RFC: Guidance for markup/tags (italic, positional, font)

[0pener]

Hi,

Regarding SRT do we have a guide somewhere for the following?

1. text markup like
1.1 italics <i>
1.2 bold <b>
1.3 font
1.4 color

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SubRip (quite probably the namespace is actually bigger than those listed)

Which are deemed okay/necessary/forbidden?


2. position, like the infamous {\an8}

Just got a complaint about {\an8} in dutch. Well, it is their prerogative to do so but I wonder if there is any consensus about all those, is there?

Found some opinions in "upload errors", seems {\an8} is unwanted. That causes some problems: First, it is being used (netflix et al). Second, subtitleedit offers no easy way to remove:
https://www.nikse.dk/subtitleedit/help
See "Multiple Replace"

Well, in the program's batching such fixing is not offered. Could write a script myself for removing this and some moot from point 1 (like font)... or even removing everything but timestamps and actual text (aka any and all tags).


EOD: So what? Keeping SRT minimalistic? Italics? Colors? Positions? No clue.

[mrtinkles]

Howdy Opener,

Am not going to offer opinions on the Dutch side, but there are previously posted reference standards used on the English side that you can avail yourself of.

viewtopic.php?t=1969&start=90#p52269

My personal opinion is that if someone is utilizing the {\anX} tags, then I would prefer to see subtitles in the .ass/.ssa format. This allows maximum utilization of options supported in those file types.

For editing out tags, SubtitleEdit will allow this, just select Remove Tags or change preferences under HI rem and select {} option:


Please note that this removes ALL references, including those that might possibly be valid to the dialog.

TextCrawler is another option, which allows a bit more user control:
https://www.digitalvolcano.co.uk/textcrawler.html



Hope this helps a bit.

[Funchalense]

...I wonder if there is any consensus about all those, is there?

Hi,
Here too im not going to offer opinions on the Dutch side.
But that i remember there is no consensus.
It seems to me that it is one of those cases where each administrator finds what is best for the section they administer.
There are some admni who don't want them {\an8}, and others who don't mind that the subtitles in their section contain these codes.

[UsenetAlias]

...I wonder if there is any consensus about all those, is there?

Hi,
Here too im not going to offer opinions on the Dutch side.
But that i remember there is no consensus.
It seems to me that it is one of those cases where each administrator finds what is best for the section they administer.
There are some admni who don't want them {\an8}, and others who don't mind that the subtitles in their section contain these codes.

SmallBrother doesn't want them... so we don't allow them.
Personally I do use them, because Infuse on Apple TV works fine with them... but I do not upload subs with allignmentcodes.

[0pener]

Thanks <3

Ah, okay, regarding any consensus... I see.

Good point, makes sense to keep such convoluted markup reserved for ASS Yeah, it's nice to have SRT as clean and (human)-readable as possible (SDH/CC exempted, of course).

Wow! Thanks for showing it so explicitly! And somehow never really bothered checking the settings: Remove Tags was checked... but none inside was activated. D'oh!



Well, in my defence I could say that until recently SE was always a bit touchy running in WINE but I better check all settings at some lonely weekend

[0pener]

Just had another irritating problem: U+200B aka Zero-width space

Had some lines that were empty but were never deleted despite having it set accordingly. Imagine you see an empty line but your machine ignores the setting to delete it:



Eventually (after desperately viewing it in hex) I figured there is something (hence not empty, hence line not marked for deletion) and it was this invisible zero-width space:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-width_space

Never heard of it before... Well, multiple replace took care of that, too

[owla]

I personally remove all formatting from my SRT subtitles except for italics. However, in the Finnish section, I have allowed positional formatting: {\an8}.
Apparently, there are TVs and players that display it in the subtitles, which understandably annoys their users.

In Subtitle Edit, you can also remove it simply by using: Ctrl+H,
Find: {\an8}
Replace with: (leave empty)
and then Replace All.

[UsenetAlias]

In Subtitle Edit, you can also remove it simply by using: Ctrl+H,
Find: {\an8}
Replace with: (leave empty)
and then Replace All.

Even more simple... select all -> right click ->

[0pener]

I personally remove all formatting from my SRT subtitles except for italics. However, in the Finnish section, I have allowed positional formatting: {\an8}.
Apparently, there are TVs and players that display it in the subtitles, which understandably annoys their users.

Lucky me I guess I had upped some finnish ones with {\an8}...

Currently I "decided" (rather vague process) to kick out most markups like you... except for the deaf ones (italics hamper with readibility, SDH brackets don't).

PS: In the meantime I found another empty line entity but in arabic, new culprit is U+202B Luckily, I found this neat site where you can paste the text and it returns the code of any weird chars

View non-printable unicode characters
https://www.soscisurvey.de/tools/view-chars.php

(not sure how to put that U+202B plus CRLF into valid Regex though, \u200B\n didnt work)