RE: [Timesheets LC comment] General Comments

A small and simple specification is good, better chance to have the
whole language implemented.

Opera has a preview of the next gen browser with native Theora and SVG:

http://dev.opera.com/articles/view/a-call-for-video-on-the-web-opera-vid/

First time I saw this, I was impressed, all that was missing was Vorbis
audio and SMIL Timesheets.

Timesheets should be able to make fade in and out transitions by
animating volume and opacity values on the audio/visual
media.

With fade transitions, it's possible to make presentations presentable,
the other feature could be added later.

The important thing is that the W3C provide an option for multimedia
content other than the prevailing proprietary ones.

SMIL Timesheets, SVG, Theora, Vorbis in a Web browser is a winning
combo IMHO :)

Jose Ramirez

Free your Media
'Xiph it'
at xiph.org

-------- Original Message --------

Subject: [Timesheets LC comment] General Comments

From: Doug Schepers <[email protected]>

Date: Sat, March 01, 2008 2:41 pm

To: [email protected]

Dear SYMM WG-

The SVG WG has reviewed SMIL Timesheets 1.0, W3C Working Draft 10

January 2008, http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/WD-timesheets-20080110/ .

We are very interested in SMIL Timesheets, and are pleased by the

functionality that this specification provides. We believe that this

has a lot of potential in a set of well-defined and common use cases,

specifically photo galleries and slideshows, which are increasingly

being presented on the Web; the functionality this specification

provides will make it much easier to author such content.

While we are sympathetic to moving forward quickly to meet market needs,

and support the approach that this technology lays out, however, we

don't believe this specification itself is in a state suitable for

Candidate Recommendation. Most obvious are the large sections stricken

through, and there are numerous areas where the normative requirements

are not clear, and several grammatical errors. We feel that once these

matters are cleared up, though, the specification will be very useful.

It does seem mostly focused on XHTML, in general; SVG can be used for

the same use cases, so we would like you to please include SVG examples

similar to the HTML ones.

Finally, while we understand that this is a simplified subset of SMIL

functionality meant to be immediately implemented in browsers with a

solid market case, we are concerned that it may in places be too simple

for what will be desired, particularly in the areas of transitions and

navigation, and encourage you to lay the groundwork for future extensions.

We have several specific comments and suggestions to follow. To make it

easier for you to address our comments, we have split them into

individual emails by types or sections.

Regards-

-Doug Schepers, on behalf of the SVG WG