1. About SMIL 3.0

This section is informative.

This document specifies the third version of the Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language (SMIL, pronounced "smile"). SMIL 3.0 has the following design goals:

• Define an XML-based language that allows authors to write interactive multimedia presentations. Using SMIL 3.0, an author may describe the temporal behavior of a multimedia presentation, associate hyperlinks with media objects and describe the layout of the presentation on a screen.
• Allow reusing of SMIL 3.0 syntax and semantics in other XML-based languages, in particular those who need to represent timing and synchronization. For example, SMIL 3.0 components are used for integrating timing into XHTML [XHTML10] and into SVG [SVG].
• Extend the functionalities contained in the SMIL 2.1 [SMIL21] into new or revised SMIL 3.0 modules.
• Define new SMIL 3.0 Mobile Profiles incorporating features useful within the industry.

SMIL 3.0 is defined as a set of markup modules, which define the semantics and an XML syntax for certain areas of SMIL functionality.

This section is informative.

This specification is structured as a set of Chapters, each defining one or more modules:

• Chapter 2 presents SMIL 3.0 modularization, the individual modules and conformance criteria.
• Chapter 3 defines SMIL 3.0 Structure.
• Chapter 4 defines SMIL 3.0 Media Object.
• Chapter 5 defines SMIL 3.0 Timing and Synchronization.
• Chapter 6 defines SMIL 3.0 Content Control.
• Chapter 7 defines SMIL 3.0 Layout.
• Chapter 8 defines SMIL 3.0 smilText.
• Chapter 9 defines SMIL 3.0 Linking.
• Chapter 10 defines SMIL 3.0 Metainformation.
• Chapter 11 defines SMIL 3.0 Transition effects.
• Chapter 12 defines SMIL 3.0 Animation.
• Chapter 13 defines SMIL 3.0 State.
• Chapter 14 defines SMIL 3.0 Time Manipulations.
• Chapter 15 defines SMIL 3.0 DOM.
• Chapter 16 defines the SMIL 3.0 Scalability Framework.

This specification also defines five Profiles that are built using the above SMIL 3.0 modules.

• Chapter 17 defines the SMIL 3.0 Language Profile.
• Chapter 18 defines the SMIL 3.0 Unified Mobile Profile.
• Chapter 19 defines the SMIL 3.0 DAISY Profile.
• Chapter 20 defines the SMIL 3.0 Tiny Profile.
• Chapter 21 defines the SMIL 3.0 smilText Profile.

This section is informative.

SMIL 3.0 is a new version. It is built on top of SMIL 2.1.
A large number of SMIL 2.1 Modules [SMIL21-modules] remain the same in SMIL 3.0.
SMIL 3.0 introduces new SMIL 3.0 Modules with extended functionalities.

SMIL 3.0 also defines three new profiles that are built using the SMIL 3.0 modules specified in this specification.

If this specification is approved as a W3C Recommendation, it will supersede the 13 December 2005 version of the SMIL 2.1 Recommendation [SMIL21].

Note: SMIL document players, those applications that support playback of "application/smil xml" documents, and host language conformant document profiles are expected to support the deprecated SMIL 2.1 functionalities as well as the new SMIL 3.0 functionalities.

This section is informative.

1.4.1 Functional areas affected by SMIL 3.0

SMIL 3.0 specification provides three classes of changes to the SMIL 2.1 Recommendation, among the functional areas. For more details on the SMIL 3.0 Modules changes, refer to the next SMIL 3.0 Modules chapter.

1- New SMIL 3.0 functional areas

SMIL 3.0 adds the following new sections introducing new modules where new elements or attributes semantics are specified.

