[whatwg] Apple Proposal for Timed Media Elements

[Vladimir Vukicevic]

Maciej Stachowiak wrote:
> 
> On Apr 4, 2007, at 7:31 PM, Vladimir Vukicevic wrote:
>> 1. 'media-loop-count' is an awkward name, especially with "The default 
>> value of 1 means the item will play through once but will not loop."  
>> We went through this with APNG, and ended up renaming that member.  I 
>> would suggest 'media-play-count' instead -- that way there is no 
>> ambiguity with what the number means.
> 
> We considered 'media-repeat-count' instead of 'media-loop-count', but 
> that turned out to be more confusing. We really wanted all the 
> looping-related properties to have consistent naming, and I don't think 
> 'play' would work in the other places mentioned.

The problem is that 'media-loop-count' with a value of 1, as defined, 
doesn't have anything to do with looping... play-count is much more 
descriptive of its actual purpose, IMO, despite not containing 'loop' in 
the name.  The others should definitely stay "loop-", though.

>> 2. The descriptions for 'media-loop-start-time' and 'media-loop-end- 
>> time' don't match; start-time says "sets the time at which the media 
>> item begins playing after looping", and end-time says "sets the time 
>> at which the media item loops for the second and subsequent repetitions".
>>
>> I would suggest that start-time says "sets the time index at which the 
>> media item starts playing for the second and subsequent repetitions", 
>> and that end-time says "sets the time index at which the media item 
>> ends playing for the second and subsequent repetitions."  The language 
>> for end-time is still a little awkward, since "ends playing" could 
>> imply that it simply stops playing (and does not loop), but it's 
>> clearer than before.
> 
> I think the language might have ended up actually defining it wrong. The 
> intent of 'media-loop-end-time' is that this is the point where you end 
> where repeating, but on the last iteration you go all the way to 
> 'media-end-time'. So if 'media-loop-count' has a value of 3, the three 
> repetitions would go as follows:
> [...]

Hmmm.  I see how that would be useful, ok.  So if I just wanted to loop 
the first 5 seconds of a video clip, I would just set media-start-time 
to 0s and media-end-time to 5s, and the count to infinite, right? 
Clarifying this (perhaps with some examples) would be good.

>> 3. 'media-timing' I would get rid of completely; while a shorthand 
>> would be useful, I don't think that media-timing as specified really 
>> works. Shorthands for properties such as 'background' are 
>> understandable on their own; 'media-timing: playing 0s -0.5s 2 2s -4s 
>> 1' is very opaque.    If it's still desirable, I would remove the 
>> setting of start/end times and change the volume shorthand to only 
>> accept the symbolic names; e.g. 'media-timing: playing high 4;'... but 
>> I think that removing the shorthand entirely would be preferable.
> 
> I'll reply in more detail about media-timing in a later message.

Sounds good.

    - Vlad