Re: minutes posted

The demonstrable case of harm is when you are relying on there being some
kind of spacing to separate words: 

 <a href="forwards">More</a><img src="somepic" alt=" "><a
href="home">land</a>

is not too cool if you end up with Moreland and your browser doesn't separate
links. Other examples could be constructed that are slightly more meaningful
(Moreland is the destination of the Tram I used to take to university each
day, but it is probably meaningless to a lot of people.)

In this case, where a function of the image is to provide a separation,
alt="&nbsp;" is a correct functional replacement. But
alt="&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;" to align something with another feature on the page
is wrong, since it is not reliable.

Charles McCN

On Thu, 28 Oct 1999, Al Gilman wrote:

  At 06:09 PM 10/28/99 -0400, Wendy A Chisholm wrote:
  >minutes from today's call are available at: 
  >http://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/meetings/19991028.html
  >
  >as usual, if you see a correction that needs to be made, let me know.
  >
  >--wendy
  > 
  
  Quote:
  
       * Resolved: shouldn't use " ". &nbsp just another form of white
         space. " " because ignored. &nbsp because it should not be used
         for formatting. only used to keep pieces of text together (e.g. in
         WCAG we keep the word "priority" and the level together).
  
  Maybe I am just dreaming, but at the time in the call I did not get the
  impression that there was such a consensus.  Chuck, do you believe that
  there was consensus on this point?  
  
  There is a line in the minutes to the effect:
  
     WC won't hurt anything, so can't use?
  
  and I don't believe that that question has been answered.  Where is the
  demonstrable case of actual harm?
  
  What is the proposed markup alternative?
  
  Al
  
  
  

--Charles McCathieNevile            mailto:charles@w3.org
phone: +1 617 258 0992   http://www.w3.org/People/Charles
W3C Web Accessibility Initiative    http://www.w3.org/WAI
MIT/LCS  -  545 Technology sq., Cambridge MA, 02139,  USA

Received on Friday, 29 October 1999 11:47:19 UTC