- From: Daniel W. Connolly <connolly@beach.w3.org>
- Date: Wed, 12 Jul 1995 18:31:40 -0400
- To: Ka-Ping Yee <kryee@novice.uwaterloo.ca>
- Cc: Rainer Klute <klute@nads.de>, Mike Batchelor <mikebat@clark.net>, www-html@www10.w3.org
In message <Pine.3.87.9507121444.A26501-0100000@novice.uwaterloo.ca>, Ka-Ping Y ee writes: > >It doesn't make sense to me that figures should break paragraphs. This >behaviour is disagreeable to me, and also makes <FIG> operate distinctly >differently from <IMG> which it was supposed to replace. > >But i might just be missing the obvious. >Is there a solid rationale for this? I just had a discussion with Dave Raggett about this... <FIG> is meant to compliment, not replace, <IMG>. There's a lot of history behind the current spec. Some of it is technical, but some of it is political stuff that I won't go into. Suffice it to say that HTML 3.0, like many other markup languages, includes two idioms for graphics: the <img> element for phrase-level stuff, like little funny characters or inline icons (or inline math formulas or ...) and <fig> for "displayed formulas" or graphic callouts or ... . The fact that the functionality of <img> doesn't include things like client-side image maps and other consequences of using an ALT attribute rather than content (e.g. <image src="xxx">alternative <em>nifty</em>stuff</image> ) is an unfortunate consequence of some historical decisions. Dan
Received on Wednesday, 12 July 1995 18:32:16 UTC