RE: [css3-content] [css21-content] Syntax for adding alternative text for inserted image

> Date: Fri, 19 Nov 2010 08:24:48 -0500
> From: bzbarsky@MIT.EDU
> To: Charles.Belov@sfmta.com; www-style@w3.org
> Subject: Re: [css3-content] [css21-content] Syntax for adding alternative text for inserted image
> 
> On 11/19/10 3:41 AM, Belov, Charles wrote:
> > http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-content/#inserting3
> > and
> > http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS2/generate.html#content
> > would be improved by an example as to how to add an alt attribute with a
> > text value, for example "New!" onto the image brought in by the uri.
> 
> Uh... If you need to add alt text, then the image has semantic meaning; 
> it's not just a decoration.
> 
> If it has semantic meaning, then adding it via CSS is just wrong. In 
> particular, it'll break badly in a UA that just doesn't load your CSS.
> 
> So there is no way to the alt text, because if you need to do it, you're 
> misusing the feature badly.
> 
> -Boris
> 

I don't completely agree with you. 
CSS is supposed to be an acceptable way of styling XML documents.
 
Suppose you have something like that 
 
<books>
<book new="true">My new book</book>
<book new="false">My second book</book>
<book new="false">My first book</book>
</books>
 
You would like to write something like
 
book[new="true"]::before {
     content: image(url('new.gif),'New: ');
}
 
I think it would be legitimate. 
(Naturally, you could use a XSL stylesheet to perform a first transformation to your XML document but it would require more work)
 
Regards, 
François