeContainers module]. Note, that in other language profiles, where a body element from another (Structure) Module is in use, that body element may have different timing semantics. For example, in the XHTML+SMIL language profile (still in progress and not yet a W3C Recommendation), the body element comes from XTML, and acts as a par time container.
The body element can have the following attributes:
The timing attributes defined in the various SMIL 2.1 timing modules are part of the body element so far as the corresponding timing modules, such as BasicInlineTiming, are part of the language profile. When a timing module is included in a language profile, the features of that module should be supported on the body element just as they are supported on the other elements in the profile. For example, the syncMaster attribute should be supported on the body element if the SyncMaster module is included in the integrating profile.
The body element contains elements depending on the other modules and specific syntax included in the language profile integrating this module.
This section is normative.
When this module is included in a language profile, the id, class, and title attributes defined in this module must be included on all elements from all modules used in the profile, including those from other module families and of non-SMIL origin. The integrating profile should also consider adding the xml:lang attribute to the applicable elements.
The SMIL Structure module is the starting module when building any SMIL Host Language conformant language profile. The Structure module may not be used for building other, non-SMIL Host Language conformant language profiles. This implies that the SMIL Structure module must at least be accompanied with the other modules mandatory for SMIL Host language conformance, and the elements in the structure module must include at least the minimum content models required for SMIL Host language conformance.
When modules from outside the SMIL 2.1 namespace are integrated in the language profile, it must be specified how the elements from those non-SMIL modules fit into the content model of the used SMIL modules (and vice versa). For example, with respect to the SMIL Structure module, the Profiling Entities in the DTD need to be overridden. This creates a so-called hybrid document type [XMOD]. In case of a so-called compound document type, the rules of XML namespaces must be satisfied [XML-NS].
This section is informative
The SMIL 2.1 specification leaves the basic syntax and semantics of the SMIL 2.0 timing model unchanged [SMIL20-timing]. The only changes for SMIL 2.1 are that SMIL 2.0's ExclTimeContainers module is deprecated and replaced with two new modules: BasicExclTimeContainers and BasicPriorityClassContainers, an errata note has been integrated into the specification that clarifies the default event base for animation elements, and a fix for a text error in the fourth bullet of the begin and end values was integrated into the text. The repartitioning of the ExclTimeContainers module is done to reduce the implementation burden of the excl element on low-powered devices or in implementations in which the full functionality of the priority class mechanism of SMIL 2.0 is not required. The clarification of the event base for animation elements makes integration with SMIL timing and SMIL animation clearer for implementers. The change related to the begin and end values allows an unresolved name to be ignored.
As a result of this change, SMIL 2.1 Timing and Synchronization support is broken down into 16 modules instead of the 15 modules used in SMIL 2.0. These modules are described in Appendix A: SMIL Timing and Synchronization modules.
This section is informative
SMIL 1.0 solved fundamental media synchronization problems and defined a powerful way of choreographing multimedia content. SMIL 2.1 extends the timing and synchronization support, adding capabilities to the timing model and associated syntax. Some SMIL 1.0 syntax has been changed or deprecated. This section of the document specifies the Timing and Synchronization module.
There are two intended audiences for this module: implementers of SMIL 2.1 document viewers or authoring tools, and authors of other XML languages who wish to integrate timing and synchronization support. A language with which this module is integrated is referred to as a host language. A document containing SMIL Timing and Synchronization elements and attributes is referred to as a host document.
As this module is used in different profiles (i.e. host languages), the associated syntax requirements may vary. Differences in syntax should be minimized as much as is practical.
SMIL 2.1 Timing and Synchronization support is broken down into 16 modules, allowing broad flexibility for language designers integrating this functionality. These modules are described in Appendix A: SMIL Timing and Synchronization modules.
This section is informative
SMIL Timing defines elements and attributes to coordinate and synchronize the presentation of media over time. The term media covers a broad range, including discrete media types such as still images, text, and vector graphics, as well as continuous media types that are intrinsically time-based, such as video, audio and animation.
Three synchronization elements support common timing use-cases:
These elements are referred to as time containers. They group their contained children together into coordinated timelines.
SMIL Timing also provides attributes that can be used to specify an element's timing behavior. Elements have a begin, and a simple duration. The begin can be specified in various ways - for example, an element can begin at a given time, or based upon when another element begins, or when some event (such as a mouse click) happens. The simple duration defines the basic presentation duration of an element. Elements can be defined to repeat the simple duration, a number of times or for an amount of time. The simple duration and any effects of repeat are combined to define the active duration. When an element's active duration has ended, the element can either be removed from the presentation or frozen (held in its final state), e.g. to fill any gaps in the presentation.
An element becomes active when it begins its active duration, and becomes inactive when it ends its active duration. Within the active duration, the element is active, and outside the active duration, the element is inactive.
Figure 1 illustrates the basic support of a repeating element within a simple <par> time container. The corresponding syntax is included with the diagram.
<par begin="0s" dur="33s"> <video begin="1s" dur="10s" repeatCount="2.5" fill="freeze" .../> </par>
Figure 1 - Strip diagram of basic timing support. The starred "Simple*" duration indicates that the simple duration is partial (i.e. it is cut off early).
The attributes that control these aspects of timing can be applied not only to media elements, but to the time containers as well. This allows, for example, an entire sequence to be repeated, and to be coordinated as a unit with other media and time containers. While authors can specify a particular simple duration for a time container, it is often easier to leave the duration unspecified, in which case the simple duration is defined by the contained child elements. When an element does not specify a simple duration, the time model defines an implicit simple duration for the element. For example, the implicit simple duration of a sequence is based upon the sum of the active durations of all the children.
Each time container also imposes certain defaults and constraints upon the contained children. For example in a <seq>, elements begin by default right after the previous element ends, and in all time containers, the active duration of child elements is constrained not to extend past the end of the time container's simple duration. Figure 2 illustrates the effects of a repeating <par> time container as it constrains a <video> child element.
<par begin="0s" dur="12s" repeatDur="33s" fill="freeze" > <video begin="1s" dur="5s" repeatCount="1.8" fill="freeze" .../> </par>
Figure 2 - Strip diagram of time container constraints upon child elements. The starred "Simple*" durations indicate that the simple duration is partial (i.e. it is cut off early).
The SMIL Timing Model defines how the time container elements and timing attributes are interpreted to construct a time graph. The time graph is a model of the presentation schedule and synchronization relationships. The time graph is a dynamic structure, changing to reflect the effect of user events, media delivery, and DOM control of the presentation. At any given instant, the time graph models the document at that instant, and the semantics described in this module. However, as user events or other factors cause changes to elements, the semantic rules are re-evaluated to yield an updated time graph.
When a begin or end value refers to an event, or to the begin or active end of another element, it may not be possible to calculate the time value. For example, if an element is defined to begin on some event, the begin time will not be known until the event happens. Begin and end values like this are described as unresolved. When such a time becomes known (i.e. when it can be calculated as a presentation time), the time is said to be resolved. A resolved time is said to be definite if it is not the value "indefinite". See also the discussion of Unifying scheduled and interactive timing.
In an ideal environment, the presentation would perform precisely as specified. However, various real-world limitations (such as network delays) can influence the actual playback of media. How the presentation application adapts and manages the presentation in response to media playback problems is termed runtime synchronization behavior. SMIL includes attributes that allow the author to control the runtime synchronization behavior for a presentation.
This section is informative
The timing model is defined by building up from the simplest to the most complex concepts: first the basic timing and simple duration controls, followed by the attributes that control repeating and constraining the active duration. Finally, the elements that define time containers are presented.
The time model depends upon several definitions for the host document: A host document is presented over a certain time interval.
This section defines the set of timing attributes that are common to all of the SMIL synchronization elements.
Unless otherwise specified below, if there is any error in the argument value syntax for an attribute, the attribute will be ignored (as though it were not specified).
This section is informative
The basic timing for an element is described using the begin and dur attributes. Authors can specify the begin time of an element in a variety of ways, ranging from simple clock times to the time that an event (e.g. a mouse click) happens. The simple duration of an element is specified as a simple time value. The begin attribute syntax is described below. The normative syntax rules for each attribute value variant are described in Timing attribute value grammars; an attribute value syntax summary is provided here as an aid to the reader.
This section is normative
This section is normative
id(Id-value)(begin)
is equivalent to
Id-value.begin
id(Id-value)(end)
is equivalent to
Id-value.end
id(Id-value)(Clock-value)
is equivalent
to Id-value.begin+ Clock-value
This section is informative
Children of a par begin by default
when the par begins (equivalent to
begin="0s"
). Children of a seq begin by default when the previous child
ends its active duration (equivalent to begin="0s"
); the first
child begins by default when the parent seq begins. Children of an excl default to a begin value of "indefinite".
