RE: Long descriptions in <OBJECT>

I disagree that PARAM is the best place.  The whole idea of LONGDESC was
because ALT, while allowing very long strings, does not allow markup.  The
inner text of <OBJECT> allows for markup.

Also, how will the user agent "know" to read the PARAM?  Most <OBJECT>'s
have multiple PARAMs.

Seems very clear to me that the designers of HTML knew that the best place
for additional information about the <OBJECT>.  The HTML 4.0 specification
says:

"One significant consequence of the OBJECT element's design is that it
offers a mechanism for specifying alternate object renderings; each embedded
OBJECT declaration may specify alternate content types."

I say that the markup is the best place for that information.

-----Original Message-----
From: nir.dagan@econ.upf.es [mailto:nir.dagan@econ.upf.es]
Sent: Thursday, July 30, 1998 6:23 PM
To: w3c-wai-gl@w3.org
Subject: Re: Long descriptions in <OBJECT>


I agree that PARAM is the best way to 
mark longdesc in OBJECT.

The philosiphy of the PARAM element is to 
be able to include attributes to OBJECT. 

However since new object types 
may require different attributes, by using PARAM
rather than attributes to OBJECT one wouldn't 
need to change the HTML specs whenever a new 
object type is born.

Althogh longdesc may be considered 
generic, and not object-type dependent
the absence of longdesc as an attribute 
justifies using the PARAM mechanism.

Being somewhat pedantic, concerning an 
example previously on this mailing list, 
PARAM elements must come before 
any other content of the OBJECT.

Regards,

Nir Dagan                            
Assistant Professor of Economics      
Universitat Pompeu Fabra
Barcelona (Spain)

email: dagan@upf.es
Website: http://www.econ.upf.es/%7Edagan/

Received on Thursday, 30 July 1998 18:04:16 UTC