[whatwg] Codecs for <audio> and <video>

[Aryeh Gregor]

On Tue, Jun 30, 2009 at 12:50 AM, Ian Hickson<ian at hixie.ch> wrote:
> I considered requiring Ogg Theora support in the spec, since we do have
> three implementations that are willing to implement it, but it wouldn't
> help get us true interoperabiliy, since the people who are willing to
> implement it are willing to do so regardless of the spec, and the people
> who aren't are not going to be swayed by what the spec says.

Why can't you make support for Theora and Vorbis a "should"
requirement?  That wouldn't be misleading, especially if worded right.
 It would serve as a hint to future implementers who might not be
familiar with this whole sordid format war.  It would also hopefully
help put more emphasis on Ogg and get more authors to view lack of Ogg
support as a deficiency or bug to be worked around, thus encouraging
implementers to support it.  It's only about two lines total -- what's
the downside?

Proselytism is a valid reason to add material to the spec, right?
Certainly I recall you mentioning that in the case of alt text -- you
didn't want to allow alt text to be omitted in general lest it
discourage authors from using it.  I think it's clear that of the two
contenders for video, Theora is a much closer fit to HTML 5's goal of
open standards and deserves whatever support is possible without
sacrificing other goals (like accuracy).