Baseline of OBJECT and supported media types

[was: Re: XHTML 1.0, section C14]

Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis wrote:
> On Tue, 2006-11-28 at 15:58 +0200, Mikko Rantalainen wrote:
>> Is there a way to get correct baseline alignment when MathML is 
>> placed inside an OBJECT? Yes, it's possible to get somewhat 
>> acceptable result but HTML+OBJECT isn't a substitute for XHTML+MathML.
> 
> I tried Googling for the problem you refer to, but couldn't find
> anything. Do you have a link or example of a baseline problem in OBJECT?

If you want to insert something like a^sqrt(2) inlined there isn't a 
nice way to get baseline of letter "a" (practically the bottom of 
letter "a") at the same height as baseline of the text line.

(the a^sqrt(2) is short for a to power of square root of 2)

The problem is that you cannot (AFAIK) tell OBJECT to position the 
letter "a" inside the OBJECT at the height a normal letter "a" would 
be positioned if OBJECT were replaced with just a letter "a". See 
any math book for an example.

>> I would expect a normal UA to send list of media types it "supports" 
>> in its normal Accept header but there could be an UI to fetch the 
>> "source" version of the document where the UA would repeat the 
>> request without Accept header (or with Accept: */*).
> 
> Sorry, Mikko, I'm still not clear what you mean by "supports". And would
> you mind elaborating on how such a user interface might work and what it
> might look like in practice (from the end-user's perspective I mean)?

I guess an UA should define what "supports" means. I would like if 
it meant "every MIME type the system is able to present". Such an 
Accept header would be too long for real world usage, though. 
Perhaps "supports" should be defined as "every MIME type that can be 
presented within the UI of UA". For visual UAs that would mean "all 
native media types of UA plus all MIME types supported by plugins", 
I guess.

As for the UI, I'd suggest something similar as current visual UAs 
have for "Save link target as..." action (usually in the context 
menu of a link). It would make sense to save the "best" format if I 
store the target of the link without viewing it. I can always save 
the version I'm currently seeing with other means (usually in menu 
File - Save as...).

-- 
Mikko

Received on Tuesday, 28 November 2006 15:13:15 UTC