Re: fear of "invisible metadata"

On Jun 18, 2007, at 6:16 PM, Chris Adams wrote:

> This also goes to show that conformance checkers are tools that,  
> while useful, should not be the
> be-all-and-end-all of error checking.
>
> If a page is designed to be semantically valid then a conformance  
> checker is not really needed.

That doesn't make sense to me. It's like saying if you design a  
program to be correct then you don't need testing.

  - Maciej

>
>
> On 6/18/07, Maciej Stachowiak <mjs@apple.com> wrote:
>
>
> On Jun 18, 2007, at 10:24 AM, Gregory J. Rosmaita wrote:
>
> >
> > Lachlan Hunt wrote, quote:
> >> No, even if the summary attribute were added to HTML5, it
> >> certainly shouldn't be required.
> > unquote
> >
> > why not?  CAPTION is akin to ALT text - it provides a terse
> > description
> > of the object that cannot be visually perceived; the summary  
> attribute
> > itself serves the same purpose as LONGDESC (which provides a  
> detailed
> > description, orientational material, etc.)
>
> ALT should not be required either. It leads to pointless alt="" on
> images that have no reasonable text equivalent, just to satisfy
> conformance checkers. And that is actively harmful, because AT can't
> tell the difference between a semantically null image and a
> semantically meaningful image with no text alternative.
>
> Regards,
> Maciej
>
>
>
>
>
> -- 
> Chris@tuesdaybegins.com
> http://www.tuesdaybegins.com