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

[Sam Kuper]

2009/6/30 Peter Kasting <pkasting at google.com>
> On Jun 30, 2009 2:17 AM, "Sam Kuper" <sam.kuper at uclmail.net> wrote:
> > > 2009/6/30 Silvia Pfeiffer <silviapfeiffer1 at gmail.com>
> > > > On Tue, Jun 30, 2009 at 2:50 PM, Ian Hickson<ian at hixie.ch> wrote: > > I considered requiring Og...
> >
> > Right. Waiting for all vendors to support the specified codec would be like waiting for them all to be Acid3 compliant. Better to specify how browsers should behave (especially if it's how most of them will behave), and let the stragglers pick up the slack in their own time under consumer pressure.
> > Sam
>
> As a contributor to multiple browsers, I think it's important to note the distinctions between cases like Acid3 (where IIRC all tests were supposed to test specs that had been published with no dispute for 5 years), much of HTML5 (where items not yet implemented generally have agreement-on-principle from various vendors) and this issue, where vendors have publicly refused to implement particular cases. [...]

I'd question, based on the following statements, whether your memory
of Acid3 is correct:

"Controversially, [Acid3] includes several elements from the CSS2
recommendation that were later removed in CSS2.1 but reintroduced in
W3C CSS3 working drafts that have not made it to candidate
recommendations yet."[1]

"The following standards are tested by Acid3: [...]
    * SMIL 2.1 (subtests 75-76) [...]"[1]

SMIL 2.1 became a W3C Recommendation in December 2005.[2]

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid3
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronized_Multimedia_Integration_Language#SMIL_2.1

So, there is some precedent for the W3C to publish specs/tests,
expecting browser vendors to catch up with them further down the line.

Sam