The begin value can specify a list of times. This can be used to specify multiple "ways" or "rules" to begin an element, e.g. if any one of several events is raised. A list of times can also define multiple begin times, allowing the element to play more than once (this behavior can be controlled, e.g. to only allow the earliest begin to actually be used - see also the restart attribute).
In general, the earliest time in the list determines the begin time of the element. There are additional constraints upon the evaluation of the begin time list, detailed in Evaluation of begin and end time lists.
Note that while it is legal to include "indefinite" in a list of values for begin, "indefinite" is only really useful as a single value. Combining it with other values does not impact begin timing, as DOM begin methods can be called with or without specifying "indefinite" for begin.
When a begin time is specified as a syncbase variant, a marker value or a wallclock value, the defined time must be converted by the implementation to a time that is relative to the parent time container (i.e. to the equivalent of an offset value). This is known as timespace conversion, and is detailed in the section Converting between local and global times.
This section is informative
The use of negative offsets to define begin times merely defines the synchronization relationship of the element. It does not in any way override the time container constraints upon the element, and it cannot override the constraints of presentation time.
This section is normative
The computed begin time defines the scheduled synchronization relationship of the element, even if it is not possible to begin the element at the computed time. The time model uses the computed begin time, and not the observed time of the element begin.
This section is informative
If an element has a begin time that resolves to a time before the parent time container begins, the parent time container constraint still applies. For example:
<par> <video id="vid" begin="-5s" dur="10s" src="movie.mpg" /> <audio begin="vid.begin+2s" dur="8s" src="sound.au" /> </par>
The video element cannot begin before the par begins. The begin is simply defined to occur "in the past" when the par begins. The viewer will observe that the video begins 5 seconds into the media, and ends after 5 seconds. Note that the audio element begins relative to the video begin, and that the computed begin time is used, and not the observed begin time as constrained by the parent. Thus the audio begins 3 seconds into the media, and also lasts 5 seconds.
The behavior can be thought of as a clipBegin value applied to the element, that only applies to the first iteration of repeating elements. In the example above, if either element were defined to repeat, the second and later iterations of the media would play from the beginning of the media (see also the repeatCount, repeatDur, and repeat attributes: repeating elements).
This section is normative
The behavior can be thought of as a clipBegin value applied to the element, that only applies to the first iteration of repeating elements.
The element will actually begin at the time computed according to the following algorithm:
Let o be the offset value of a given begin value, d be the associated simple duration, AD be the associated active duration. Let rAt be the time when the begin time becomes resolved. Let rTo be the resolved sync-base or event-base time without the offset Let rD be rTo - rAt. If rD < 0 then rD is set to 0. If AD is indefinite, it compares greater than any value of o or ABS(o). REM( x, y ) is defined as x - (y * floor( x/y )). If y is indefinite or unresolved, REM( x, y ) is just x. Let mb = REM( ABS(o), d ) - rD
If ABS(o) >= AD then the element does not begin. Else if mb >= 0 then the media begins at mb. Else the media begins at mb + d.
If the element repeats, the iteration value of the
repeat
event has the calculated value based upon the above
computed begin time, and not the observed number of repeats.
This section is informative
Thus for example:
<smil ...> ... <ref begin="foo.activateEvent-8s" dur="3s" repeatCount="10" .../> ... </smil>
The element begins when the user activates (for
example, clicks on) the element "foo". Its calculated begin time is actually
8 seconds earlier, and so it begins to play at 2 seconds into the 3 second
simple duration, on the third repeat iteration. One second later, the fourth
iteration of the element will begin, and the associated repeat
event will have the iteration value set to 3 (since it is zero based). The
element will end 22 seconds after the activation. The beginEvent
event is raised when the element begins, but has a time stamp value that
corresponds to the defined begin time, 8 seconds earlier. Any time dependents
are activated relative to the computed begin time, and not the observed begin
time.
Note: If script authors wish to distinguish
between the computed repeat iterations and observed repeat iterations, they
can count actual repeat
events in the associated event
handler.
A begin time specifies a synchronization relationship between the element and the parent time container. Syncbase variants, eventbase, marker and wallclock timing are implicitly converted to an offset on the parent time container, just as an offset value specifies this directly. For children of a seq, the result is always a positive offset from the begin of the seq time container. However, for children of par and excl time containers the computed offset relative to the parent begin time may be negative.
Note that an element cannot actually begin until the parent time container begins. An element with a negative time delay behaves as if it had begun earlier. The presentation effect for the element (e.g. the display of visual media) is equivalent to that for a clipBegin value (with the same magnitude) for the first -- and only the first -- iteration of a repeated element. If no repeat behavior is specified, the element presentation effect of a negative begin offset is equivalent to a clipBegin specification with the same magnitude as the offset value. Nevertheless, the timing side effects are not equivalent to a clipBegin value as described. Time dependents of the begin value will behave as though the element had begun earlier.
The length of the simple duration is specified using the dur attribute. The dur attribute syntax is described below.
This section is normative
If there is any error in the argument value syntax for dur, the attribute will be ignored (as though it were not specified).
If the "media
" attribute value is used on
an element that does not define media (e.g. on the SMIL 2.1 time container
elements par,
seq and excl), the attribute will be ignored
(as though it were not specified). Contained media such as the children of a
par are not considered media directly
associated with the element.
If the element does not have a (valid) dur attribute, the simple duration for the element is defined to be the implicit duration of the element. The implicit duration depends upon the type of an element. The primary distinction is between different types of media elements and time containers. If the media element has no timed children, it is described as a simple media element.
If the author specifies a value for dur that is shorter than the implicit duration for an element, the implicit duration will be cut short by the specified simple duration.
If the author specifies a simple duration that is longer than the implicit duration for an element, the implicit duration of the element is extended to the specified simple duration:
Note that when the simple duration is "indefinite", some simple use cases can yield surprising results. See the related example #4 in Appendix B.
The following example shows simple offset begin timing. The <audio> element begins 5 seconds after the <par> time container begins, and ends 4 seconds later.
<par> <audio src="song1.au" begin="5s" dur="4s" /> </par>
The following example shows syncbase begin timing. The <img> element begins 2 seconds after the <audio> element begins.
<par> <audio id="song1" src="song1.au" /> <img src="img1.jpg" begin="song1.begin+2s" /> </par>
Elements can also be specified to begin in response to an event. In this example, the image element begins (appears) when the user clicks on element "show". The image will end (disappear) 3 and a half seconds later.
<smil ...> ... <text id="show" ... /> <img begin="show.activateEvent" dur="3.5s" ... /> ... </smil ...>
This section is informative
SMIL 2.1 provides an additional control over the active duration. The end attribute allows the author to constrain the active duration by specifying an end value using a simple offset, a time base, an event-base, a syncbase, or DOM methods calls. The rules for combining the attributes to compute the active duration are presented in the section, Computing the active duration.
The normative syntax rules for each attribute value variant are described in the section Timing attribute value grammars; a syntax summary is provided here as an aid to the reader.
This section is normative
endElement()
method call.If an end attribute is specified but none of dur, repeatCount and repeatDur are specified, the simple duration is defined to be indefinite, and the end value constrains this to define the active duration. The behavior of the simple duration in this case is defined in Dur value semantics, as though dur had been specified as "indefinite".
If the end value becomes resolved while the element is still active, and the resolved time is in the past, the element should end the active duration immediately. Time dependents defined relative to the end of this element should be resolved using the computed active end (which may be in the past), and not the observed active end.
The deprecated SMIL 1.0-syncbase-values are semantically equivalent to the following SMIL 2.1 end-value types:
id(Id-value)(begin)
is equivalent to
Id-value.begin
id(Id-value)(end)
is equivalent to
Id-value.end
id(Id-value)(Clock-value)
is equivalent to
Id-value.begin+Clock-value
This section is informative
The end value can specify a list of times. This can be used to specify multiple "ways" or "rules" to end an element, e.g. if any one of several events is raised. A list of times can also define multiple end times that can correspond to multiple begin times, allowing the element to play more than once (this behavior can be controlled - see also the restart attribute).
In the following example, the dur attribute is not specified, and so the simple duration is defined to be the implicit media duration. In this case (and this case only) the value of end will extend the active duration if it specifies a duration greater than the implicit duration. The video will be shown for 8 seconds, and then the last frame will be shown for 2 seconds.
<video end="10s" src="8-SecondVideo.mpg" .../>
If an author wishes to specify the implicit duration as well as an end
constraint, the dur attribute can be
specified as "media
". In the following example, the element will
end at the earlier of the intrinsic media duration, or a mouse click:
<html ...> ... <video dur="media" end="click" src="movie.mpg" .../> ... </html>
These cases arise from the use of negative offsets in the sync-base and event-base forms, and authors should be aware of the complexities this can introduce. See also Handling negative offsets for end.
