On Thu, Jul 23, 2026 at 11:07:25AM -0600, Charles Staats wrote: > Hello, > > Currently, `texi2any --latex` appears to discard any alt text tag, see > https://github.com/latex3/tagging-project/issues/1491#issuecomment-5061006949. > Would it be possible to change this? > > Ideally, there would be some sort of flag like `--accessible` or > `--latex-tagging` that could be passed to the texi2any script that would > cause certain changes to the TeX and pdf output, such as the following: > > * Forward any alt text to the `\includegraphics` commands.
If as Patrice discovered, this was only supported in LaTeX releases after 2021, this is too recent to implement in the default output, without a clear reason. It appears that LaTeX2e was released in 1994 so should be a pretty stable target by now. I'm not opposed to implementing support for newer features in the output, provided that they remain optional and do not break conversion for users of older versions of LaTeX. For example, we could add a customization variable to texi2any to enable alt text output. > * Insert a `\DocumentMetadata` command (with appropriate settings) at the > beginning of the document. > * (For pdf output) compile with lualatex instead of pdflatex. > * Ideally, we would also have "actual" and "artifact" tags as well. If I > understand correctly, the "actual=<stuff>" tag indicates to screenreaders > that the image should be treated as if it were the text "<stuff>"; the > "artifact" tag tells the screenreader to ignore the image altogether (used, > e.g., for logos). All of these tags are supported by `\includegraphics`, > although I don't know what version is needed. You haven't explained why any of that is important. I feel that this discussion is missing important context, such as what an "accessible" document is, why it is important, and how you would check if a document is "accessible" or not. >From the github link: > The tex files produced by texi2any --latex are almost certainly not > accessible. (I haven't actually tested this, but I would be astonished > if they were.) Is there any workflow to produce a tagging-compliant tex > file from a texi file? This complaint appears to be hypothetical, with a claim that texi2any output is not "accessible" or "compliant", but with no details about what problems this causes, or how to check if if texi2any output meets these criteria. If we don't have a clear statement of the problem, how are we going to know if it is fixed or not? > There may be other changes needed, as discussed in the issue linked above. > (Note: Some of these may be better dealt with on the TeX side rather than > the texinfo side.) Referring people to an discussion of an open-ended issue without a clear purpose is unlikely to produce useful change, as it does not provide a reason to engage with the details of the discussion. I notice that these emails are being CCed to an email address which appears to post on the linked github issue. I don't understand why a problem with texi2any output is being discussed on a LaTeX bug tracker in the first place, as that would seem not to be the responsibility of the LaTeX project in the first place. (The bug tracker is for something called "The LaTeX Tagged PDF project", but you'll have to understand that people subscribed to this mailing list with an interest in Texinfo development may have no idea what that is, or why they should care.) So it could be worth bearing in mind that some messages posted to [email protected] might not be relevant for that bug tracker, depending on what the purpose of that bug tracker is.
