Mallard+TTML+ITS

I just blogged about Mallard+TTML. And earlier I blogged about XML translations with ITS.

One of the nice features of ITS Tool is that it can merge ITS definitions from multiple sources. So when you embed TTML into Mallard, you don’t need to have a specific Mallard+TTML mode. Instead, the Mallard ITS definitions get applied, and the TTML ITS definitions get applied on top of them. I just added this ITS file to itstool git:

<its:rules
    xmlns:its="http://www.w3.org/2005/11/its"
    xmlns:tt="http://www.w3.org/ns/ttml"
    its:version="1.0">
  <its:withinTextRule withinText="yes" selector="//tt:p//*"/>
</its:rules>

This ensures that inline markup like tt:span doesn’t get split off with a placeholder into a separate translation unit. This one file applies the ITS definitions whether your TTML is embedded in Mallard, DocBook, XHTML, or any other format, or even if you have a standalone TTML file.

Mallard+TTML Video Captions

I said, “Why not add some simple captions to Mallard?” Philip said “Why not embed an existing format, like TTML?” Philip was so right.

<media type="video" mime="application/ogg" src="figures/gnotravex-video.ogv">
  <p>Simple demonstration of a game</p>
  <tt:tt xmlns:tt="http://www.w3.org/ns/ttml">
    <tt:body>
      <tt:div begin="1s" end="7s">
        <tt:p>Drag pieces from the right to the left, making sure that
        adjacent edges have the same number<em><tt:span begin="1s"> and
        color</tt:span></em>.</tt:p>
      </tt:div>
      <tt:div begin="6.5s" end="14s">
        <tt:p>Press <keyseq><key>Ctrl</key>arrow keys</keyseq>
        to move all the placed pieces at once.</tt:p>
      </tt:div>
    </tt:body>
  </tt:tt>
</media>

A nice bonus feature is the tt:span element. One second after the first caption is displayed, some extra text appears inside it.

We should host a TTML profile for Mallard+TTML on projectmallard.org. Authors concerned with interchange would then be able to specify that profile using ttp:profile to prevent non-Mallard TTML processors from choking up on the inline Mallard syntax.

Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States
This work by Shaun McCance is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States.