[whatwg] SRT research: timestamps

[Ralph Giles]

This is all I meant as well. Of course we should all implement the parser as spec'd. My comments were with respect to amending the spec to be more forgiving of common errors.

 -r

Philip Jägenstedt <philipj at opera.com> wrote:

>On Thu, 06 Oct 2011 07:36:00 +0200, Silvia Pfeiffer  
><silviapfeiffer1 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On Thu, Oct 6, 2011 at 10:51 AM, Ralph Giles <giles at mozilla.com> wrote:
>>> On 05/10/11 04:36 PM, Glenn Maynard wrote:
>>>
>>>> If the files don't work in VTT in any major implementation, then  
>>>> probably
>>>> not many.  It's the fault of overly-lenient parsers that these things  
>>>> happen
>>>> in the first place.
>>>
>>> A point Philip Jägenstedt has made is that it's sufficiently tedious to
>>> verify correct subtitle playback that authors are unlikely to do so with
>>> any vigilance. Therefore the better trade-off is to make the parser
>>> forgiving, rather than inflict the occasional missing cue on viewers.
>>
>> That's a slippery slope to go down on. If they cannot see the
>> consequence, they assume it's legal. It's not like we are totally
>> screwing up the display - there's only one mis-authored cue missing.
>> If we accept one type of mis-authoring, where do you stop with
>> accepting weirdness? How can you make compatible implementations if
>> everyone decides for themselves what weirdness that is not in the spec
>> they accept?
>>
>> I'd rather we have strict parsing and recover from brokenness. It's
>> the job of validators to identify broken cues. We should teach authors
>> to use validators before they decide that their files are ok.
>>
>> As for some of the more dominant mis-authorings: we can accept them as
>> correct authoring, but then they have to be made part of the
>> specification and legalized.
>
>To clarify, I have certainly never suggested that implementation do  
>anything other than follow the spec to the letter. I *have* suggested that  
>the parsing spec be more tolerant of certain errors, but looking at the  
>extremely low error rates in our sample I have to conclude that either (1)  
>the data is biased or (2) most of these errors are not common enough that  
>they need to be handled.
>
>-- 
>Philip Jägenstedt
>Core Developer
>Opera Software