Re: "image analysis heuristics" (ISSUE-66)

hi ian,

>I have no data to support this, and would in no way suggest that my
>experience is The Truth

thanks for the clarification.

>However, I _do_ intend to take the above into account when
>writing the specs that I edit;

and that is your prerogative, as it is the the HTML WG's prerogative to
agree upon something different and expect that specification be modified in
line with the WG decision.


>As far as I am aware, the only links from the WHATWG complete.html spec to
>other specs are links to specs that are required to be implemented because
>they form the substrate on which HTML and its APIs are built, such that
>the implementors _cannot_ skip them even if they are tempted to.

I was referring to the W3C HTML5 specification, what i did not say was there
were thousands of links to other specs, but "thousands of links" that being
the very nature of the web, interlinked documents that is, not one
hermetically sealed docment that contains all knowledge.

>but on average they are more
>likely to do the right thing when they find the information right there in
>the prose they are having to read anyway, than if it is "conveniently out
>of sight".

do you have any data to back this up?

If you are concerned about people not reading the referenced text, why not
quote the relevant bit inline?

or provide a link phrased in such a way that it encourages people to follow
the link, I volunteer to help you with the wordsmithing.

best regards
stevef



On 7 February 2010 10:06, Ian Hickson <ian@hixie.ch> wrote:

> On Sun, 7 Feb 2010, Steven Faulkner wrote:
> >
> > As a general rule, people don't follow references.
> >
> > Can you provide support for this statement?
>
> Sure. Over the years I've worked for Netscape and Opera, as well as
> contributing to the Mozilla, WebKit, and Chromium projects, and regularly
> advising Microsoft. In all of these cases, I have repeatedly seen
> competent engineers do the minimum amount of reading possible to implement
> the feature that they have been tasked to implement. Again in all cases, I
> have found them to implement things better when they are faced with clear
> unambiguous steps to implement, rather than when they are presented with
> constraints; and (more germane here) I've found them to treat suggestions
> inlined in a document with a _lot_ more weight than suggestions found in
> documents referenced from the document they are reading.
>
> I intend to make no value judgements here, I'm merely describing what I've
> found to be true, repeatedly, over the years.
>
> I have no data to support this, and would in no way suggest that my
> experience is The Truth, or try to enforce my conclusions on other
> editors. However, I _do_ intend to take the above into account when
> writing the specs that I edit; I consider maximising the extent to which
> the document is an effective tool for getting quality implementations to
> be part of the responsibility of writing a spec.
>
>
> > it would seem to me that a link to a reference is like the many
> > thousands of links that the spec already contains, it may be that the
> > phrasing of the link text can affect the likelyhood of a person to
> > follow the link.
>
> As far as I am aware, the only links from the WHATWG complete.html spec to
> other specs are links to specs that are required to be implemented because
> they form the substrate on which HTML and its APIs are built, such that
> the implementors _cannot_ skip them even if they are tempted to.
>
>
> > This infomation is meant for browser developers is it not?
>
> Yes.
>
>
> > If they are not interested in making their browsers provide more
> > accessible content, it does not matter how much content you put in the
> > html5 spec, they can easily skip over it.
>
> In practice in my experience most implementors are in principle in favour
> of making their implementations accessible, but on average they are more
> likely to do the right thing when they find the information right there in
> the prose they are having to read anyway, than if it is "conveniently out
> of sight".
>
> As the adage goes, "out of sight, out of mind".
>
>
> > If they ar interested it would be better, i think, to point them to a
> > document that provides comprehensive advice on how to do so.
>
> We do provide a link to UAAG. However, if there is advice in the UAAG spec
> that you think implementors should follow here, then the best way we can
> ensure that it is followed is, IMHO, to also include it in HTML. Is there
> something I've omitted that UAAG recommends of relevance here?
>
> --
> Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
> http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
> Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'
>



-- 
with regards

Steve Faulkner
Technical Director - TPG Europe
Director - Web Accessibility Tools Consortium

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