ascii art

I would like to re-suggest an old proposal of John T. Whelan:
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-gl/1998JulSep/0209.html

concerning ASCII art. It was to include it with an OBJECT (or anchor)
as a separate file with a mime type text/x-ascii-art. 

The question what MIME type to use is related 
to what should be the mimetypes of vector graphics 
written in XML applications. (I.e., should it be text/xml or 
image/xml; likewise maybe image/plain is appropriate 
for ascii art.) 

As new mime types for these vector graphic formats will be 
recommended at some point, the ascii art type may be discussed 
at the same opportunity at the appropriate W3C working group. 

In my view this makes more sense than 
the example in the techniques doc.

<SPAN class="smile" title="smiley in ascii art">:-)</SPAN>

As this example assumes that the browser 
assigns semantics to class=smile.

Nir Dagan, Ph.D.
http://www.nirdagan.com
mailto:nir@nirdagan.com

"There is nothing quite so practical as a good theory." 
-- A. Einstein

Received on Monday, 16 November 1998 15:48:06 UTC