Does "longdesc" really have to comprise a link to an external page, or can it simply be an extended version of the "alt" attribute?
as per http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/struct/objects.html#h-13.2 it *has to be* a URI
by the way: it doesn't need to be a link to an external page...you can also have longdesc pointing at an anchor or fragment identifier on the same page (e.g. longdesc="#imagedescription") or you can have one single external page for all descriptions, and then link to the specific one for the particular image, again with anchor or fragment identifier (e.g. longdesc="alldescriptions.html#bookcover1")
Regardless, what are the practical applications of this, anyway? Can any user agents read it? Do screen readers use it? Does ANYTHING use it?
if by "use it" you mean "expose it to the user" then in most cases the answer seems to be no. can't vouch for it, as i haven't got any installed here at home, but i do seem to recall that some screenreaders to present the option to jump to the longdesc when they encounter it.
incidentally, i've just written an extension for firefox to offer a "View Image Longdesc: ..." in the image context menu, whenever an image actually has a longdesc attribute set. http://www.splintered.co.uk/experiments/55/
i'm hoping that this sort of thing will make it into the browser(s) as standard.
> inline "display" through
fetching the longdesc URI if the image is not available would seem to make more sense, at least to me.
no, that's what ALT is for. imagine if the image is a book cover. the ALT would say "book cover: title of book" and the document referenced by the londesc would go into the details of what the cover looks like, e.g. "a man and a woman, kissing in front of a nuclear explosion while debris flies all around the scene" or something. now imagine your screenreader is reading out the page...having the longdesc plonked right there in the middle of the original document would be very disruptive to the flow of the document, and in most cases unnecessary and distracting if the ALT already adequately conveys what the image is for.
Patrick _____________________________________________________ reÂdux (adj.): brought back; returned. used postpositively [latin : re-, re- + dux, leader; see duke.] www.splintered.co.uk | www.photographia.co.uk http://redux.deviantart.com
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