Re: checkpoint 3.1 RE: rationalize presentation

At 3:07 PM -0500 1/20/02, Charles McCathieNevile wrote:
>I don't claim total enlightenment, but maybe the following thoughts based on
>experience will do...
>
>There are a couple of things we were trying to achieve with the checkpoint
>(as I recall the history). One was to avoid relying on (here Kynn's point
>about wording is clearly relevant) images of text, for reasons already
>discussed. And yes, SVG does provide a way around this and so would be
>considered "markup" not an image.
>
>The other was finding images of mathmatical content, or chemical formulae,
>instead of some kind of markup version rather than as well as.
>
>My take on using bitmap images of text is that if the content of the text is
>meant to be read (rather than the overall shpae being recognised, as in a
>logo - w3c uses the same logo in all scripts, but uses arabic script for
>arabic text) then don't use an image. Most particulrly this applies to
>navigation bar text - in my opinion among the most important text on azn
>average page.
>
>On the other hand, for something like Maths or chemistry, providing an image
>as one alternative, with other recognised formats - mathML or cheML and
>LaTeX - can be a useful thing to do.

I think that maybe we need to recognize this as two checkpoints.  Ideally,
one checkpoint should not be serving two different cases with different
justifications, because then it makes it much harder to understand what
the checkpoint is about.  We want to minimize confusion, and one way to
do that is to avoid OVER-simplifying to the point where we have one
checkpoint which means two things.

Even so, the idea of the W3C's logo is still problematic here; W3C
itself uses text in logos, so I think that an absolute prohibition
for dogmatic reasons rather than practical -- i.e. if the content is
still available and accessible you STILL can't put text in an image
-- will only lead to confusion.  I would rather have an easy to
understand and easy to use accessible solution that says "use both"
than a complex and footnoted and incomprehensible one that tries to
define each case in which you "can" and "cannot" put text in an image.

--Kynn

-- 
Kynn Bartlett <kynn@idyllmtn.com>                 http://kynn.com
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Received on Sunday, 20 January 2002 21:11:42 UTC