[whatwg] rel=license example

Fri Jun 5 20:11:05 PDT 2009

On Thu, 7 May 2009, Philip Taylor wrote:
>
> The rel=license example in 
> <http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/multipage/history.html#link-type-license> 
> looks like:
> 
>  <body>
>   <h1>Kissat</h1>
>   <nav> <a href="../">Return to photo index</a> </nav>
>   <img src="/pix/39627052_fd8dcd98b5.jpg">
>   <p>One of them has six toes!</p>
>   ...
>  </body>
> 
> Looking down the list of <img> alternative text requirements in the
> table of contents, the <img> seems to be "A key part of the content"
> (<http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/multipage/embedded-content-0.html#a-key-part-of-the-content>).
> 
> It's presumably not "possible for detailed alternative text to be
> provided", because it's a photo rather than some kind of describable
> diagram. Maybe "the nature of the image might be such that providing
> thorough alternative text is impractical" but I can't tell if this
> applies since I don't know what the image is. The "Images whose
> contents are not known" case looks like the best fit. That requires
> one of three things:
> 
> There's no title attribute, so it fails the first requirement.
> 
> There's no figure element, so it fails the second requirement.
> 
> Therefore it requires: "The img element is part of the only paragraph
> directly in its section, and is the only img element without an alt
> attribute in its section, and its section has an associated heading."
> 
> Its section is the section created by the <body> element. I think the
> paragraphs directly in the section are "<img ...>", "One of them has
> six toes!", "...". (I thought "Return to photo index" was too, but
> then I realised it's not "directly in" the section, assuming that
> means it must consist of direct child nodes. Also I'm assuming the
> paragraph formed explicitly by a <p> element is directly in the parent
> element of the <p>, rather than being directly in the <p> itself). So
> the img element isn't part of the only paragraph, and it fails the
> third requirement too.
> 
> Conclusions probably include a subset of the following:
> 
>  * The license example is invalid.
>  * The validity rules for <img> are far too complex since even the
> editor got them wrong.
>  * The validity rules for <img> are far too complex since it takes
> this much effort to work out that the editor got them wrong.
> [...]

All three of those conclusions are correct.

What should we change the alt="" rules to for this case?

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'