RE: ISSUE-194: full-transcript - Chairs Solicit Alternate Proposals or Counter-Proposals

I am not really interested in designing the markup; I'll leave that to the young blades that fill this list with such entertaining rhetoric. I will restrict myself to advocating for use cases. It does seem to me though that there is more information here than we can usefully pack into a single attribute value, yet I certainly see the advantages and logic of retaining longdesc; so the aliasing concept sort of seemed natural.

-----Original Message-----
From: John Foliot [mailto:john@foliot.ca] 
Sent: 15 March 2012 13:43
To: Sean Hayes; 'Silvia Pfeiffer'; 'Sam Ruby'
Cc: public-html@w3.org
Subject: RE: ISSUE-194: full-transcript - Chairs Solicit Alternate Proposals or Counter-Proposals

Sean Hayes wrote
> 
> I am not sure that these are necessarily the same thing at all. A
> transcript is IMO a static untimed merged representation of the
> information in in the caption and description tracks. A longdesc would
> probably be something more along the lines of a synopsis or précis. I
> think we need mechanisms that can handle both of these use cases.

I could not agree more. A transcript of a 90 minute video would be
approximately 90 minutes worth of reading, which is significantly more than
what a 'longer textual description' would call for under any circumstances.
It is not a description, it is a transcript.

In checking with a number of non-sighted colleagues, there seems to be some
consensus that this would be onerous on the end user, and
insufficient/incorrect for the role.

> 
> I agree that it makes sense to wait and see how the discussion on
> generic 'off page text' pans out; it might be for example that we end
> up with both an attribute and an element e.g. @longdesc and <longdesc>
> (following the precedent of @src and <source>) where the latter admits
> a richer set of adornments, possibly including some sort of role
> attribute which can distinguish between a transcript and a synopsis,
> amongst other uses for off-page text.

This is the first I have heard of proposing a <longdesc> element (and as you
know, I follow *those* discussions quite closely).  It is an interesting if
unorthodox idea. Do you have further thoughts jotted down somewhere?  I
would encourage you to surface them on this list soon.

Cheers!

JF

Received on Thursday, 15 March 2012 16:14:04 UTC