- From: Jan Roland Eriksson <jrexon@newsguy.com>
- Date: Wed, 12 Jul 2000 01:14:31 +0200
- To: RickR@biztro.com
- Cc: www-html@w3.org
On Tue, 11 Jul 2000 15:23:21 -0700, RickR@biztro.com wrote: >What I'm saying is that in the HTML and XHTML DTDs, the ATTLIST for IMG >states that alt is required. Yes, rest assured, I know that... >So, in XHTML, wouldn't this make a XHTML-compliant user agent choke on IMG >elements without the ALT attribute? Yes sure, but the "real world problem" is that you can not find a strict XHTML-compliant browser in the first place. >Bare in mind that I don't claim to be an XML expert, and am not to clear how >say IE 5 intreprets the DTDs with regards to validity/well-formedness. Then take the following into your heart :) There is _no_ browser produced for "wide public use" that cares about DTDs at all. (they all just ignore DTD references, and that's a fact) You can find exceptions on a commercial level, e.g. Panorama is (was) popular in the SGML world and that browser needed a DTD to get on to a rendering phase (and it needed a local stylesheet too for the same purpose) To reconnect to the ALT issue... The ALT attribute is supposed to provide a value that can be rendered in those situations where it's _not_ appropriate (for whatever reason) to render the image it self. (listening to a web page wearing a headset comes to mind) The "advisory TITLE attribute" is described in HTML specs to carry a value that can be appropriately rendered as a tool-tip in visual browsers. The "big two" has got it all wrong from there, we just have to live with that, sorry to say... -- Jan Roland Eriksson <jrexon@newsguy.com> <URL:http://member.newsguy.com/%7Ejrexon/>
Received on Tuesday, 11 July 2000 19:14:24 UTC