SMIL Europe 2003
February 12-14, 2003
Paris, France
http://www.smileurope.org/
Trip Report by Lloyd Rutledge

Dick Bulterman and I went to this first conference ever devoted to
SMIL.  While we were expecting a flop, particularly several months ago
when the conference was postponed, it ended up being a success, with
about 70 registrants and many interesting presentations and
discussions.

I gave a half-day SMIL tutorial on Wednesday afternoon, the 12th.  It
was probably the largest audience the tutorial ever had.  The audience
certain offered the best questions I've ever had, since they were
primarily people who'd already started working with SMIL.  The
feedback at the end about the tutorial was positive.

Dick gave a talk about authoring systems.  Patrick Schmitz gave two
talks: on one synchronization with XHTML+SMIL, and the other on
generating SMIL and SVG slideshows with XSLT.  I'd already been using
the techniques on his last talk for authoring the SMIL tutorial and
book example course sheets.  This talk and its subsequent discussion
also talked about generating multiple files, having multiple
presentation formats in one input format, and how these two go
together.

There were a few "SMIL Extension" talks: one on 3D audio, and one on
authoring for professional quality.  The first amounted to a bunch of
sound filtering constructs (mostly from sound mixing consoles) that
could be added to SMIL.  The second was primarily the visual
equivalent of the first, but with additional constructs from other
areas.  I responded to both talks with some techniques and principles
for exploring extending SMIL.  These are

 - all existing constructs remain the same
 - make a namespace for your extensions
    - put them in a profile, or make a new one
    - and make a validator ... at least a DTD
 - implement them! ... often easy with XSLT
    - XSLT converts extended SMIL to SMIL that plays on current players
    - some extensions convert to larger SMIL construct composites
       - "authoring convenience" constructs
    - other extensions can filter integrated media into new media files
       - "media filtering" constructs
    - of course, some extensions can't be XSLT'ed around

The second extension talk, which was from Sony, also called for work
in a SMIL 3.0.  Philipp Hoschka reminded him that the Timed Text
effort is ongoing and that there is still a SYMM interest group and a
W3C public list for SMIL.  He also described the W3C procedure for
starting new working group projects ... basically "put your paperwork
where your mouth is".  I followed up with "put your (company's --
Sony, in this case) money (and your time) where your mouth is"
... that W3C proposal go through more smoothly when member companies
have committed resources to them.

Philipp Hoschka gave a general SMIL overview.  Thierry Michel
presented the active Timed Text working group.  The Timed Text chair
Glenn Adams was also at the conference.  X-Smiles had a paper about
combining Forms with SMIL.  The Grenoble folks were there,
particularly Nabil, who was one of the Masters of Ceremonies.  The use
of mobile SMIL was well represented, including the "Pocket SMIL"
player for PDAs by INRIA in Grenoble.

The program and slides for the conference are available at
http://aristote1.aristote.asso.fr/SMIL2002/Transparents.htm.  The
slides for the last day are not there yet, but should show up
eventually.  Also promised within the next few months are SMIL
synchronized video, audio and slides hypermedia documents from each
talk, including my tutorial.  This media was also broadcast live on
the Internet, with audiences (we were told) around the world listening
in.