In the following example, the active duration will end at the earlier of 10 seconds, or the end of the "foo" element. This is particularly useful if "foo" is defined to begin or end relative to an event.
<audio src="foo.au" dur="2s" repeatDur="10s" end="foo.end" .../>
In the following example, the active duration will end at 10 seconds, and will cut short the simple duration defined to be 20 seconds. The effect is that only the first half of the element is actually played. For a simple media element, the author could just specify this using the dur attribute. However in other cases, it is sometimes important to specify the simple duration independent of the active duration.
<par> <audio src="music.au" dur="20s" end="10s" ... /> </par>
In the following example, the element begins when the user activates (e.g., clicks on) the "gobtn" element. The active duration will end 30 seconds after the parent time container begins.
<smil ...> ... <par> <audio src="music.au" begin="gobtn.activateEvent" repeatDur="indefinite" end="30s" ... /> <img src="foo.jpg" dur="40s" ... /> </par> ... </smil>
Note that if the user has not clicked on the target element before 30 seconds elapse, the element will never begin. In this case, the element has no active duration and no active end.
The defaults for the event syntax make it easy to define simple interactive behavior. The following example stops the image when the user clicks on the element.
<html ...> ... <img src="image.jpg" end="click" /> ... </html>
Using end with an event value enables authors to end an element based on either an interactive event or a maximum active duration. This is sometimes known as lazy interaction.
In this example, a presentation describes factory processes. Each step is a video, and set to repeat 3 times to make the point clear. Each element can also be ended by clicking on the video, or on some element "next" that indicates to the user that the next step should be shown.
<smil ...> ... <seq> <video dur="5s" repeatCount="3" end="activateEvent; next.activateEvent" .../> <video dur="5s" repeatCount="3" end="activateEvent; next.activateEvent" .../> <video dur="5s" repeatCount="3" end="activateEvent; next.activateEvent" .../> <video dur="5s" repeatCount="3" end="activateEvent; next.activateEvent" .../> <video dur="5s" repeatCount="3" end="activateEvent; next.activateEvent" .../> </seq> ... </smil>
In this case, the active end of each element is defined to be the earlier of 15 (5s dur * 3 repeats) seconds after it begins, or a click on "next". This lets the viewer sit back and watch, or advance the presentation at a faster pace.
This section is normative
This section is informative
The min/max attributes provide the author with a way to control the lower and upper bound of the element active duration.
This section is normative
If there is any error in the argument value syntax for min, the attribute will be ignored (as though it were not specified).
The default value for min is "0". This does not constrain the active duration at all.
If there is any error in the argument value syntax for max, the attribute will be ignored (as though it were not specified).
The default value for max is "indefinite". This does not constrain the active duration at all.
If the "media
" argument value is specified
for either min or max on an element that does not define media
(e.g. on the SMIL 2.1 time container elements par, seq
and excl), the respective
attribute will be ignored (as though it were not specified). Contained media
such as the children of a par are not
considered media directly associated with the element.
If both min and max attributes are specified then the max value must be greater than or equal to the min value. If this requirement is not fulfilled then both attributes are ignored.
The rule to apply to compute the active duration of an element with min or max specified is the following: Each time the active duration of an element is computed (i.e. for each interval of the element if it begins more than once), this computation is made without taking into account the min and max attributes (by applying the algorithm described in Computing the active duration). The result of this step is checked against the min and max bounds. If the result is within the bounds, this first computed value is correct. Otherwise two situations may occur:
if the first computed duration is greater than the max value, the active duration of the element is defined to be equal to the max value (see the first example below).
if the first computed duration is less than the min value, the active duration of the element becomes equal to the min value and the behavior of the element is as follows :
if the repeating duration (or the simple duration if the element doesn't repeat) of the element is greater than min then the element is played normally for the (min constrained) active duration. (see the second and third examples below).
otherwise the element is played normally for its repeating duration (or simple duration if the element does not repeat) and then is frozen or not shown depending on the value of the fill attribute (see the fourth and fifth examples below).
This section is informative
The following examples illustrate some simple use cases for min and max attributes:
Example 1. In the following example, the video will only play for 10 seconds.
<smil ...> ... <par > <video id="video_of_15s" max="10s".../> </par> ... </smil>
Example 2. In the following example, if an activate event happens before 10 seconds, this activation (e.g. click) does not interrupt the video immediately, but the video plays until 10 seconds and then stops. If a click event happens after 10 seconds, the video plays (repeating) until the click happens. Note, the endEvent is only raised if a click occurs after 10 seconds, not at the simple end of each repeat.
<smil ...> ... <par > <video id="video_of_15s" repeatDur="indefinite" end="activateEvent" min="10s".../> </par> ... </smil>
Example 3. In the following example, if an activate event happens on element "foo" at 5 seconds, this event does not end the time container immediately, but rather at 12 seconds. The simple duration is defined to be "indefinite" (because an end attribute is specified with no dur attribute), and so the time container plays normally until it ends at 12 seconds.
<smil ...> ... <par end="foo.activateEvent" min="12s" > <video id="video_of_15s" .../> <video id="video_of_10s" .../> </par> ... </smil>
Example 4. In the following example, if a click event happens on the first video at 5 seconds, then the simple duration of the time container is computed as 5 seconds. Respecting the fill attribute in the time between the end of the simple duration and the end of the active duration, the two videos are frozen between 5 seconds and 12 seconds.
<html ...> ... <par endsync="first" min="12s" fill="freeze" > <video id="video_of_15s" end="click" ...> <video id="video_of_10s" .../> </par> ... </html>
Example 5. In the following example, the time container simple duration is
defined to be 5 seconds, and the min constraint defines the active duration
to be 12 seconds. Since the default value of fill in this case is "remove"
,
nothing is shown for the time container between 5 seconds and 12 seconds.
<par dur="5s" min="12s" > <video id="video_of_15s"/> <video id="video_of_10s" /> </par>
If an element is defined to begin before its parent (e.g. with a simple negative offset value), the min duration is measured from the calculated begin time not the observed begin (see example 1 below). This means that the min value may have no observed effect (as in example 2 below).
Example 1. In the following example, the image will be displayed from the beginning of the time container for 2 seconds.
<par> <img id="img" begin="-5s" min="7s" dur="5s" .../> </par>
Example 2. In the following example, the image will not be displayed at all.
<par> <img id="img" begin="-5s" min="4s" dur="2s" .../> </par>
See also the sections The min attribute and restart and Time container constraints on child durations.
This section is normative
The syntax specifications are defined using EBNF notation as defined in XML 1.1 [XML11]
In the syntax specifications that follow, allowed white space is indicated as "S", defined as follows (taken from the [XML11] definition for 'S'):
S ::= (#x20 | #x9 | #xD | #xA)+
This section is normative
A begin-value-list is a semi-colon separated list of timing specifiers:
begin-value-list ::= begin-value (S
? ";"S
? begin-value-list )? begin-value ::= (offset-value | syncbase-value | event-value | repeat-value | accesskey-value | media-marker-value | wallclock-sync-value | "indefinite" )
This section is normative
An end-value-list is a semi-colon separated list of timing specifiers:
end-value-list ::= end-value (S
? ";"S
? end-value-list )? end-value ::= (offset-value | syncbase-value | event-value | repeat-value | accesskey-value | media-marker-value | wallclock-sync-value | "indefinite" )
Several of the timing specification values have
a similar syntax. To parse an individual item
in a value-list, the following approach defines the correct
interpretation. In addition, Id-values and Event-symbols are XML NMTOKEN values and
as such are allowed to contain the full stop '.
' and
hyphen-minus '-' characters. The reverse
solidus character '\' must be used to escape these characters within
Id-values
and Event-symbols, otherwise these characters will be interpreted as the
full stop separator and hyphen-minus sign, respectively. Once these rules are
interpreted, but before Id-values in syncbase values, event values, or
media-marker values are further handled, all leading and embedded escape
characters should be removed.
'+'
or '-'
), the value
should be parsed as an offset
value..
' characters preceded by a reverse solidus
'\
' escape character should not be treated as a separator,
but as a normal token character.
.
'
separator character, then the value should be parsed as an event-value with an unspecified
(i.e. default) eventbase-element..begin
" or ".end
", then the value
should be parsed as a syncbase-value..marker(
", then the value should be parsed as a
media-marker-value.This approach allows implementations to treat the
tokens wallclock and
indefinite
as reserved element IDs, and begin, end and marker as reserved event names, while retaining an
escape mechanism so that elements and events with those names may be
referenced.