• SMIL 3.0 smilText provides a new media type for use in SMIL presentations. Unlike other media types defined in the media object module, smilText provides a text container element with an explicit content model for defining in-line text, and a set of additional elements and attributes to control explicit in-line text rendering.
• SMIL 3.0 State provides a mechanism for the author to create more complex control flow than what SMIL provides through the timing and content control modules, without using a scripting language. To provide this, it allows a document to have some explicit state (think: variables) along with ways to modify, use and save this state.
• SMIL 3.0 DOM describes the SMIL 3.0 DOM support. SMIL is an XML-based language and conforms to the (XML) DOM Core [DOM1], [DOM2]. A language profile may include DOM support. The granularity of DOM being supported corresponds to the modules being selected in that language profile. As with all modules, required support for the DOM is an option of the language profile. DOM support consists of two independently usable parts, a module which contains methods to start and stop parts of a presentation during playback, and a description of the effects of changing attributes during playback.

2- Revised SMIL 3.0 functional areas

In these sections, updated or new modules are introduced where new and updated elements or attributes semantics are specified.

• SMIL 3.0 Content Control
• SMIL 3.0 Layout
• SMIL 3.0 Linking
• SMIL 3.0 Media Object
• SMIL 3.0 Modularization and conformance criteria
• SMIL 3.0 Metainformation
• SMIL 3.0 Structure
• SMIL 3.0 Timing and Synchronization

3- Unchanged SMIL 3.0 functional areas

The modules, elements and attributes semantics in the following sections remain the same as in SMIL2.1 [SMIL21]. There are no major changes to the document; apart from minor issues related to wording, typos, links and references.

• SMIL 3.0 Animation
• SMIL 3.0 Time Manipulations
• SMIL 3.0 Transition effects

1.4.2 Profiles affected by SMIL 3.0

1- New SMIL 3.0 Profiles:

SMIL3.0 adds the following three new Profiles:

• SMIL 3.0 DAISY Profile is a collection of SMIL 3.0 modules introduced for DAISY books. These digital talking books are fully accessible for persons with print disabilities, including blindness, low-vision, and dyslexia.
• SMIL 3.0 Tiny Profile is the minimum collection of SMIL 3.0 modules that provide support for the SMIL 3.0 language.
  This profile is suitable for systems which require very simple SMIL presentations where user interactions and specific content layout are not necessary. This is, for instance, the case of devices with reduced computing capabilities such as MP3/MP4 players, minimum capability mobile phones, car navigation systems, television sets or voice user agents. Also, it is possible to use the profile in the development of server side playlists. These playlists are used to generate continuous streams from individual video or audio files. The server processes the playlists without any user interaction.
• SMIL 3.0 smilText Profile is a collection of SMIL 3.0 modules that provide support for the specification of an external streaming text container. This container allows the functionality of the SMIL 3.0 smilText modules to be referenced outside of the content of a SMIL file.
  This profile is suitable for systems which require simple streaming timed text. A separate smilText rendering engine will be required to process documents defined using this profile. In many cases, SMIL 3.0 engines will provide this capability, but other stand-alone implementations may also be developed..

2- Updated SMIL 3.0 Profiles:

The following Profiles are updated from SMIL 2.1 [SMIL21] to include new SMIL 3.0 functionalities.

• SMIL 3.0 Language Profile describes the SMIL 3.0 modules that are included in the SMIL 3.0 Language and details how these modules are integrated. It contains support for all of the major SMIL 3.0 features including animation, content control, layout, linking, media object, meta-information, structure, timing and transition effects. It is designed for Web clients that support direct playback from SMIL 3.0 markup.

• SMIL 3.0 Unified Mobile Profile is a collection of SMIL 3.0 modules that provide extensive support for the SMIL 3.0 Language within the context of a representative (for 2008) mobile device. Such a device is expected to have a high-resolution display and sufficient memory and processor capacity to render nontrival SMIL documents. Although not as complete as the full SMIL 3.0 Language Profile, the SMIL 3.0 UnifiedMobile profile is rich enough to meet the needs of a wide range of interactive presentations. The Unified Mobile Profile replaces the former SMIL 2.1 Mobile Profile and SMIL 2.1 ExtendedMobile Profile.

