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Re: Preferred Format for Text Transcript

for

From: John Foliot
Date: May 25, 2010 1:12PM

Daniel Tang (dtang) wrote:
>
> Hello:
>
> Yes. Text is better.
>
> Daniel

Hi Daniel,

With all due respect, better for whom? And why?

Text (txt) has no semantic structure, cannot be easily repurposed or
visually styled in a web browser (or other user agent) and is a very
baseline minimum. To suggest in 3 words that it is "better" warrants a
fuller explanation (please).

Janet, obviously I believe that HTML is the better format as it can be
'rendered-down' to text output much more easily than .txt can be 'rendered
up' by end users. I would recommend marked-up texts whenever possible.

There is a very real possibility that using a profile of TTML (DFXP)
[http://www.w3.org/TR/ttaf1-dfxp/] - formats already supported by many
Flash-based players and likely a candidate for HTML5 - along with a little
bit of XSLT magic you could auto-generate your .html docs from the
time-stamped files, reducing production time and effort. (Note, I have not
yet attempted this myself, but am thinking about it...)

Cheers!

JF

===========================John  Foliot
Program Manager
Stanford Online Accessibility Program
http://soap.stanford.edu
Stanford University
Tel: 650-862-4603

---
Co-chair - W3C HTML5 Accessibility Task Force (Media)
http://www.w3.org/WAI/PF/HTML/wiki/Main_Page

===========================



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