[PLUG-Devel] Hi all

[Ted Gould]

On Wed, 2007-09-05 at 23:02 -0700, Tim Heuer wrote:
> -what's the point of silverlight...
> It's really about choice in the rich internet application space (RIA).  

I didn't realize this space was big enough to have it's own acronym ;)

> Silverlight will likely be the 
> chosen platform for most organizations who are already doing Microsoft 
> development.  I think that is just natural to be honest.  Just as much 
> as a linux organization would be using core linux offerings...it is 
> expected.  

So, in a nutshell, you'd expect Silverlight to be used by everyone who's
already a Microsoft Developer/Partner (I can't remember the current
term) but Moonlight by everyone else?

Is there a reason that someone would choose Silverlight over Moonlight
on a Mac?

> Great point.  Silverlight actually is already working to be mobile for 
> the next versions of windows mobile platforms and embedded spaces.  
> Plans are early on this, but they are in the works (Major League 
> Baseball has a working demonstration of their mobile platform for 
> premium subscribers that is delivered through silverlight).

I guess my issue here is upgrades.  Mobile devices get upgraded less,
and simply have less content on them.  It seems a little bit counter
intuitive to be introducing a new application framework on a relatively
static and stable platform.  I think Mark Cuban recently referred to the
Internet as "boring", but that's a good thing because it is a stable
development platform.  It allows your washer and dryer to have a defined
amount of implementation.

> -with SVG and canvas I already have...
> Not exactly.  Let's first understand the primary intended scenarios for 
> Silverlight...RIA.  SVG itself doesn't enable encapsulation of UI+behavior 
> into re-usable controls, nor does it play well with video today.  Heck 
> even Adobe seemingly dropped primary SVG support (I've heard of SVG tiny 
> but don't know much about it).  

SVG does support that as much as any AJAX application can.  There are
reusable widget libraries for SVG available.  It does not play video
without using object embedding, but that's what Windows Media Player is
for, right? ;)

> The decision for XAML stems from not just silverlight but to provide a 
> broad markup language for documents (fixed and flow), behaviors, UI, 
> media, etc.  One of the main reasons is that XAML provides a close 
> relationship between the elements in the XAML file as well as objects 
> at runtime.  

No offense, but I think that this provides to my point that XAML is an
odd choice for a vector graphics format.  It seems more like an
application representation format (like XUL) than a graphics format.  It
can represent graphics, but that seems like a side light to what it's
goals are.

> SVG assets can be re-used in Silverlight 
> using Inkscape (my tool of choice) to convert to an understandable 
> format.  Right now, our tools don't directly import SVG to convert 
> to XAML but there are third parties that do this as well as plugins 
> for leading tools out there.

Now, this is interesting to me :)

So one can "drop in" their SVG documents onto a Silverlight canvas?  I
can't find any documentation on this.  Do you know how much of SVG is
supported?  Filters, blending, etc.  Does this mean that IE7 has SVG
support using Silverlight (finally)?

> The codecs that are provided are licensed implementations of the VC-1
> standard.  Microsoft isn't able to release the source to those, but 
> providing the binaries is the next best thing.  This is actually on 
> par with other RIA technologies like Flash as well.  Neither is the 
> best for the OSS community, but at least the binaries are there for 
> you to leverage.  This is actually a pretty big deal I think.  

Yeah, I think that is great that Microsoft is providing them at all, but
I'm still a little bit concerned.  I hope that this is something that'll
grow into a better thing overall -- it's definitely not perfect.  Then
again, there is little that is perfect in the media CODEC space.

Do you think there is a chance of getting OGG support into Silverlight?
Perhaps Dirac?  These would provide an easier solution to implement on
the Open Source side of things.  They would also reduce Microsoft's
licensing costs to people like the MPEG LA.

> provides up to 720p HD quality content and is the only shipping 
> technology to deliver that through the RIA technologies.  Having 
> that ability on all platforms is pretty sweet I think.

No offense, but when you're implementing media CODECs in software the
only limitation to resolution is memory and processor power.  I'm really
surprised that it isn't be marketed as 1080p -- in theory it should work
unless someone coded a limitation in.

> It is a codec 
> like any other codec so I'm not sure there is any more/less exposure 
> to security flaws than codec ABX provided by vendor XYZ.

I think the concern is more the "live download" of them.  The Internet
is a very scary place.  How do I know I got the good ones?  How do I
know what good is?  How do I know there isn't a man in the middle?  I
think these were all issues when ActiveX came out.

Also, I noticed that in the Mac support it was mentioned that there
would be PowerPC and Intel support.  But, the Novell guys are saying x86
and x86-64 support for the CODECs.  Any chance of MS providing PPC
binaries for the CODECs?

> As to your question to Miguel about offline experiences.  As long as 
> they are delivered "in the browser" that is what I believe/understand 
> the agreement to be at this time.  If the browser is a localhost offering, 
> as long as it is Moonlight and the browser is rendering the content, it 
> is the same as an http://

This is odd to me.  Do you by chance know why this was done?  Why
wouldn't MS want all Moonlight apps running the CODECs?  I'm just a
touch confused on MS's motivation here.

	Thanks,
		Ted

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