Clock values have the following syntax:
Clock-value ::= ( Full-clock-value | Partial-clock-value | Timecount-value ) Full-clock-value ::= Hours ":" Minutes ":" Seconds ("." Fraction)? Partial-clock-value ::= Minutes ":" Seconds ("." Fraction)? Timecount-value ::= Timecount ("." Fraction)? (Metric)? Metric ::= "h" | "min" | "s" | "ms" Hours ::= DIGIT+; any positive number Minutes ::= 2DIGIT; range from 00 to 59 Seconds ::= 2DIGIT; range from 00 to 59 Fraction ::= DIGIT+ Timecount ::= DIGIT+ 2DIGIT ::= DIGIT DIGIT DIGIT ::= [0-9]
For Timecount values, the default metric suffix is "s" (for seconds). No embedded white space is allowed in clock values, although leading and trailing white space characters will be ignored.
The following are examples of legal clock values:
02:30:03
= 2 hours, 30 minutes and 3 seconds 50:00:10.25
= 50 hours, 10 seconds and 250
milliseconds
02:33
= 2 minutes and 33 seconds 00:10.5
= 10.5 seconds = 10 seconds and 500
milliseconds 3.2h
= 3.2 hours = 3 hours and 12 minutes 45min
= 45 minutes 30s
= 30 seconds 5ms
= 5 milliseconds 12.467
= 12 seconds and 467 millisecondsFractional values are just (base 10) floating
point definitions of seconds. The number of digits allowed is unlimited
(although actual precision may vary among implementations).
For example:
00.5s = 500 milliseconds 00:00.005 = 5 milliseconds
Offset values are used to specify when an element should begin or end relative to its syncbase.
This section is normative
An offset value has the following syntax:
offset-value ::= ( S? ("+" | "-") S? )? ( Clock-value )
The implicit syncbase for an offset value is dependent upon the time container:
Deprecated.
smil-1-syncbase-value ::= "id(" Id-value ")" ( "(" ( "begin" | "end" | Clock-value) ")" )?
This section is normative
ID reference values are references to the value of an "id" attribute of another element in the document.
Id-value ::= Id-ref-value
Id-ref-value ::= IDREF | Escaped-Id-ref-value
Escaped-Id-ref-value ::= Escape-Char NMTOKEN
Escape-Char ::= "\"
If the element referenced by the IDREF is ignored as described in the Content Control modules (e.g. if it specifies test attributes that evaluate false), the associated time value (i.e.. the syncbase value or the eventbase value that specifies the Id-value) will be considered invalid.
This section is informative
The semantics of ignored elements may change in a future version of SMIL. One possible semantic is that the associated sync arc arguments will not be invalid, but will instead always be "unresolved". When this behavior needs to be simulated in this version of SMIL Timing and Synchronization, an author can include the value "indefinite" in the list of values for the begin or end attribute.
A syncbase value starts with a Syncbase-element term defining the value of an "id" attribute of another element referred to as the syncbase element.
This section is normative
A syncbase value has the following syntax:
Syncbase-value ::= ( Syncbase-element
"." Time-symbol )
( S? ("+"|"-") S? Clock-value )?
Syncbase-element ::= Id-value
Time-symbol ::= "begin" | "end"
The syncbase element is qualified with one of the following time symbols:
Examples
begin="x.end-5s"
:
Begin 5 seconds before "x" ends
begin=" x.begin "
: Begin when "x" begins
end="x.begin + 1min"
: End 1 minute after "x"
begins
This section is informative
An Event value starts with an Eventbase-element term that specifies the event-base element. The event-base element is the element on which the event is observed. Given DOM event bubbling, the event-base element may be either the element that raised the event, or it may be an ancestor element on which the bubbled event can be observed. Refer to DOM-Level2-Events [DOM2Events] for details.
This section is normative
An event value has the following syntax:
Event-value ::= (
Eventbase-element "." )? Event-symbol
( S? ("+"|"-") S? Clock-value )?
Eventbase-element ::= ID
The eventbase-element must be another element contained in the host document.
If the Eventbase-element term is missing, the event-base element defaults to the element on which the eventbase timing is specified (the current element). A host language designer may override the definition of the default eventbase element. As an example of this, the SMIL 2.1 Animation modules describe Timing integration requirements for the animation elements (animate, animateMotion, etc.). These requirements specify that the default eventbase element is the target element of the animation. See SMIL 2 Animation section 3.9.1 (Integration requirements).
The event value must specify an Event-symbol. This term is an XML NMTOKEN that specifies the name of the event that is raised on the Event-base element. The host language designer must specify which events can be specified.
If an integrating language specifies no supported events, the event-base time value is effectively unsupported for that language.
A host language may choose not to include support for offsets with event values. The language must specify if this support is omitted.
If the host language allows dynamically created events (as supported by DOM-Level2-Events [DOM2Events]), all possible Event-symbol names cannot be specified and so unrecognized names may not be considered errors.
Unless explicitly specified by a host language, it is not considered an error to specify an event that cannot be raised on the Event-base element (such as activateEvent or click for audio or other non-visual elements). Since the event will never be raised on the specified element, the event-base value will never be resolved.
The last term specifies an optional offset-value that is an offset from the time of the event.
This section is informative
This module defines several events that may be
included in the supported set for a host language, including
beginEvent
and endEvent
. These should not be
confused with the syncbase time values. See the section on
Events and event model.
The semantics of event-based timing are detailed in Unifying Scheduling and Interactive Timing. Constraints on event sensitivity are detailed in Event sensitivity.
Examples:
begin=" x.load "
:
Begin when "load" is observed on "x"
begin="x.focus+3s"
: Begin 3 seconds after a "focus"
event on "x"
begin="x.endEvent+1.5s"
: Begin 1 and a half seconds after an
"endEvent" event on "x"
begin="x.repeat"
: Begin each time a
repeat
event is observed on "x"
The following example describes a qualified repeat eventbase value:
<html ...> ... <video id="foo" repeatCount="10" end="endVideo.click" ... /> <img id="endVideo" begin="foo.repeat(2)" .../> ... </html>
The "endVideo" image will appear when the video "foo" repeats the second time. This example allows the user to stop the video after it has played though at least twice.
Repeat values are a variant on event values that
support a qualified repeat event. The repeat
event defined in Events and event model allows an additional
suffix to qualify the event based upon an iteration value.
A repeat value has the following syntax:
Repeat-value ::= (
Eventbase-element "." )? "repeat(" iteration ")"
( S? ("+"|"-") S? Clock-value )?
iteration ::= DIGIT+
If this qualified form is used, the eventbase value will only be resolved when a repeat is observed that has a iteration value that matches the specified iteration.
The qualified repeat event syntax allows an author to respond only to an individual repeat of an element.
Accesskey values allow an author to tie a begin or end time to a particular key press, independent of focus issues. It is modeled on the HTML accesskey support. Unlike with HTML, user agents should not require that a modifier key (such as "ALT") be required to activate an access key.
An access key value has the following syntax:
Accesskey-value ::= "accesskey(" character
")"
The character is a single character from [ISO10646].
( S? ("+"|"-") S? Clock-value )?
The time value is defined as the time that the access key character is input by the user.
Certain types of media can have associated marker values that associate a name with a particular point (i.e. a time) in the media. The media marker value provides a means of defining a begin or end time in terms of these marker values. Note that if the referenced id is not associated with a media element that supports markers, or if the specified marker name is not defined by the media element, the associated time may never be resolved.
This section is normative
Media-Marker-value ::= Id-value ".marker(" S? marker-name S? ")"
This section is informative
Wallclock-sync values have the following syntax. The values allowed are based upon several of the "profiles" described in [DATETIME], which is based upon [ISO8601].
This section is normative
wallclock-sync-value ::= "wallclock(" S? (DateTime | WallTime | Date) S? ")" DateTime ::= Date "T" WallTime Date ::= Years "-" Months "-" Days WallTime ::= (HHMM-Time | HHMMSS-Time)(TZD)? HHMM-Time ::= Hours24 ":" Minutes HHMMSS-Time ::= Hours24 ":" Minutes ":" Seconds ("." Fraction)? Years ::= 4DIGIT; Months ::= 2DIGIT; range from 01 to 12 Days ::= 2DIGIT; range from 01 to 31 Hours24 ::= 2DIGIT; range from 00 to 23 4DIGIT ::= DIGIT DIGIT DIGIT DIGIT TZD ::= "Z" | (("+" | "-") Hours24 ":" Minutes )
This section is informative
Complete date plus hours and minutes: YYYY-MM-DDThh:mmTZD (e.g. 1997-07-16T19:20+01:00) Complete date plus hours, minutes and seconds: YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ssTZD (e.g. 1997-07-16T19:20:30+01:00) Complete date plus hours, minutes, seconds and a decimal fraction of a second YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ss.sTZD (e.g. 1997-07-16T19:20:30.45+01:00)
Note that the Minutes, Seconds, Fraction, 2DIGIT and DIGIT syntax is as defined for Clock-values. Note that white space is not allowed within the date and time specification.
