RE: longdesc verbiage

Charles McCathieNevile wrote:
> 
> 
> In fact substantial amounts of Web content are maintained in processes
> which assume the presence of "hidden" metadata (which is actually
> readily
> discoverable) and require maintenance of that data as well as of the
> "primary" content (that is immediately visible by default).

Investigated and reported here: http://john.foliot.ca/wysiwyg_longdesc/ 


>  In
> addition,
> where an image is not changed, it is unlikely that a well crafted
> description needs to be changed, so there is no inherent degradation.

+1

> 
> While longdesc does not require "hidden" metadata (it can be used
> simply
> to unambiguously identify inline content of the page as a description
> for
> an image), there are use cases which benefit from the ability to
> support
> it. Images maintained as resources in a content management system, or
> even
> just by copying and pasting the img tag with a link inside it such as
> longdesc provides, can easily re-use the description rather than
> requiring
> that it too be replicated. This matches common workflows for managed
> content, and there is no reason to make it difficult. It is normal in
> authoring tools that copying objects between pages may require
> rewriting
> links appropriately (their destinations are, after all "hidden"), and
> this
> does not seem to break the web.

I can support this text.

JF