[Bug 21493] Describe the longdesc link rot issue and suggest how to combat it

https://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=21493

--- Comment #4 from Leif Halvard Silli <xn--mlform-iua@xn--mlform-iua.no> ---
(In reply to comment #3)
> In my research rotted longdesc links are nowhere near as common as plain
> text descriptions,

Handauthored? If a gallery CMS spits out incorrect longdesc-s, the numbers fast
becomes high.

> but of course looking at a different slice might give
> different results.

The Longdesc lottery article places "not a valid URL" amongst the 96% of
longdesc attributes where the longdesc URL is either empty or invalid. As such,
your reserarch combined with what that articles says, have made me pretty
convinced that you are right that there are more longdesc attributes with
non-valid URLs which (how often?) are text, than there are longdesc attributes
with rotten URLs.

> I
> don't see why the normative HTML spec should say "authors should be careful
> to re-check the values of attributes when they copy source code around",

It’s "authoring" whether one edits - or moves around - new or old
documents/code. Thus there is no need to specifically point out "copy source
code around" as an issue.

> or
> "authors should think about how they are going to be sure that their content
> stays up to date" and I don't see why this spec should say that either.

Made more stringent, that statement could be OK. Perhaps you would be OK with
the following statement? Proposal:

   ]] NOTE: A longdesc URL is supposed to be usable regardless of
            the context (e.g. online, in e-mail or syndicated) in
            which the image occurs, and should be designed
            accordingly.[[

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Received on Tuesday, 2 April 2013 14:27:12 UTC