This section is normative
There are three ways of handling time zone offsets:
The presentation engine must be able to convert wallclock-values to a time within the document.
This section is informative
Note that the resulting begin or end time may be before the begin, or after end of the parent time container. This is not an error, but the time container constraints still apply. In any case, the semantics of the begin and end attribute govern the interpretation of the wallclock value.
The following examples all specify a begin at midnight on January 1st 2000, UTC:
begin="wallclock( 2000-01-01T00:00Z )" begin="wallclock( 2000-01-01T00:00:00Z )" begin="wallclock( 2000-01-01T00:00:00.0Z )" begin="wallclock( 2000-01-01T00:00:00.0Z )" begin="wallclock( 2000-01-01T00:00:00.0-00:00 )"
The following example specifies a begin at 3:30 in the afternoon on July 28th 1990, in the Pacific US time zone:
begin="wallclock( 1990-07-28T15:30-08:00 )"
The following example specifies a begin at 8 in the morning wherever the document is presented:
begin="wallclock( 08:00 )"
This section is normative
The endsync attribute controls the implicit duration of time containers, as a function of the children. The endsync attribute is only valid for par and excl time container elements, and media elements with timed children (e.g. animate or area elements). Integrating languages may allow the endsync attribute on any element with time container semantics. The endsync attribute is particularly useful with children that have "unknown" duration, e.g. an MPEGmovie, that must be played through to determine the duration, or elements with event-based end timing.
Semantics of endsync and dur and end:
Semantics of endsync and restart:
Semantics of endsync and paused elements:
pause()
method has not completed its active duration. Paused
elements (that have not already completed the active duration at least
once) must be considered in the evaluation ofendsync. For example, if a time container with endsync=last has paused child elements, the simple duration
of the time container will not end until the paused children resume or
otherwise end.This section is informative
Semantics of endsync and unresolved child times:
This section is normative
The following pseudo-code describes the endsync algorithm:
// // boolean timeContainerHasEnded() // // method on time containers called to evaluate whether // time container has ended, according to the rules of endsync. // Note: Only supported on par and excl // // A variant on this could be called when a child end is updated to // create a scheduled (predicted) end time for the container. // // Note that we never check the end time of children - it doesn't matter. // // Assumes: // child list is stable during evaluation // isActive state of children is up to date for current time. // [In practice, this means that the children must all be // pre-visited at the current time to see if they are done. // If the time container is done, and repeats, the children // may be resampled at the modified time.] // // Uses interfaces: // on TimedNode: // isActive() tests if node is currently active // hasStarted() tests if node has (ever) begun // begin and end begin and end TimeValues of node // // on TimeValue (a list of times for begin or end) // is Resolved(t) true if there is a resolved time // at or after time t // boolean timeContainerHasEnded() { TimeInstant now = getCurrentTime(); // normalized for time container boolean assumedResult; // For first or ID, we assume a false result unless we find a child that has ended // For last and all, we assume a true result unless we find a disqualifying child if( ( endsyncRule == first ) || ( endsyncRule == ID ) ) assumedResult = false; else assumedResult = true; // Our interpretation of endsync == all: // we're done when all children have begun, and none is active // // loop on each child in collection of timed children, // and consider it in terms of the endsyncRule foreach ( child c in timed-children-collection ) { switch( endsyncRule ) { case first: // as soon as we find an ended child, return true. if( c.hasStarted() & !c.isActive() ) return true; // else, keep looking (assumedResult is false) break; case ID: // if we find the matching child, just return result if( endsyncID == c.ID ) return( c.hasStarted() & !c.isActive() ); // else, keep looking (we'll assume the ID is valid) break; case last: // we just test for disqualifying children // If the child is active, we're definitely not done. // If the child has not yet begun but has a resolved begin, // then we're not done. if( c.isActive() || c.begin.isResolved(now) ) return false; // else, keep checking (the assumed result is true) break; case all: // we just test for disqualifying children // all_means_last_done_after_all_begin // If the child is active, we're definitely not done. // If the child has not yet begun then we're not done. // Note that if it has already begun, // then we still have to wait for any more resolved begins if( c.isActive() || !c.hasStarted() || c.begin.isResolved(now) ) return false; // else, keep checking (the assumed result is true) break; } // close switch } // close foreach loop return assumedResult; } // close timeContainerHasEnded()
This section is informative
SMIL 1.0 introduced the repeat attribute, which is used to repeat a media element or an entire time container. SMIL 2.1 introduces two new controls for repeat functionality that supercede the SMIL 1.0 repeat attribute. The new attributes, repeatCount and repeatDur, provide a semantic that more closely matches typical use-cases, and the new attributes provide more control over the duration of the repeating behavior.
Repeating an element causes the simple duration to be "played" several times in sequence. This will effectively copy or loop the contents of the element media (or an entire timeline in the case of a time container). The author can specify either how many times to repeat, using repeatCount, or how long to repeat, using repeatDur. Each repeat iteration is one instance of "playing" the simple duration.
In the following example, the implicit duration of the audio is constrained by repeatCount. Only the first half of the clip will play; the active duration will be 1.5 seconds.
<audio src="3second_sound.au" repeatCount="0.5" />
In this example, the 3 second (implicit) simple duration will be played three times through and then is constrained by the dur attribute on the parent par; the active duration will be 9 seconds.
<par dur="9s">
<audio src="3second_sound.au" repeatCount="100" />
</par>
In the following example, the 2.5 second simple duration will be repeated twice; the active duration will be 5 seconds.
<audio src="background.au" dur="2.5s" repeatCount="2" />
In the following example, the 3 second (implicit) simple duration will be repeated two full times and then the first half is repeated once more; the active duration will be 7.5 seconds.
<audio src="3second_sound.au" repeatCount="2.5" />
In the following example, the audio will repeat for a total of 7 seconds. It will play fully two times, followed by a fractional part of 2 seconds. This is equivalent to a repeatCount of 2.8.
<audio src="music.mp3" dur="2.5s" repeatDur="7s" />
Note that if the simple duration is indefinite, repeat behavior is not defined (but repeatDur still contributes to the active duration). In the following example the simple duration is 0 and indefinite respectively, and so the repeatCount is ignored. Nevertheless, this is not considered an error. The active duration is equal to the simple duration: for the first element, the active duration is 0, and for the second element, the active duration is indefinite.
<img src="foo.jpg" repeatCount="2" /> <img src="bar.png" dur="indefinite" repeatCount="2" />
In the following example, the simple duration is 0 for the image and indefinite for the text element, and so repeat behavior is not meaningful. The active duration is 0 for the first element, however for the second element, the active duration is determined by the repeatDur value, and so is 10 seconds. The effect is that the text is shown for 10 seconds.
<img src="foo.jpg" repeatDur="10s" /> <text src="intro.html" dur="indefinite" repeatDur="10s" />
In the following example, if the audio media is longer than the 5 second repeatDur, then the active duration will effectively cut short the simple duration.
<audio src="8second_sound.au" repeatDur="5s" />
The repeatCount and repeatDur attributes can also be used to repeat an entire timeline (i.e. a time container simple duration), as in the following example. The sequence has an implicit simple duration of 13 seconds. It will begin to play after 5 seconds, and then will repeat the sequence of three images 3 times. The active duration is thus 39 seconds long.
<seq begin="5s" repeatCount="3" > <img src="img1.jpg" dur="5s" /> <img src="img2.jpg" dur="4s" /> <img src="img3.jpg" dur="4s" /> </seq>
The min attribute does not prevent an element from restarting before the minimum active duration is reached. If in the following example, the "user.activateEvent" occurs once at 2 seconds, then again at 5 seconds, the "image" element will begin at 2 seconds, play for 3 seconds, and then be restarted at 5 seconds. The restarted interval (beginning at 5 seconds) will display the image until 12 seconds.
<smil ...> ... <par> <img id="image" begin="user.activateEvent" min="7s" dur="5s" restart="always" fill="freeze".../> </par> ... </smil>
The SMIL 1.0 repeat attribute behaves in a manner similar to repeatCount, but it defines the functionality in terms of a sequence that contains the specified number of copies of the element without the repeat attribute. This definition has caused some confusion among authors and implementers. See also the SMIL 1.0 specification [SMIL10].
