[whatwg] Fwd: Discussing WebSRT and alternatives/improvements
Julian Reschke
julian.reschke at gmx.de
Wed Aug 18 00:14:19 PDT 2010
On 18.08.2010 00:43, Silvia Pfeiffer wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 18, 2010 at 5:12 AM, Julian Reschke <julian.reschke at gmx.de
> <mailto:julian.reschke at gmx.de>> wrote:
>
> On 12.08.2010 10:09, Philip Jägenstedt wrote:
>
> ...
>
> The core "problem" is that WebSRT is far too compatible with
> existing SRT usage. Regardless of the file extension and MIME
> type used, it's quite improbable that anyone will have different
> parsers for the same format. Once media players have been forced
> to handle the extra markup in WebSRT (e.g. by ignoring it, as
> many already do) the two formats will be the same, and using
> WebSRT markup in .srt files will just work, so that's what
> people will do. We may avoid being seen as arrogant
> format-hijackers, but the end result is two extensions and two
> different MIME types that mean exactly the same thing.
>
> > ...
>
> (just observing...)
>
> So when something that used to be plain text now carries markup,
> what's the compatibility story for plain text that happens to
> contain markup characters, such as "<", ">" or "&"?
>
> Best regards, Julian
>
>
> I assume you mean: what happens to text that contains such characters?
> In most SRT systems, such stuff will just be displayed verbatim.
Yes, in SRT. But in WebSRT? Isn't there a compatibility problem when the
format just switches from plain text to possibly escaped text?
(I recall the problems with title handling in RSS, and I want to make
sure that people have considered this issue)
Best regards, Julian
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