RE: longdesc - beside the box

Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis wrote:
>
> By allowing your proposed attribute to point to invisible links
> without link text, I think you open it to the same problems of hidden
> metadata as "longdesc".
>

Hi Ben,

*IT's NOT* hidden metadata, it's discoverable metadata, just like 
microformats are discoverable metadata: I've yet to encounter a browser or 
web-page that renders microformat data on screen. Yet user-agents can 
none-the-less discover this data, and a number of browser plug-ins (such as 
the Operator and Tails Export extensions for firefox) allow individual users 
the ability to extract this discoverable metadata into a usable form they 
can (visually) process.

@longdesc takes a URL string (often "hidden" to end users: <a 
href="complex_url_string.html">Click here</a>, and yes I appreciate the 
irony of that example), and allows users to interact with it. A browser 
mechanism that allowed for the discoverability and interaction with 
@longdesc values is all we need to render @longdesc useful to all users.


> It's not clear to me how your proposal would be more palatable to the
> WG than reinstating "longdesc".

Currently the @longdesc Issue has been re-opened at the W3C HTML WG.

JF