In particular, there has been confusion concerning the behavior of the SMIL 1.0 end attribute when used in conjunction with the repeat attribute. SMIL 2.1 complies with the common practice of having the end attribute define the element's simple duration when the deprecated repeat attribute is used. Only SMIL document user agents must support this semantic for the end attribute. Only a single SMIL 1.0 "end" value (i.e. an offset-value or a smil-1.0-syncbase-value, but none of the new SMIL 2.1 timing) is permitted when used with the deprecated repeat attribute. If repeat is used with repeatCount or repeatDur on an element, or if repeat is used with an illegal end value, the repeat value is ignored.
This section is normative
This section is informative
When an element's active duration ends, it may be frozen at the final state, or it may no longer be presented (i.e., its effect is removed from the presentation). Freezing an element extends it, using the final state defined in the last instance of the simple duration. This can be used to fill gaps in a presentation, or to extend an element as context in the presentation (e.g. with additive animation - see [SMIL-ANIMATION]).
This section is normative
The fill attribute allows an author to specify that an element should be extended beyond the active duration by freezing the final state of the element. The fill attribute is also used to determine the behavior when the active duration is less than the duration specified in the min attribute. For this reason, rather than referring to the end of the active duration, this description refers to the "last instance of the simple duration".
The syntax of the fill attribute is the same as in SMIL 1.0, with two extensions. In addition, the fill attribute may now be applied to any timed element, including time containers.
Note that given the default values for fill and fillDefault attributes, if the fill attribute is not specified for an element, and if the fillDefault attribute is not specified for any ascendant of the element, the behavior uses "auto" semantics.
An element with "freeze" behavior is extended according to the parent time container:
When applied to media, fill only has a presentation effect on visual media. Non-visual media (audio) will simply be silent (although they are still frozen from a timing perspective).
This section is normative
The effects of the fill attribute apply only to the timing semantics. If an element is still visible while frozen, it behaves normally with respect to other semantics such as user event processing. In particular, elements such as a and area are still sensitive to user activation (e.g. clicks) when frozen. See also the SMIL 1.0 specification [SMIL10].
This section is informative
The fill attribute can be used to maintain the value of a media element after the active duration of the element ends:
<par endsync="last"> <video src="intro.mpg" begin= "5s" dur="30s" fill="freeze" /> <audio src="intro.au" begin= "2s" dur="40s"/> </par>
The video element ends 35 seconds after the parent time container began, but the video frame at 30 seconds into the media remains displayed until the audio element ends. The attribute "freezes" the last value of the element for the remainder of the time container's simple duration.
This functionality is also useful to keep prior elements on the screen while the next item of a seq time container prepares to display as in this example:
<seq> <video id="v1" fill="freeze" src.../> <video id="v2" begin="2s" src.../> </seq>
The first video is displayed and then the last frame is frozen for 2 seconds, until the next element begins. Note that if it takes additional time to download or buffer video "v2" for playback, the first video "v1" will remain frozen until video "v2" actually begins.
This section is informative
Note that there are several ways that an element may be restarted. The behavior (i.e. to restart or not) in all cases is controlled by the restart attribute. The different restart cases are:
As with any begin time, if an element is scheduled to restart after the end of the parent time container simple duration, the element will not restart.
restart = ( "always" | "whenNotActive" | "never" | "default" )
The restartDefault attribute can be used to control the default behavior of the restart attribute. This is described below in Controlling the default behavior of restart.
For details on when and how the restart attribute is evaluated, see Evaluation of begin and end time lists.
This section is informative
A common use-case requires that the same UI event is used to begin an element and to end the active duration of the element. This is sometimes described as "toggle" activation, because the UI event toggles the element "on" and "off". The restart attribute can be used to author this, as follows:
<smil ...> ... <img id="foo" begin="bar.activateEvent" end="bar.activateEvent" restart="whenNotActive" ... /> </smil ...>
If "foo" were defined with the default restart behavior "always", a second activateEvent on the "bar" element would simply restart the element. However, since the second activateEvent cannot restart the element when restart is set to "whenNotActive", the element ignores the "begin" specification of the activateEvent event. The element can then use the activateEvent event to end the active duration and stop the element.
Note that in SMIL Language documents, a SMIL
element cannot be visible before it begins so having a begin="activateEvent" means it won't ever begin.
In languages with timeAction
support, this may not be the case.
For example, the following is reasonable:
<html ...> ... <span begin="click" end="click" timeAction="class:highlight" restart="whenNotActive"> Click here to highlight. Click again to remove highlight. </span> ... </html>
This is based upon the event sensitivity semantics described in Event sensitivity and Unifying Scheduling and Interactive Timing.
This section is normative
The following attribute is provided to specify the default behavior for restart:
Given the default values of this attribute ("inherit") and of the restart attribute
("default"), a document that does not specify these attributes will
have restart="always"
behavior for all timed elements.
This section is normative
When a time container repeats or restarts, all descendent children are "reset" with respect to certain state:
This section is informative
Thus, for example if an element specifies restart="never", the element can begin again after a reset. The restart="never" setting is only defined for the extent of the parent time container simple duration.
This section is normative
When an element restarts, rules 1 and 2 are also applied to the element itself, although rule 4 (controlling restart behavior) is not applied.
Note that when any time container ends its simple duration (including when it repeats), all timed children that are still active are ended. See also Time container constraints on child durations.
When an excl time container restarts or repeats, in addition to ending any active children, the pause queue for the excl is cleared.
This section is informative
New support in SMIL 2.1 introduces finer grained control over the runtime synchronization behavior of a document. The syncBehavior attribute allows an author to describe for each element whether it must remain in a hard sync relationship to the parent time container, or whether it can be allowed slip with respect to the time container. Thus, if network congestion delays or interrupts the delivery of media for an element, the syncBehavior attribute controls whether the media element can slip while the rest of the document continues to play, or whether the time container must also wait until the media delivery catches up.
The syncBehavior attribute can also be applied to time containers. This controls the sync relationship of the entire timeline defined by the time container. In this example, the audio and video elements are defined with hard or "locked" sync to maintain lip sync, but the "speech" par time container is allowed to slip:
<par> <animation src="..." /> ... <par id="speech" syncBehavior="canSlip" > <video src="speech.mpg" syncBehavior="locked" /> <audio src="speech.au" syncBehavior="locked" /> </par> ... </par>
If either the video or audio must pause due to delivery problems, the entire "speech" par will pause, to keep the entire timeline in sync. However, the rest of the document, including the animation element will continue to play normally. Using the syncBehavior attribute on elements and time containers, the author can effectively describe the "scope" of runtime sync behavior, defining some portions of the document to play in hard sync without requiring that the entire document use hard synchronization.
This functionality also applies when an element first begins, and the media must begin to play. If the media is not yet ready (e.g. if an image file has not yet downloaded), the syncBehavior attribute controls whether the time container must wait until the element media is ready, or whether the element begin can slip until the media is downloaded.
An additional extension allows the author to specify that a particular element should define or control the synchronization for a time container. This is similar to the default behavior of many user agents that "slave" video and other elements to audio, to accommodate the audio hardware inaccuracies and the sensitivity of listeners to interruptions in the audio playback. The syncMaster attribute allows an author to explicitly define that an element defines the playback "clock" for the time container, and all other elements should be held in sync relative to the syncMaster element.
In practice, linear media often need to be the syncMaster, where non-linear media can more easily be adjusted to maintain hard sync. However, a user agent cannot always determine which media behaves in a linear fashion and which media behaves in a non-linear fashion. In addition, when there are multiple linear elements active at a given point in time, the user agent cannot always make the "right" decision to resolve sync conflicts. The syncMaster attribute allows the author to specify the element that has linear media, or that is "most important" and should not be compromised by the syncBehavior of other elements.
This section is normative
The argument value independent is equivalent to setting syncBehavior="canSlip" and syncMaster="true" so that the element is scheduled within the timegraph, but is unaffected by any other runtime synchronization issues. Setting syncBehavior="canSlip" and syncMaster="true" declares the element as being the synchronization master clock and that the element may slip against its parent time line
This section is informative
Note that the semantics of syncBehavior do not describe or require a particular approach to maintaining sync; the approach will be implementation dependent. Possible means of resolving a sync conflict may include:
Additional control is provided over the hard sync model using the syncTolerance attribute. This specifies the amount of slip that can be ignored for an element. Small variance in media playback (e.g. due to hardware inaccuracies) can often be ignored, and allow the overall performance to appear smoother.
When any element is paused (including the cases described above for runtime sync behavior), the computed end time for the element may change or even become resolved, and the time model must reflect this. This is detailed in Paused elements and the active duration.
Two attributes are defined to specify the default behavior for runtime synchronization:
If an element slips synchronization relative to its parent, the amount of this slip at any point is described as the accumulated synchronization offset. This offset is used to account for pause semantics as well as performance or delivery related slip. This value is used to adjust the conversion between element and parent times, as described in Converting between local and global times. The offset is computed as follows:
Let tc(tps) be the computed element active time for an element at the parent simple time tps, according to the defined synchronization relationship for the element.Let to(tps) be the observed element active time for an element at the parent simple time tps.
