Re: IMG tag

Just a thought, maybe thinking out loud.  I am not sure these are the 
right questions...perhaps the question is "what semantics and 
expressive capabilities are offered by the IMG tag"?  That is, for a 
content author, the semantics of
displays a visual rectangular area
might have alpha (transparency)
may have a succession of actual images, but no time-axis control is 
provided (use <video>) (animated GIF, PDF)

so, rather than asking "what can I embed", ask "do the attributes and 
user affordances give me the functionality I want"?

There are valid uses of SVG as static 'images", under this scenario. 
Not all SVGs are satisfactorily displayed as static images, however.

I realize that browser authors need guidance on what they should 
think of supporting...



At 9:33  -0600 15/01/08, Wesley.Upchurch@semcoinc.com wrote:
>Thoughts on the IMG tag:
>
>Because the draft says there still needs to be discussion on this: 
>[Should we restrict the URI to pointing to an image? What's an 
>image? Is PDF an image? (Safari supports PDFs in <img> elements.) 
>How about SVG? (Opera supports those). WMFs? XPMs? HTML?] ....
>
>I suggest allowing URI pointing to any file type that is not an 
>html/xhtml document in it's own right (because they would have their 
>own set of header and body tags).  The way a UA chooses to handle 
>the different file formats would most likely be it's own decision 
>(obviously normal images .jpg, .gif, .png, etc. would always be 
>supported as normal) or set by the end user in the settings.  Could 
>possibly just show an Icon for other file types if they elect not to 
>have them traditionally embedded.  I think this would best conform 
>to both historical use and newer uses such as the mobil web, where 
>one might not want larger files (like WMFs, FLAs, etc) automatically 
>fully embedded like images are.
>
>Any thoughts?


-- 
David Singer
Apple/QuickTime