Re: Mandatory and Important

HI Dave, and Phil,

On Aug 22, 2008, at 11:58 PM, Philip TAYLOR (Ret'd) wrote:
>
> Dave Singer wrote:
>> [Microsoft] word has no field for alt text of images.
>
> Not true : much as I hate Word, I fired it
> up, inserted an image, and a few right-clicks
> later found how to insert ALT text.
>
> Philip TAYLOR

Even if Word didn't have a way to set the alt text on an image, that's  
not really the concern of this WG. We're not the WordML WG. We're the  
HTML WG. There are always going to be lesser formats that authors will  
want to convert to HTML and authors will need to supplement the data  
available from the source format with new values that cannot be  
automatically generated. Consider the conversion of a plaintext format  
to HTML. The plain text has no way to express the character encoding  
of the file (unless it is a UTF, then there's some solid clues). The  
resulting HTML file will have to be non-conforming. The authoring tool/ 
conversion tool can do nothing about it. It can leave the charset  
attribute unspecified or worse it can insert an charset attribute  
placeholder. Regardless, the converted file will not be conforming  
(though it might be machine validated).

Take care,
Rob

Received on Friday, 22 August 2008 21:20:43 UTC