RE: @longdesc scope (was: HTML Media Transcript, Issue-194: Are we done?)

Leif Halvard Silli wrote
> 
> David Singer, Mon, 09 Jul 2012 08:42:23 -0700:
> >
> > yes.
> 
> I don't agree with that 'yes'. But I agree that this is not a
> transcript:
> 
> > "This movie concerns the childhood and youth of someone who becomes a
> > film director. It opens with a scene of his adulthood, receiving a
> > phone call from his mother in Sicily, informing that someone is dead.
> > The film then returns to hid childhood, where he is shown fascinated
> > with the local cinema, and he befriends the projectionist." and so
> on.
> >
> > this is not a transcript.
> 
> However: That was not the kind of long alternative text that I had
> mind.

Hi Leif,

I think that your attempt to conceptually merge the ideas of transcript and
longer textual description (in what feels almost like a re-telling of the
abbr/acronym story), while at a higher level may make sense, will ultimately
lead to confusion at the authoring level. "Transcript" (as opposed to
transcription, which is what *you* seem to be ultimately talking about) in
the world of multimedia/video has a distinct and well-understood meaning,
and trying to leverage the higher idea of your proposal onto the web will be
hurtful rather than helpful: after all, a transcript could also be "a copy
of a student's permanent academic record" [1], or "a written record of
spoken language in court proceedings" [2], so attempting to use a pure
dictionary definition of any attribute can often lead to confusion.

Leave "@Transcript" to be what it is already known to be (as defined for
media/video), and reinstate @longdesc, and let's stop pretending that
@longdesc is disposable at this time. It isn't, it may be some day in the
future, but for now making changes at the end of a gun is the worst possible
means of doing so.

Later...

JF

[1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcript_(education)]
[2 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcript_(law)]

Received on Monday, 9 July 2012 20:27:12 UTC