Re: TIDY - Objects to euro symbol (?) & very pedestrian about ALT for gifs

When Tidy (at least the January version, I did not yet get to test the new 
April version) is called with [--alt-text ''] (or with the line _alt-text: 
""_ in the config file), your example

<IMG SRC="fred.gif">

is tidied as:

<IMG ALT="" SRC="fred.gif">

Running Tidy (Jan 13, 2000) again on this result, you will get:

<IMG ALT="SRC=fred.gif">


Tidy chokes on its own empty attributes - interestingly it has no problem 
with empty ALT values, if the ALT apears as the last attribute of the IMG 
tag, right before the concluding ">".

I am going to try the new April version today, to see whether this bug got 
fixed...


sebastian

At 19:46 01.05.2000 -0400, J. David Bryan wrote:
>On 29 Apr 2000, at 15:49, WCD wrote:
>
> > It seems pedestrian in the extreme that such invisible graphic images
> > should be required to have an alt="something" attribute.
>
>I'm not sure I understand.  _Does_ Tidy require this?  Running Tidy against
>this line:
>
>   <img src="fred.gif">
>
>in an HTML file results in the same line in the tidied output.  Or by
>"require," are you objecting to the warning that Tidy generates?
>
>
>On 29 Apr 2000, at 22:20, html-tidy@war-of-the-worlds.o wrote:
>
> > Tidy could possibly use a heuristic that keeps track of img srcs and
> > dimensions and note images where the same image is given, say, 3 or more
> > different sizes, and presuming they are resized transparent GIF
> > references and provide them with alt="" attributes automatically.  [...]
> > Anyone like this idea?
>
>Hmmm...if the first poster is objecting to the warnings, then an option to
>suppress the warnings would be more appropriate (and a lot easier :-), I
>would think.
>
>While I completely understand the need for ALT attributes on images, I
>never quite understood the rationale for having the "alt-text" option in
>Tidy.  To be useful, surely the alternate text has to be relevant to the
>image, which the "alt-text" option does not provide.  Far more
>understandable to me is the warning that Tidy generates to alert the author
>that such attributes are missing.
>
>However, if the author does not want to view the warnings, then simply
>suppressing them seems a far better approach than adding meaningless ALT
>attribute values.
>
>(The October 1999 release notes say, "A number of people have asked for a
>config option to set the alt attribute for images when missing."  I'm not
>advocating the removal of this option, even if I don't appreciate it's
>value.  :-)  I am advocating a different method of suppressing
>accessibility warnings other than adding meaningless text.)
>
>                                       -- Dave

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Received on Tuesday, 2 May 2000 05:28:27 UTC