Re: unifying alternate content across embedded content element types

On 7/14/07, Sander Tekelenburg <st@isoc.nl> wrote:
> Could you send plain text please? I had to manually repair quote indication
> and delete inserted HTML.

Sorry.  Using Gmail.  I'll make a habit of sending text/plain to the
list if needed.

> > [...] context is often equal to fallback. There are cases where the context
> >and
> >the fallback would be exactly the same
>
> Could you give an example? I'm having a hard time thinking of one...

<img src=cat.jpg alt="A photo of my cat, Fluffy, playing with a ball of yarn">
<p>A photo of my cat, Fluffy, playing with a ball of yarn</p>

figure/legend helps with this by directly associating the photo with
the description Expecting me to provide that @alt attribute along with
the following paragraph seems silly and redundant.  If that's not what
I should provide for @alt, then it should be crystal clear what I
should provide as @alt

>
> > I think better defining the markup for a semantic "equivalent" vs. a
> >semantic "alternate" is more useful than defining markup for "long" vs.
> >"short".
>
> Sorry, you've lost me. I don't know what "long vs short" refers to, and don't
> understand what "semantic equivalent vs semantic alternate" means.

Most of this thread has been about various ways of providing "short"
alternative in addition to a "long" alternative, such as using @alt
and @longdesc together, and using a hypothetical <object alt='...'>
attribute in addition to the contents of alt.  I thing this confuses
the issue of alternative content more than it goes to solve it.  I
think the more relevant issue is "descriptions" of media vs.
"equivalents" to media.

Were the examples I gave not clear enough as to what I meant?

> > Are the contents of <object> an equivalent or a description?  Both, in
> >certain cases?
>
> In HTML 4.01 the content of <object> is the equivalent content:

I suspect that most commonly in the wild, the contents of <object> are
actually a description of the media instead of an actual equivalent to
the media.  It would be interesting to gather data on this.  Is there
a convenient way for me to search the code of existing pages on the
web.


-- 
Jon Barnett

Received on Sunday, 15 July 2007 03:28:19 UTC