<br><br><div><span class="gmail_quote">On 4/21/07, <b class="gmail_sendername">Maciej Stachowiak</b> <<a href="mailto:mjs@apple.com">mjs@apple.com</a>> wrote:<br><br></span><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
How is an <object> with empty fallback content different from an<br><img> with an empty alt value? It seems like it is just as ambiguous,<br>since if the fallback content were non-empty it should be substituted.
</blockquote><div><br>I guess made an assumption that <object> semantically means "embedded object that is part of the page content" while <img> semantically means "image that represents text", making the distinction between (1) and (2).
<br><br>Although, like I said, I think omitting the alt attribute is a better way to distinguish (2) from (1)<br></div><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
I think a better option would be to distinguish alt="", and use that<br>for images in the content that add no meaning as the draft says<br>today, and no alt attribute at all for images that are meaningful,<br>but where a text description is not available or appropriate.
</blockquote><div><br>That's pretty much what I said at the end of the message, so I agree. </div><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
We could limit <img> with no alt attribute to content generated by<br>WYSIWYG editors, in the same way as <font>. Or something like that.</blockquote><div><br>That's where I disagree. I think it should be perfectly valid for authors to omit the alt attribute on images in a gallery for the same reason it's acceptable for YouTube not to have fallback content for its videos in <embed> tags. This does not just apply to WYSIWYG editor.
<br></div><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">Basically we can distinguish the two cases by alt="" and entirely<br>
omitted alt. <br></blockquote><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">Regards,<br>Maciej</blockquote><div><br>By "entirely omitted alt", do you still only mean WYSIWYG editors? If not, I agree. The distinction would be as follows:
<br>(1) <img src="obvious.jpg" alt="obvious"> - This image represents text, particularly the word "obvious". Lynx should replace it with the word "obvious" and do nothing else.
<br>(2) <img src="gallery2.jpg"> The image is part of the content and doesn't represent text. Lynx should indicate that the image is missing and offer a way to download it<br>(3) <img src="decor.jpg
" alt=""> The image is purely decorational or represents text that would be redundant to display. Lynx should pretend it's not there.<br></div></div>-- <br>Jon Barnett