- From: Charles McCathieNevile <charles@w3.org>
- Date: Thu, 12 Oct 2000 10:38:24 -0400 (EDT)
- To: jonathan chetwynd <jc@signbrowser.org.uk>
- cc: w3c-wai-ig@w3.org, Al Gilman <asgilman@iamdigex.net>
The problem is that most of us don't have the right db. I could set it up on my macintosh or unix system or french/chinese/etc system, but it would take a lot of work. Which defeats the original purpose. Download time is one of the limitations of the web. It is possible in principle to develop a system like URNs which allow the sort of thing you are proposing, but it is not a simple problem to solve so that it works well in the real world, without breaking things for other people. The file: solution breaks for most people. URNs can potentially be developed in such a way that they will work the same way as the file: thing, without breaking for the rest of us. But that requires developers of browsers to implement it, and they are not likely to do that unless there is some agreement amongst them to make it work. Which is why there are organisations like W3C who spend what seems like a lot of time trying to solve problems that can be partially solved by something that seems much easier... If you can force everyone to dothings the same way, then a lot of problems are easy to solve. But it doesn't seem to work in practise - people would rather fight than agree to speak pig-latin, or whatever the particular solution would be. This doesn't mean the problem can't be solved, and it should certainly be discussed. Just that it might be harder than it seems it should.. Cheers Charles On Wed, 11 Oct 2000, jonathan chetwynd wrote: Did you visit the link I posted? the point was that it 'instantly' gave a large graphic with sounds, if you have the right db. Linking to an online db will for the present require downloading the sound and graphic, and thus be far from instant. Our clients do not need large and dramatic icon/clip art libraries, however a very limited set would help. Unfortunately the msonline set available here: http://cgl.microsoft.com/clipgallerylive/default.asp is somewhat muddled. It would be nice if they started from a simple design, getting more complex. jonathan chetwynd jc@signbrowser.org.uk IT teacher (learning difficulty) & accessibility consultant -- Charles McCathieNevile mailto:charles@w3.org phone: +61 (0) 409 134 136 W3C Web Accessibility Initiative http://www.w3.org/WAI Location: I-cubed, 110 Victoria Street, Carlton VIC 3053, Australia September - November 2000: W3C INRIA, 2004 Route des Lucioles, BP 93, 06902 Sophia Antipolis Cedex, France
Received on Thursday, 12 October 2000 10:38:31 UTC