Re: example spec text for longdesc

Hi Benjamin,

Do you think it do any harm if validators did some checks and issued
warnings if they suspected that the description resource was unlikely
to contain a description of the image? What would make sense on that
level? Could it help address some of the points brought forth in the
"longdesc lottery".
http://blog.whatwg.org/the-longdesc-lottery

Henri said it would be trivial to incorporate some checks into his
validator. So that could possibility help longdesc if it is reinstated
into HTML.

If longdesc is reinstated into HTML, would you be in favor of having
spec text something like:

"Conformance checkers and authoring tools should inspect the URL and
issue a warning if they suspect that the description resource is
unlikely to contain a description of the image (i.e., if the URL is an
empty string, or if it points to the same URL as the src attribute
unless the document contains an id that matches a longdesc#anchor, or
if it is indicative of something other than a URL.)"

Maybe something different?

All ideas for improving the example spec text would be greatly appreciated.
http://www.d.umn.edu/~lcarlson/research/ld-spec-text.html
We can change. It is not set in stone.

> Document validation is perhaps the wrong layer to check what are
> actually relationships between documents.

I don't know of a tool that currently checks longdesc link
relationships between documents.

> I'd suggest links of all sorts - a@href, img@src, blockquote@cite,
> img@longdesc, etc. - are best checked with a link checker:
>
> http://validator.w3.org/checklink
>
> It would additionally be good if link checking was incorporated into
> total validation tools such as:
>
> http://validator.w3.org/unicorn/

I use http://validator.w3.org/checklink regularly. I have also used
unicorn. But have never gotten them to check longdesc links. Do they
do that?

Do you know of tools that check longdesc links? What do you think is
the best way to go about this?

Thanks.

Best Regards,
Laura

On 4/5/11, Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis <bhawkeslewis@googlemail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 30, 2011 at 10:34 AM, Henri Sivonen <hsivonen@iki.fi> wrote:
>>> Do you think that it would be a good idea for the spec to have
>>> language for conformance checking tools to do such checks if longdesc
>>> is reinstated into HTML?
>>
>> I think making machine-checkable conformance a property of the HTML file
>> (and the protocol headers it was supplied with) makes the concept more
>> tractable than making machine-checkable conformance depend on the
>> external resources the HTML file refers to. That's why if longdesc were
>> reinstated, I wouldn't want to make its machine-checkable conformance
>> depend on external resources. However, if we find a that other features
>> have extremely compelling reasons to have their machine-checkable
>> conformance depend on external resources, then we might as well make the
>> machine-checkable conformance of longdesc depend on external resources,
>> too.
>
> Document validation is perhaps the wrong layer to check what are
> actually relationships between documents.
>
> I'd suggest links of all sorts - a@href, img@src, blockquote@cite,
> img@longdesc, etc. - are best checked with a link checker:
>
> http://validator.w3.org/checklink
>
> It would additionally be good if link checking was incorporated into
> total validation tools such as:
>
> http://validator.w3.org/unicorn/
>
> --
> Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis
>
>


-- 
Laura L. Carlson

Received on Wednesday, 6 April 2011 12:30:49 UTC