Re: What have they done!?

On Tue, 24 Apr 2007 20:37:24 GMT Jukka K. Korpela scribed:

This argument

Which argument? You quoted my entire message, so which of the
arguments are you commenting on?

I was commenting on your entire argument as a whole. While it may have
been multifaceted, it had a common (-if erroneous) theme.

boils down to nothing more than a
least-common-denominator approach in more ways than one.

Pseudo-mathematical expressions like "least-common-denominator" don't
help, and this particular phrase, used in some vague derogative
manner, is often a sign of cluelessness.

Isn't that opinion just a little subjective?

Alt ext is
baggage which in many cases is unnecessary, and my proposed default
is not alt="" but its elimination entirely.

Defaulting means omission. By making an attribute optional and by not
declaring any default value you would just leave the question about
document presentation wide open. If a document contains an <img>
element, how should it be rendered when the image is not available or
won't be displayed for some other reason? You can't avoid the problem
by not saying anything about it in the specifications.

Defaulting doesn't mean omission. It means having something which is
used or understood when an alternative in not specifically stated.

Browsers render unavailable images in different ways. IE tends to use a
small square, Mozilla just blank nothingness on the graphics side. As
for alt text, who knows?, its use is very unpopular.

Sure there are times
when it is important and desirable,

And saying something about an image's textual alternative is
unimportant and undesirable exactly when?

When a textual representation of the image would serve no real useful
purpose. Of course, that is the essence of this argument to begin with.

but stating that a large
percentage of web authors currently choose to ignore this fact does
little to persuade me of its value in modern superfluous contexts.

Your statement looks like it has been generated by a babble generator:
it constitutes grammatically a sentence but does not make sense.

Okay, to be a bit more earthy, I actually feel that the shoe is quite
significantly on the other foot.

Some video media has close-captions, some doesn't. While this isn't
an analogy, it does show that an option exists and is utilized with
minimal criticism.

No, it shows nothing about this matter. I wonder whether you have
understood _why_ the alt attribute is used. There's more in it than
meets the eye; see http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/html/alt.html

You're right, I probably don't know all the reasons for using the alt
attribute and will avail myself of the link anon. But I do know one
overpowering reason for not using it and have stated same previously.

--
Neredbojias
He who laughs last sounds like an idiot.
.

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