[whatwg] add html-attribute for "responsive images"

[Matthew Wilcox]

That's a fair enough point. I'd /like/ to be able to over-ride the alt with
something even more specific, but I do agree the core semantics should be
the same - so a 'generalised' alt would work too, just be a little less
informative than it could be.

I could see the advantage of not allowing alt over-riding in that it forces
the alt to be applicable to all sources which then strengthens the vibe
that the images, although different, should have the same semantics.

On 7 February 2012 14:59, David Goss <dvdgoss at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 7 February 2012 14:00, Matthew Wilcox <mail at matthewwilcox.com> wrote:
> > I'm glad this is making a reasonable amount of sense to people :)
> >
> > Please note however that this isn't just a case of "the image is
> cropped".
> > It could be an entirely different image *as long as* it still carries the
> > same semantic message. In that, the image in the About example is merely
> to
> > give a visual representation of someone. As long as all of the scaled
> images
> > do that, they do not need to be *the same image* re-cropped. In fact, it
> > would be better in this case to have different images. Hence why it makes
> > sense to have the ability to over-ride the alt attribute on each source.
> >
> > There's nothing to stop us saying that an alt attribute can be declared
> on
> > the default image, and is only over-written if the <src> contains a new
> alt
> > attribute?
> >
> > -Matt
> >
> > On Tuesday, Feb 7, 2012, at 7:35 AM, David Goss wrote:
> >>
> >> I'm not really sure whether <source> should get an alt attribute - my
> >> thinking is that if one alt attribute doesn't correctly describe all the
> >> <source>s then perhaps they are different content. Matthew's example
> does
> >> make sense, in that the extra alt attributes describe the way the image
> has
> >> been cropped (although it's still the same image). But maybe it would be
> >> better to only allow alt on the <img> to reinforce the idea that all the
> >> <source>s should basically be the same image albeit
> >> cropped/monochrome/whatever.
> >>
>
> My point is that if the two images are supposed to have the same
> semantic message, then you should be able to describe them both with
> the same alt text (even if the differences between those images make
> the alt text a little more vague than it might be). So, as you say,
> you could have two different photos of the same person for different
> media, but the alt text "photo of Matthew Wilcox" would be applicable
> for both, so that's fine.
>
> I'm with you in that I want the flexibility (e.g. the sources
> shouldn't all have to be literally the same image just resized), I
> just think saying "all sources must correspond with same alt text"
> gives a nice clear definition of what's okay for authors.
>