Re: draft HTML5: Techniques for the provision of text alternatives

hi Olaf, thanks for the feedback.

>I think, the section 6 contains improper markup (and problematic content).
>Poetry or a stanza/strophe is embedded in a p element.
>The current draft of HTML5 as previous versions of HTML notes,
>that p represents a paragraph. Paragraphs are prose and no
>poetry and cannot contain any substructures like strophe-lines.

The example was based pretty much on this example from the HTML5 spec:
http://dev.w3.org/html5/spec/text-level-semantics.html#a-purely-decorative-image-that-doesn-t-add-any-information
 which is where the use of the image the poem and the use of <p> for poetry
comes from. I guessed since it was written by the editor it was conforming
HTML5.

I did a little digging and found this post about poetry in HTML5
http://blog.signified.com.au/a-poem-element-for-html5/
in which a thread from the what wg mailing list on the subject and your
discussions  are cited.
 I would encourage you to follow lauras advice (in the following
email) about filing a bug on the W3C html5 spec in regards to poetry markup.

>My suggestion is to use either another format to markup
>literature/text properly or to use divs with RDFa or some other
>mechanism to indicate the role of the divs.
>Especially for a non visual representation it is for many
>people pretty confusing/depressing, if poetry is presented as prose
>(I know this personally, because one of my nephews tends to
>recite poetry much like prose ;o)
As this example is about text alternatives for images not about how to mark
up poetry, I would prefer not to include mark up that is extraneous to the
purpose.
I would also suggest that using divs and RDFa would not currently provide
any benefit for none visual representations.

>Another problem may occur with the relation of h1, h2, image
>and stanza. The current order implies more or less, that
>Alfred Lord Tennyson is the author of the poem, the image
>and the alternative text - is this really true?
>Some metadata (RDF) might be necessary to put the
>relations correct.
 I will try to modify the example to make it clearer, the use of RDF in the
context of this example i consider is out of scope.

>This problem is only slightly better handled with example 6.2
>due to the hyperlink (not only because it points to an error 404 page).

the example URL is made up, the actual URL was, I considered, too long and
was not needed for the example code, but it is linked in the explanation
above the example code [
http://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/ViewWork?cgroupid=-1&workid=15984&searchid=false&roomid=false&tabview=text&texttype=10
]

do you think it would be better to include this link in the code?

>Is there a mechanism currently to relate metadata to the
>value of an attribute like alt? If not, it might be better to
>replace the old img with a new element with the
>possibility to contain the alternative text as element content,
>including metadata about the content ;o)
Not that I know of. If we replace the image then it is no longer an example
of providing text laternatives for images (<img>) :-)

>The sample seems to be already old enough to be public
>domain, therefore it is at least not really problematic for the
>draft to blur all these relations. However, if the sample is
>intended to be useful for current works, one has to put those
relations somewhere due to copyright restrictions - and even
>without, I think, the works of authors should be always
>honoured by putting the relations correctly.

i understand your concern, do you think it may be better not to use this
image and associated poetry?


best regards
Stevef

2010/1/18 Dr. Olaf Hoffmann <Dr.O.Hoffmann@gmx.de>

> I think, the section 6 contains improper markup (and problematic content).
> Poetry or a stanza/strophe is embedded in a p element.
> The current draft of HTML5 as previous versions of HTML notes,
> that p represents a paragraph. Paragraphs are prose and no
> poetry and cannot contain any substructures like strophe-lines.
>
> My suggestion is to use either another format to markup
> literature/text properly or to use divs with RDFa or some other
> mechanism to indicate the role of the divs.
> Especially for a non visual representation it is for many
> people pretty confusing/depressing, if poetry is presented as prose
> (I know this personally, because one of my nephews tends to
> recite poetry much like prose ;o)
>
>
> Another problem may occur with the relation of h1, h2, image
> and stanza. The current order implies more or less, that
> Alfred Lord Tennyson is the author of the poem, the image
> and the alternative text - is this really true?
> Some metadata (RDF) might be necessary to put the
> relations correct.
>
> This problem is only slightly better handled with example 6.2
> due to the hyperlink (not only because it points to an error 404 page).
>
>
> According to wikipedia
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lady_of_Shalott
> the image seems to show a replication
> of an image of John William Waterhouse, not from
> Alfred Lord Tennyson, while the alternative text is maybe
> from another person, what means, it is effectively an
> interpretation of the image, not neccessarily representing
> the intentions of the image author.  Still it can be an alternative
> for the image, however not related directly to the author of
> the poem or the image...
>
> Is there a mechanism currently to relate metadata to the
> value of an attribute like alt? If not, it might be better to
> replace the old img with a new element with the
> possibility to contain the alternative text as element content,
> including metadata about the content ;o)
>
> The sample seems to be already old enough to be public
> domain, therefore it is at least not really problematic for the
> draft to blur all these relations. However, if the sample is
> intended to be useful for current works, one has to put those
> relations somewhere due to copyright restrictions - and even
> without, I think, the works of authors should be always
> honoured by putting the relations correctly.
>
>
> Related discussion about the poetry problem of HTML in the wiki:
> http://esw.w3.org/topic/HTML/PoeticSemantics
>
>
> Olaf
>
>
>
>


-- 
with regards

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

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