The accumulated synchronization offset O is:
O = to(tps) - tc(tps)This offset is measured in parent simple time.
Thus an accumulated synchronization offset of 1 second corresponds to the element playing 1 second "later" than it was scheduled. An offset of -0.5 seconds corresponds to the element playing a half second "ahead" of where it should be.
The modularization of SMIL 2.1 functionality allows language designers to integrate SMIL Timing and Synchronization support into any XML language. In addition to just scheduling media elements as in SMIL language documents, timing can be applied to the elements of the host language. For example, the addition of timing to HTML (i.e. XHTML) elements will control the presentation of the HTML document over time, and to synchronize text and presentation with continuous media such as audio and video.
Two attributes are introduced to support these integration cases.
The timeContainer
attribute allows the author to specify that any XML language element
has time container behavior. E.g., an HTML <ol>
ordered list element can be defined to behave as a sequence time
container. The timeAction
attribute allows the author to specify what it means to apply timing to
a given element.
XML language elements can be declared to have time container semantics by adding the timeContainer attribute. The syntax is:
Constraints upon the use of the timeContainer attribute are:
The timeAction attribute provides control over the effect of timing upon an attribute. A host language must specify which values are allowed for each element in the language. A host language must specify the intrinsic timing behavior of each element to which timeAction may be applied. In addition, a host language may specify additional timeAction values. The syntax is:
display
" property
should be controlled over time.visibility
"
property should be controlled over time.style
" attribute.class
attribute value list).The intrinsic behavior is defined by a host language. For example in the SMIL language, the intrinsic behavior of media elements is to schedule and control the visibility of the media. For some elements or some languages, the intrinsic behavior may default to one of the other behaviors.
Additional timeAction semantics and constraints:
visibility
property should be set to "hidden" when
the element is not active or frozen. If the original value of the
visibility
property was not "hidden", the original value should be used
when the element is active or frozen. If the original value of the
visibility
property was "hidden", the property should be set to "visible" when the element is active or
frozen.style
" attribute,
the style value for timeAction should not be
allowed.class
attribute), the class name should be
removed from the class list of the element when the element is not
active or frozen.Certain special elements may have specific intrinsic semantics. For example, linking elements like a and area can have an intrinsic behavior that controls the sensitivity of the elements to actuation by the user. This may have presentation side-effects as well. In XHTML for example, making these elements insensitive also has the effect that the default styling (e.g. a color and underline) that is applied to sensitive links is removed when the element is not active or frozen.
Host language designers should carefully consider and define the
behavior associated with applying timing to an element. For example,
script
elements could be defined to execute when the
element begins, or the language could disallow the timeAction attribute on the
element. Similarly, link
elements could apply a linked
stylesheet when the element begins or the language could disallow the
timeAction attribute on
link
.
For details of the CSS properties visibility
and
display
, see [CSS2].
The following example shows a simple case of controlling visibility over time. The text is hidden from 0 to 3 seconds, shown normally for 5 seconds, and then hidden again.
<span timeAction="visibility" begin="3s" dur="5s"> Show this text for a short period. </span>
The following example shows a simple case of controlling display over time. Each list element is shown for 5 seconds, and is removed from the layout when not active or frozen. The ordered list element is set to be a sequence time container as well (note that each list element retains its ordinal number even though the others are not displayed):
<ol timeContainer="seq" repeatDur="indefinite"> <li timeAction="display" dur="5s"> This is the first thing you will see. </li> <li timeAction="display" dur="5s"> You will see this second. </li> <li timeAction="display" dur="5s"> Last but not least, you will see this. </li> </ol>
The following example shows how an element specific style can be
applied over time. The respective style is applied to each HTML
label
for 5 seconds after a focus event is raised on the
element:
<form ...> ... <label for="select_red" begin="focus" dur="5s" timeAction="style" style="color:red; font-weight:bold" > Make things RED. </label> <input id="select_red" .../> <label for="select_green" begin="focus" dur="5s" timeAction="style" style="color:green; font-weight:bold" > Make things GREEN. </label> <input id="select_green" .../> ... </form>
This section is informative
SMIL 2.1 specifies three types of time containers. These can be declared with the elements par, seq, and excl, or in some integration profiles with a timeContainer attribute. Media elements with timed children are defined to be "media time containers", and have semantics based upon the par semantics (see also Attributes for timing integration: timeContainer and timeAction and Implicit duration of media element time containers).
This document refers in general to time containers by reference to the elements, but the same semantics apply when declared with an attribute, and for media time containers.
This section is normative
The implicit syncbase of the child elements of a par is the begin of the par. The default value of begin for children of a par is "0". This is the same element introduced with SMIL 1.0.
The par element supports all element timing.
The implicit duration of a par is controlled by endsync. By default, the implicit duration of a par is defined by the endsync="last" semantics. The implicit duration ends with the last active end of the child elements.
This section is normative
This is the same element introduced with SMIL 1.0, but the semantics (and allowed syntax) for child elements of a seq are clarified.
The seq element itself supports all element timing except endsync.
When a hyperlink traversal targets a child of a seq, and the target child is not currently active, part of the seek action must be to enforce the basic semantic of a seq that only one child may be active at a given time. For details, see Hyperlinks and timing and specifically Implications of beginElement() and hyperlinking for seq and excl time containers.
SMIL 2.1 defines a time container, excl, that allows the interactive (or a-temporal) activation of child elements.
This section is normative
The implicit syncbase of the child elements of the excl is the begin of the excl. The default value of begin for children of excl is "indefinite". This means that the excl has 0 duration unless a child of the excl has been added to the timegraph.
The excl element itself supports all element timing.
This section is informative
With the excl time container, common use cases that were either difficult, or impossible, to author are now easier and possible to create. The excl time container is used to define a mutually exclusive set of clips, and to describe pausing and resuming behaviors among these clips. Examples include:
The interactive playlist use case above could be accomplished using a par whose sources have interactive begin times and end events for all other sources. This would require a prohibitively long list of values for end to maintain. The excl time container provides a convenient short hand for this - the element begin times are still interactive, but the end events do not need to be specified because the excl, by definition, only allows one child element to play at a time.
The audio descriptions use case is not possible without the pause/resume behavior provided by excl and priorityClass. This use case would be authored with a video and each audio description as children of the excl. The video element would be scheduled to begin when the excl begins and the audio descriptions, peers of the video element, would start at scheduled begin times or in response to stream events raised at specific times.
The dynamic video sub-titles use case requires the "play only one at a time" behavior of excl. In addition, the child elements are declared in such a way so as to preserve the sync relationship to the video:
<smil ...> ... <par endsync="vid1"> <video id="vid1" .../> <excl dur="indefinite"> <par begin="englishBtn.activateEvent" > <audio begin="vid1.begin" src="english.au" /> </par> <par begin="frenchBtn.activateEvent" > <audio begin="vid1.begin" src="french.au" /> </par> <par begin="swahiliBtn.activateEvent" > <audio begin="vid1.begin" src="swahili.au" /> </par> </excl> </par> ... </smil>
The three par elements are children of the excl, and so only one can play at a time. The audio child in each par is defined to begin when the video begins. Each audio can only be active when the parent time container (par) is active, but the begin still specifies the synchronization relationship. This means that when each par begins, the audio will start playing at some point in the middle of the audio clip, and in sync with the video.
The excl time container is useful in many authoring scenarios by providing a declarative means of describing complex clip interactions.
This section is normative
This section is informative
Using priority classes to control the pausing behavior of children of the excl allows the author to group content into categories of content, and then to describe rules for how each category will interrupt or be interrupted by other categories. Attributes of the new grouping element priorityClass describe the intended interactions.
Each priorityClass element describes a group of children, and the behavior of those children when interrupted by other time-children of the excl. The behavior is described in terms of peers, and higher and lower priority elements. Peers are those elements within the same priorityClass element.
When one element within the excl begins (or would normally begin) while another is already active, several behaviors may result. The active element may be paused or stopped, or the interrupting element may be deferred, or simply blocked from beginning.
The careful choice of defaults makes common use cases very simple. See the examples below.
This section is normative
If no priorityClass element is used, all the children of the excl are considered to be peers, with the default peers behavior "stop".
This section is informative
Note that the rules define the behavior of the currently active element and the interrupting element. Any elements in the pause queue are not affected (except that their position in the queue may be altered by new queue insertions).
This section is normative
excl
time container). The paused element is
added to the pause queue.When an element begin is blocked (ignored) because of the "never" attribute value, the blocked element does not begin in the time model. The time model should not propagate begin or end activations to time dependents, nor should it raise begin or end events.
