Re: conflation of issues or convergence of interests?

Patrick H. Lauke wrote:

> con: even if proximity was defined, this would create some "special" 
> grammatical or syntactical rule for HTML: "if a video element is 
> present, the next link element alongside it must be assumed to be a link 
> to an alternative for the video...unless the parent container is closed, 
> or unless...etc etc (not a trick question: how could this be expressed 
> in something like a DTD or schema?)

A few more related thoughts: the above approach would also be prone to 
authors not bothering, or not doing it right. They may add a link 
"alongside" a video element, but that link might well not be pointing at 
an alternative (again, depending on the exact definition of 
"alongside"). Further, this may make it difficult to do the opposite: 
adding a video which is purely decorative, and thus not requiring an 
alternative...somehow explicitly "terminating" or preventing the next 
link next to a video from being interpreted as a link to an alternative.

 From those points, I'd personally feel that an explicit means to say 
"this is the alternative" would be more advantageous (and less likely to 
require complicated heuristics with, depending on the definition of 
"alongside", a possibility of false positives/negatives).

P
-- 
Patrick H. Lauke
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Received on Saturday, 28 July 2007 03:22:14 UTC