Re: Control Text-file Embedding in HTML-docs

Tina Holmboe wrote:
> On 31 Mar, David Woolley wrote:
> 
>   How would you suggest doing this for
> 
>     <p src="uri">
>      ...
>     </p>

<p src="Marketing_departments_view_of_exactly_what_it_should_look_like.jpg">
Plain text version
</p>

The text in the paragraph can have its own markup, but the image can be 
of the paragraph as a whole.

(I've used jpg here because the art of knowing when to use lossless 
formats seems to have been lost!)

> 
>   then? XHTML 2 is making it possible for authors who /still/ don't
>   understand what a "paragraph" /is/ to build documents that consist of
>   paragraphs pulled from external sources - and we are to believe that
>   if those external sources fail the document should /still/ carry the
>   meaning?

You are assuming that people will use HTML or plain text.  I think they 
will use image formats.  They might also provide an applet, in which 
case the paragraph might have to describe the algorithm.

> 
>   I rather fail to see how anyone expect the 'replacement' content to be
>   unlike the 'included' content and still carry the same meaning.
>   Studying the difficulty people have with IMG and ALT ought prove that
>   point rather quickly.

I think that, here, you are into the problem that XHTML2 is not for 
normal "web designers", who are really commercial artists.  There is a 
danger that fashion and getting a good CV will make them use XHTML 2
inappropriately, but most commercial web designers should be using HTML 
4.01 or HTML 5, not even XHTML 1.0.

>> keep the size of each page down, but commercial use has resulted in
>> severe bloat, and, as a result, there is a benefit in assembling the
> 
>   I disagree. /Uneducated/ use of, in particular, HTML as a layout
>   language has resulted in severe bloat. Education on this topic has
>   failed - clearly - when you, in 2007, can find

Largely I think that commercial users want a layout language, but PDF 
lost out in the fashionability stakes, so use as a layout language is a 
prime driver in the way that HTML is used.
> 
>     <div class="header1">
> 
>   in markup produced this year. The proof, as they say, is in the

Yes, I've seen islands in which it is clear that the designer has been 
taught the philosophy, but there are still many web sites designed by 
cut and paste techniques by people who cannot challenge marketing 
requirements.

>> - as a server feature, the ability to use them is often an added cost
>>   option, so not available on cheap hosting services, as, for example,
>>   bundled by ISPs;
> 
>   A logistics problem. Doing this properly may not be cheap; that's a
>   fact of life; if authors want to play the game they might find they
>   also have to pay.

The problem is that this hits people when they are first learning to 
write HTML.

>
>   XHTML 2 gives the power to split entire paragraphs of text out, and
>   I'm damned if I can see how good alternatives will be provided without
>   including /exactly/ the same content in the document itself.

I think this would be an abuse of the mechanism.  I don't think it was 
intended to replace text with text.

Received on Sunday, 1 April 2007 16:50:59 UTC