Posted by Jukka K. Korpela on 04/24/07 20:37

Scripsit Neredbojias:

> On Sun, 22 Apr 2007 06:32:51 GMT Jukka K. Korpela scribed:

When I see a screenful of quotation, as in your message(s), I suspect I'll
see an AOL one-liner like "Me too!" or "Bullshit!". Don't you think it's
time for you to learn how to quote on Usenet? (Hint: Google for "how do I
quote on Usenet".)

> This argument

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

> 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.

> 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.

> 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?

> 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.

> 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

--
Jukka K. Korpela ("Yucca")
http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/

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