Re: [html4all] New issue: IMG section -- metadata embedded in image?

It's not clear to me who should supply the alternative text - the author of
the image or the author of the content embedding the image?  Of course this
matters more when the authors are different people.

* In the image author case, the 'alternative text' can be defined only one
time, but then it is fixed for all possible uses of that image.

* In the html author case, the 'alternative text' must be defined by every
user of that image, but then different alternative text could be supplied
for different audiences.

What is alternative text - is it meant to be a completely neutral
description of the image or is it a description of the image in the context
of which it was embedded?

Jeff

On 4/16/08, Charles McCathieNevile <chaals@opera.com> wrote:
>
>
> On Tue, 15 Apr 2008 13:30:01 +0200, Olivier GENDRIN <
> olivier.gendrin@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>  On Mon, Apr 14, 2008 at 7:18 PM, David Dailey <david.dailey@sru.edu>
> > wrote:
> >
> > >  PNG format, for one example, and SVG for another, both allow the
> > > embedding
> > > of metadata into the image itself. Suppose we rewarded the creators of
> > > such
> > > images with built-in metadata, by requiring browsers to access that
> > > data
> > > directly thereby providing a handy and perhaps more explanatory
> > > provenience
> > > and semantics than the web author (who may well not know too much
> > > about the
> > > image's history, shutter speed, IP legacy and meaning). Perhaps this
> > > has
> > > been proposed already, but it would reduce a bit of the reliance upon
> > > the
> > > cursory alt explanations often provided by HTML authors if the images
> > > themselves came with built-in explanations.
> > >
> >
> > Interesting, but the metadata can't be updated in an HTML editor, and
> > could not fit the context, if I use for example an image from a
> > bank-image, or as decoration (alt="").
> >
>
> Right. Among other problems. This is indeed a pretty old idea that has use
> cases, but hasn't arrived at a standard treatment.
>
> For example, it isn't clear what browsers should do *by default* with
> desc/title in svg (there are many useful ways of using this stuff, but
> different users actually want different things), something that many
> browsers now implement. It has been a while since I even tested what does
> happen...
>
> cheers
>
> Chaals
>
> --
> Charles McCathieNevile  Opera Software, Standards Group
>    je parle français -- hablo español -- jeg lærer norsk
> http://my.opera.com/chaals   Try Opera 9.5: http://snapshot.opera.com
>
>