This section is informative
The pauseDisplay attribute controls the behavior when paused of the children of a priorityClass element. When a child of a priorityClass element is paused according to excl and priorityClass semantics, the pauseDisplay attribute controls whether the paused element will continue to show or apply the element (i.e. the state of the element for the time at which it is paused), or whether it is removed altogether from the presentation (i.e. disabled) while paused.
This section is normative
="pause"
or
higher="pause"
.This section is informative
Note that because of the defaults, the simple cases work without any additional syntax. In the basic case, all the elements default to be peers, and stop one another:
<excl dur="indefinite"> <audio id="song1" .../> <audio id="song2" .../> <audio id="song3" .../> ... <audio id="songN" .../> </excl>
is equivalent to the following with explicit settings:
<excl dur="indefinite"> <priorityClass peers="stop"> <audio id="song1" .../> <audio id="song2" .../> <audio id="song3" .../> ... <audio id="songN" .../> </priorityClass> </excl>
If the author wants elements to pause rather than stop, the syntax is:
<excl dur="indefinite"> <priorityClass peers="pause"> <audio id="song1" .../> <audio id="song2" .../> <audio id="song3" .../> ... <audio id="songN" .../> </priorityClass> </excl>
The audio description use case for visually impaired users would look very similar to the previous example:
<excl dur="indefinite"> <priorityClass peers="pause"> <video id="main_video" .../> <audio id="scene1_description" begin="20s" dur="30s".../> <audio id="scene2_description" begin="2min" dur="30s" .../> ... <audio id="sceneN_description" .../> </priorityClass> </excl>
This example shows a more complex case of program material and several commercial insertions. The program videos will interrupt one another. The ads will pause the program, but will not interrupt one another.
<excl dur="indefinite"> <priorityClass id="ads" peers="defer"> <video id="advert1" .../> <video id="advert2" .../> </priorityClass> <priorityClass id="program" peers="stop" higher="pause"> <video id="program1" .../> <video id="program2" .../> <video id="program3" .../> <video id="program4" .../> </priorityClass> </excl>
The following example illustrates how defer semantics and priority groups can interact. When "alert1" tries to begin at 5 seconds, the "program" priorityClass will force "alert1" to defer, and so "alert1" will be placed upon the queue. When "alert2" tries to begin at 6 seconds, the same semantics will force "alert2" onto the queue. Note that although the "alerts" priorityClass defines the peers rule as "never", "alert1" is not active at 6 seconds, and so the interrupt semantics between "alert1" and "alert2" are not evaluated. The resulting behavior is that when "prog1" ends at 20 seconds, "alert1" will play, and then when "alert1" ends, "alert2" will play.
<excl dur="indefinite"> <priorityClass id="program" lower="defer"> <video id="prog1" begin="0" dur="20s" .../> </priorityClass> <priorityClass id="alerts" peers="never"> <video id="alert1" begin="5s" .../> <video id="alert2" begin="6s" .../> </priorityClass> </excl>
This example illustrates pauseDisplay control. When an element is interrupted by a peer, the interrupted element pauses and is shown in a disabled state. It is implementation dependent how the disabled video is rendered. Disabled elements do not respond to mouse events.
<excl dur="indefinite"> <priorityClass peers="pause" pauseDisplay="disable"> <video id="video1" .../> <video id="video2" .../> <video id="video3" .../> ... <video id="videoN" .../> </priorityClass> </excl>
In this example, when a child of a higher priorityClass element interrupts a child of the "program" priorityClass, the child of "program" pauses and remains onscreen. If a peer of the "program" priorityClass interrupts a peer, the element that was playing stops and is no longer displayed.
<excl dur="indefinite"> <priorityClass id="ads" peers="defer"> <video id="advert1" .../> <video id="advert2" .../> </priorityClass> <priorityClass id="program" peers="stop" higher="pause" pauseDisplay="show"> <video id="program1" .../> <video id="program2" .../> <video id="program3" .../> <video id="program4" .../> </priorityClass> </excl>
This section is normative
Elements that are paused or deferred are placed in a priority-sorted queue of waiting elements. When an active element ends its active duration and the queue is not empty, the first (i.e. highest priority) element in the queue is pulled from the queue and resumed or activated.
The queue semantics are described as a set of invariants and the rules for insertion and removal of elements. For the purposes of discussion, the child elements of a priorityClass element are considered to have the priority of that priorityClass, and to have the behavior described by the peers, higher and lower attributes on the priorityClass parent.
Note that if an element is active and restarts (subject to the restart rule), it does not interrupt itself in the sense of a peer interrupting it. Rather, it simply restarts and the queue is unaffected.
The runtime synchronization behavior of an element (described in the syncBehavior, syncTolerance, and syncMaster attributes: controlling runtime synchronization) does not affect the queue semantics. Any element that is paused or deferred according to the queue semantics will behave as described. When a paused element is resumed, the synchronization relationship will be reestablished according to the runtime synchronization semantics. The synchronization relationship for a deferred element will be established when the element actually begins.
When an element is paused, the calculated end time for the element may change or even become resolved, and the time model must reflect this. This is detailed in Paused elements and the active duration. In some cases, the end time is defined by other elements unaffected by the pause queue semantics. In the following example, the "foo" element will be paused at 8 seconds, but it will still end at 10 seconds (while it is paused):
<img "joe" end="10s" .../> <excl dur="indefinite"> <priorityClass peers="pause"> <img id="foo" end="joe.end" .../> <img id="bar" begin="8s" dur="5s" .../> </priorityClass> </excl>
If an element ends while it is in the pause queue, it is simply removed from the pause queue. All time dependents will be notified normally, and the end event will be raised at the end time, as usual.
When an element is deferred, the begin time is deferred as well. Just as described in Paused elements and the active duration, the begin time of a deferred element may become unresolved, or it may simply be delayed. In the following example, the "bar" element will initially have an unresolved begin time. If the user clicks on "foo" at 8 seconds, "bar" would resolve to 8 seconds, but will be deferred until 10 seconds (when "foo" ends):
<html ...> ... <excl dur="indefinite"> <priorityClass peers="defer"> <img id="foo" begin="0s" dur="10s" .../> <img id="bar" begin="foo.click" .../> </priorityClass> </excl> ... </html>
If there is enough information to determine the new begin time (as in the example above), an implementation must compute the correct begin time when an element is deferred. The change to the begin time that results from the element being paused must be propagated to any sync arc time dependents (i.e. other elements with a begin or end defined relative to the begin of the deferred element). See also the Propagating changes to times section.
One exception to normal processing is made for deferred elements, to simplify the model: a deferred element ignores propagated changes to its begin time. This is detailed in the Deferred elements and propagating changes to begin section.
Although the default begin value for children of an excl is indefinite, scheduled begin times are permitted. Scheduled begin times on children of the excl cause the element to begin at the specified time, pausing or stopping other siblings depending on the priorityClass settings (and default values).
If children of an excl attempt to begin at the same time, the evaluation proceeds in document order. For each element in turn, the priorityClass semantics are considered, and elements may be paused, deferred or stopped.
This section is informative
The following examples both exhibit this behavior (it can result from any combination of scheduled times, interactive timing, hyperlink or DOM activation):
<smil ...> ... <excl> <img src="image1.jpg" begin="0s" dur="5s"/> <img src="image2.jpg" begin="0s" dur="5s"/> <img src="image3.jpg" begin="0s" dur="5s"/> </excl> <excl dur ="indefinite"> <img id="img1" src="image1.jpg" begin="foo.activateEvent" dur="5s"/> <img id="img2" src="image2.jpg" begin="img1.begin" dur="5s"/> <img id="img3" src="image3.jpg" begin="img2.begin" dur="5s"/> </excl> ... </smil>
In the first example, the images are scheduled to begin immediately, where in the second, they will all begin once the user activates the "foo" element. The end result of the two (other than the begin time) is the same. Given the default interrupt semantics for excl, the first image will begin and then be immediately stopped by the second image, which will in turn be immediately stopped by the third image. The net result is that only the third image is seen, and it lasts for 5 seconds. Note that the begin and end events for the first two images are raised and propagated to all time dependents. If the behavior is set to "pause" as in this example, the declared order is effectively reversed:
<excl> <priorityClass peers="pause"> <img src="image1.jpg" begin="0s" dur="5s"/> <img src="image2.jpg" begin="0s" dur="5s"/> <img src="image3.jpg" begin="0s" dur="5s"/> </priorityClass> </excl>
In this case, the first image will begin and then be immediately paused by the second image, which will in turn be immediately paused by the third image. The net result is that the third image is seen for 5 seconds, followed by the second image for 5 seconds, followed by the first image for 5 seconds. Note that the begin events for the first two images are raised and propagated to all time dependents when the