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

>It is generally safe to assume that single-pixel height
>or width images are either transparent or purely decorative
>and thus can be provided with alt="" if an alt attribute
>is absent.

First, I can't see how alt="" can be an improvement over no alt at all.
It seems to me that you'd (or the program would) be adding seven bytes
for no purpose whatever.  (But see below!)

Secondly, I thought these single-byte GIFfies were often used in stretched
form. If so, height and width could be considerable.

I'd suggest having Tidy add alt="" to any alt-less image.  Then the
webmeister could (i) go through the resulting file, adding the text
between the quotation marks where appropriate, and then (ii) zap all
remaining examples of alt="". (Perhaps this is what Tidy already does;
I don't know, because adding alt="explanation" to my graphics is one of
the few things I manage to do consistently and competently without
Tidy's help.)

++++++++++++++++
Peter Evans mailto:evans@i.hosei.ac.jp

Received on Sunday, 30 April 2000 00:24:30 UTC