Finally, SMIL 3.0 provides a Scalability Framework, where a family of scalable SMIL profiles may be defined using a sub- or superset of the SMIL 3.0 Language, DAISY, or Unified Mobile Profile profiles, or a superset of the SMIL 3.0 Tiny profile.

This section is informative.

Throughout the document, normative and informative sections are labelled with following rules:

• Each <h2> section as a whole must be labelled either normative or informative with:

  - a <div> section associated with a class="normative or class="informative". These two class have different styling to ease viewing of different sections.
  - a statement "This section is normative" or "This section is informative" which follows the <div> tag
  

• Sub-sections (<h3>, <h4>, etc.) of a normative section that remain normative MUST NOT be re-labelled.
• Sub-sections of a normative section that are informative MUST BE labelled informative for the scope of that section.

1.5.1 Section styling

Informative sections are color coded as follows. All other sections (without a gray background and green border) are normative.

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This section is informative.

This document has been prepared by the Synchronized Multimedia Working Group (SYMM WG) of the World Wide Web Consortium.
The SYMM WG which specified SMIL 3.0 included the following individuals:

Dick Bulterman, CWI - Alessio Cartocci, IWA-HWG - Pablo Cesar, CWI - Samuel Cruz-Lara, INRIA - Marisa DeMeglio, DAISY Consortium - Xabiel García Pañeda, Universidad de Oviedo - Luiz Fernando Gomes Soares, Invited Expert - Marcin Hanclik ACCESS Co., Ltd. - Eric Hyche, RealNetworks - Jack Jansen, CWI - Hiroshi Kawamura, NRCD - Nabil Layaïda, INRIA - David Melendi, Universidad de Oviedo, Thierry Michel, W3C - Sjoerd Mullender, CWI - Julien Quint, DAISY Consortium - Petri Vuorimaa, Helsinki University of Technology - Daniel Weck, NRCD - Daniel F. Zucker, Nokia.

The former SYMM WG which specified the previous SMIL versions included the following individuals:

Kazuhide Tanaka, ACCESS Co., Ltd. - Hanan Rosenthal, Canon - Jin Yu, Compaq - Pietro Marchisio, CSELT - Lynda Hardman, CWI - Jacco van Ossenbruggen, CWI - Lloyd Rutledge, CWI - Ishan Vaishnavi, CWI - Markku Hakkinen, DAISY Consortium - Olivier Avaro, France Telecom - Vincent Mahe, France Telecom - Ted Wugofski, Gateway (Invited Expert) - Masayuki Hiyama, Glocomm - Keisuke Kamimura, Glocomm - Michelle Y. Kim, IBM - Steve Wood, IBM - Jeff Boston, IBM - Nabil Layaïda, INRIA - Muriel Jourdan, INRIA - Aaron Cohen, Intel - Wayne Carr, Intel - Masaru Sugano, KDDI Corporation - Tomoyuki Shimizu, KDDI Corporation - Marcel Wong, Ericsson - Ken Day, Macromedia - Daniel Weber, Panasonic - Patrick Schmitz, Microsoft - Debbie Newman, Microsoft - Pablo Fernicola, Microsoft - Aaron Patterson, Microsoft - Kevin Gallo, Microsoft - Paul David, Microsoft - Don Cone, Netscape/AOL - Wo Chang, NIST - Guido Grassel, Nokia - Didier Chanut, Nokia - Antti Koivisto, Nokia - Andrei Popescu, Nokia - Roberto Castagno, Nokia - Jack Jansen, Oratrix - Sjoerd Mullender, Oratrix - Dick Bulterman, Oratrix - Kenichi Kubota, Panasonic - Warner ten Kate, Philips - Ramon Clout, Philips - Jeff Ayars, RealNetworks - Erik Hodge, RealNetworks - Rob Lanphier, RealNetworks - Bridie Saccocio, RealNetworks - Eric Hyche, RealNetworks - Robin Haglund, RealNetworks - Yoshihisa Gonno, Sony Corporation - Geoff Freed, WGBH - Philipp Hoschka, W3C - Philippe Le Hégaret, W3C - Thierry Michel, W3C.