Re: List image bullet

to follow up on what Pawson, David said:

> 
> Daniel wrote
> First, it seems like a bad idea to add semantics information like ALT
> text to a piece of style sheet.
> DP: Agreed. Nothing to do with how the content be shown
> 

Styles need to be able to apply images that the HTML didn't know about.
Maybe the text alternative to an image invoked in a stylesheet is in
an alternative stylesheet -- i.e. one designed for the character-grid 
medium.

I believe that the clean way to style this is that if you want the
bullet to be "New!" or "Reduced!" emblazoned on an eye-catching splash
of color, that the list item should have CLASS="...,new" and the style
should select new-in-splash.jpg as the bullet image.  Whether or not
the style language needs the capablility to provide an ALT string at
this point is a function of the overall style control logic which is
defined by the stylesheet language.  If the style selection automatically
falls back to "find a style in another sheet that fits when you can't
implement this style" then the textual bullet styling in another stylesheet
will suffice.  If the stylesheet language says you have to stick to
one sheet, then it will want to offer alternatives locally.

DD> The reason is that it's possible, likely in fact, that a particular
> style sheet be dropped in favor of another one by the browser, so any
> valuable information would be lost.
> DP: Agreed.
> 
DD> Second, the real place for content is the markup, 
> DP: This is the critical point.  ALT text is content. We may add
> a few adjectives to 'content', but content it is, therefore it should be
> part of the document.
> 

You can't say categorically that ALT text is content.  Only if
there was articulable information in the selection of the icon is
there content in the ALT.  The ALT may be content-free, too.  And
various degrees of significance in between.

I believe it is better to try to express the canonical "content"
in the classes used to categorize [the list items] and let the
bullet realization used in any medium, for which the ALT serves
today as the realization in character-grid, speech, and Braille,
be an expression of that content.

-- Al Gilman

PS: There is still another issue dealing with list items.  It is
desirable to force the sensitive graphic region for a list item
to enclose both bullet and text.  Can this be done by nesting LI
inside A?  Or do we need to be able to wrap items in a container
which unifies control sensitivity over its contents as an atomic
unit?  [forces content to contain only one sensitive item; forces
User interface to accept stimulus targeted to any of the blocked
content as equivalent].

Received on Friday, 26 September 1997 10:58:05 UTC