media type(s) for braille

to follow up on what Hakon Lie said:
> 
> Thanks, these references were very helpful. The difference between
> printed braille and dynamic braille seems important enough to warrant
> two different media types. This is noted along with the description of
> "BRAILLE" in the CSS2 WD [1], but no name pair. How about
> 
>   BRAILLE           (dynamic braille)
>   BRAILLE-PRINT     (static braille)
> 
> Alternative suggestions welcome.
> 

What we have in HTML 4.0 at the moment is what we would want to
use, unless we find out that it is unusable.  This indicates [in
my translation -- consult the HTML WG pages for the exact
statement] that a media type indication is given by

 base-type [whitespace] other-stuff

and terminated by a comma e.g.

  braille print 40X25,

Actually the base-type string terminates when a caracter illegal
in [an SGML name?] this string is found.  But it is
people-friendly to use a whitespace following the base type.  The
base-type is supposed to be on the list of know base types, or
the browser is free to ignore the reference.  But the stylesheet
is supposed to be selectable based on all of the other stuff as
well.

We have the capability to make braille-print a separate base type
but there are enough other situations where styles will want to
adapt parametrically and not just by base type so that the
"qualifier" strategy seems to make more sense.  We can't make
base types for all the interesting cases.

Chris has been through the discussions on this.

-- Al

Received on Saturday, 8 November 1997 14:07:44 UTC