RE: Query from APA WG on longdesc usage

It might be helpful just to send out a general notice too all the groups that it may be going away… again.

 

It’s not supported in EPUB 3, and not terribly useful in EPUB 2 due to lack of practical support, so I doubt it will be missed by those groups. But always good to give people a heads up.

 

Matt

 

From: Bill Kasdorf <kasdorf.bill@gmail.com> 
Sent: August 12, 2019 16:32
To: Ralph Swick <swick@w3.org>
Cc: W3C Publishing Steering Committee <public-publishing-sc@w3.org>
Subject: Re: Query from APA WG on longdesc usage

 

I can report that the XML model that is pretty much universally used in scholarly publishing--JATS for journals and its counterpart BITS for books--contains longdesc in the form <long-desc>, as well as the element <alt-text>.  In my modeling work I always encourage the use of both, with <alt-text> being used for the content of the required @alt attribute on <img> in HTML and the content of <long-desc> for what would currently be referred to as an extended description. What I can't report is how much they are actually used in practice; I hope some of the publishers or service providers in the PBG or PBGSC can comment on that.

 

The best way to find out how commonly those are used would probably be to check with the major scholarly journal hosts--Atypon (now owned by Wiley and thus a W3C member), HighWire Press, Silverchair, and Ingenta. The four of those host the vast majority of scholarly journal content. Atypon has the biggest proportion of those four so I would suggest checking with Marty Picco of Atypon as a start (mpicco@atypon.com <mailto:mpicco@atypon.com> ).

 


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On Mon, Aug 12, 2019 at 2:26 PM Ralph Swick <swick@w3.org <mailto:swick@w3.org> > wrote:

In what Publishing forum is Janina Sajka's query about current usage of 
longdesc in Publishing best addressed?

On 2019-08-12 12:21 PM, Janina Sajka wrote:
> Hi, Judy:
> 
> APA has become aware that there is a proposal afoot to obsolete
> longdesc. We would likely not oppose that unless there is still use of
> longdesc, perhaps in legacy education publications still actively in
> distribution.
> 
> If there is still such use, or if Details/Summary and/or Annotations use
> isn't sufficiently mature to completely replace longdesc, we need to
> know that from our Publishing people.
> 
> It seemed this would be a useful agendum for our upcoming CC call.
> 
> Best,
> 
> Janina
> 




 

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Bill Kasdorf
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Founding Partner, Publishing Technology Partners <https://pubtechpartners.com/> 

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