Re: ALT specification

Daniel W. Connolly (connolly@beach.w3.org)
Tue, 20 Jun 1995 11:59:34 -0400


In message <9506200637.AA22548@www10.w3.org>, Philippe Jausions writes:
>Hi everybody !
>
>I have a suggestion for ALT attribut (IMG tag). Why don't we use it with full
>HTML syntax and not just with simple text. I mean, what do you think of such u
>se :
>
><IMG SRC="pictures" ALT="<PRE> ._.<BR> / \<BR> / \<BR>/-------\<BR> |
> |_|<BR> | __ |<BR> | <A HREF=door.html>||</A> |</PRE>"> My House !

SGML, on which HTML is based, says that the stuff inside attribute value
literals (i.e. inside the ""'s in ALT="...") doesn't get parsed for tags.

Now we could go ahead and parse it anyway, but that would be a strange
use of the technology.

The functionality that you're asking for has been in the HTML+
proposal for some years now: it's called the FIG element.

Your example would look like:

<FIG SRC="pictures">
<PRE>
._.
/ \
/ \
/-------\
| |_|
| __ |
| <A HREF=door.html>||</A> |
</PRE>
</FIG> My House !

The most recent specification proposal is:

Figures
http://www.w3.org/hypertext/WWW/MarkUp/html3/figures.html
Fri Mar 24 09:56:57 1995

Dan

p.s. Please: everybody read the WWW FAQ[1] and the www-talk/www-html
archives[2] and the recent HTML specs before posting.

[1] http://sunsite.unc.edu/boutell/faq/www_faq.html
[2] http://gummo.stanford.edu/html/hypermail/