- From: Jukka Korpela <jkorpela@cc.hut.fi>
- Date: Wed, 20 May 1998 08:43:09 +0300 (EET DST)
- To: www-html@w3.org
On Tue, 19 May 1998, David Norris wrote: > Who's idea was this? All specs up to the > final, including HTML 3.2, indicate that height and width are the suggested > dimensions, as in simply a description, not scaled. You might find part of an answer to this question about history in http://www.w3j.com/5/letter1.html which contains my notes on Chuck Musciano's article about what's new in HTML 3.2 and his response to my notes. The article itself is at http://www.w3j.com/5/s3.musciano.html > I certainly agree that they should not be an override. This is a difficult question. Maybe I'll come back to it some day if there will be some activities in developing the HTML language... > They are important for describing the image > to someone that can't see it, for instance. Are they? In which way? Sometimes the dimensions are important to someone who _could_ see the image and is wondering whether to load it or not, but then probably the size (in bytes) would be more relevant. > If we get right down to it; use of IMG is everything but discouraged in the > specs. The specs suggest quite often that use of OBJECT is a better way to > include an image. Eh? Which of those statements contains a typo? Really, I'm not sure! Or do you just mean the specs are somewhat self-contradictory? > I tend to agree. IMG is a bit limiting. OBJECT allows > for better replacement when images aren't available to the user. In principle, yes. In practice, current implementations are so horrible that one can hardly consider using OBJECT for anything real; see http://www.webreference.com/dev/html4nsie/objects.html And it isn't even clear that the inclusion of an image using OBJECT is _equivalent_ to the inclusion of an image using IMG. The specs rather strongly _suggest_ this in explaining the example at http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/struct/objects.html#h-13.2 (I'm especially looking at the words "This inclusion may also be achieved with the OBJECT element - -", giving the word "This" perhaps more emphasis than is intended.) But on the other hand, browsers seem to take different viewpoints; see the thread beginning from <URL:http://search.dejanews.com/getdoc.xp?AN=354164719&search=thread& threaded=1&CONTEXT=895642704.1138819145& HIT_CONTEXT=895642678.1140260898&hitnum=0> Yucca, http://www.hut.fi/u/jkorpela/ or http://yucca.hut.fi/yucca.html
Received on Wednesday, 20 May 1998 01:43:12 UTC