Re: non-text content

Gregg writes:

> I like the direction here.     But we need to handle
>
> 1- content includes structure so the word “content” is problematic here.
>
> 2- ascii (or Unicode) art.
>
>  How about “information” for “content”
>
> Some believe structure is not information – others worry that if you 
> remove structure from, say, a table, its meaning changes.   That would 
> indicate that you removed information necessary to understanding of 
> the content.  It may be information about information but it has 
> semantic content.
>
>  Otherwise I would go for
>
>     * non-text information - information that is not represented by a 
> Unicode
>
>       character or linear presentation of Unicode characters
>
>  
>
If "content" is the superset of information that forms Web sites and Web 
applications:  the code and markup that define the structure, 
presentation, and  interaction, as well as text, images, and sounds that 
convey   information to the end-user. In other words - all things in the 
delivery unit.

Then, "non-text content" is a subset that includes content that is not 
represented by a Unicode character or sequence of Unicode characters 
[this does not take into account Christophe's response about Unicode and 
character encodings].  Or we could say that "non-text content is content 
that is not rendered in a Unicode character or sequence." In other 
words, we can distinguish non-text content from content in the effect 
that non-text content has on the perceivable unit [to address the issue 
that Jason raised yesterday].

So, I see this as parallel to "Aristotle is human therefore he is 
mortal" in that "non-text content is information that makes up a Web 
site therefore it is content." 

Therefore, I think it is ok to have subsets of content. 

If this still feels confusing we could be more specific, as UAAG 1.0 is 
[1] and say,
In this specification, the noun "content" is used in three ways:

   1. It is used to mean the document object as a whole or in parts.
   2. It is used to mean the content of an HTML or XML element, in the 
sense employed by the XML 1.0 specification ([XML], section 3.1): "The 
text between the start-tag and end-tag is called the element's content." 
Context should indicate that the term content is being used in this sense.
   3. It is used in the terms non-text content and text content.

Thoughts?
--w

[1] <http://www.w3.org/TR/UAAG10/glossary.html#def-content>

-- 
wendy a chisholm
world wide web consortium
web accessibility initiative
http://www.w3.org/WAI/
/--

Received on Friday, 22 April 2005 15:58:05 UTC