00:03
<othermaciej>
annevk: we already have hit testing ability in the engine to determine "where the caret would go if you clicked here in an editable area"
00:03
<othermaciej>
annevk: so it's not that tricky
00:03
<othermaciej>
we have that code because we already need to do that for actual editable areas
00:04
<roc>
yeah
00:04
<roc>
maybe we need two methods :-(
00:05
<annevk>
textRangeFromPoint and rangeFromPoint ?
00:05
<annevk>
the former does the caret thingie (no idea how to define that in prose yet) and the latter does the char -> element thingie
00:06
othermaciej
shrugs
00:06
<othermaciej>
SVG also has hit testing APIs
00:07
<othermaciej>
but only on elements that contain text (so hit testing to the element has to be done first as a separate step()
00:08
<annevk>
grmbl, the SVG spec is so complex and hard to navigate
00:09
<shepazu>
anne, are you looking for text selection stuff?
00:09
Philip`
thinks the HTML5 spec is more complex and harder to navigate
00:10
<hsivonen>
Philip`: at least the HTML5 spec comes as a single file so seaching on the page works
00:10
<shepazu>
we need more extensive indexing, which we're working on
00:10
<hsivonen>
I have to search the SVG 1.1 spec as PDF
00:10
<hsivonen>
because the multipage HTML version is a pain to work with in a random access manner
00:10
<Philip`>
http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Aw3.org+inurl%3Atr%2Fsvg+purple
00:11
<othermaciej>
annevk: http://www.w3.org/TR/SVG/text.html#DOMInterfaces
00:11
<othermaciej>
getCharNumAtPosition is what I was thinking of
00:11
<othermaciej>
though getStartPositionOfChar, getEndPositionOfChar, and getSubStringLength provide the opposite direction
00:12
<othermaciej>
I think getCharNumAtPosition may not be compatible with DOM range notions of offset though
00:13
Philip`
wonders if Opera 9.5 has fixed the thing where search-as-you-type is incredibly slow, because it tries highlighting every occurrence in the 2MB file of the letter "e" when you're trying to start searching for "elephants" or whatever
00:14
<annevk>
i guess we don't need to worry about those methods...
00:14
<othermaciej>
yeah, I'm just mentioning them as prior art
00:14
<othermaciej>
not sure they are the best model to generalize
00:14
<weinig>
annevk: I am curious as to what your opinion is on what to do when not enough arguments are passed to a method like getRequsetHeader from the XMLHttpRequest Object spec
00:15
<Philip`>
(Aha, it has, by just making the search/highlighting much faster)
00:15
<annevk>
weinig, whatever Web IDL says should happen :)
00:15
<weinig>
annevk: ah, ok
00:16
<othermaciej>
normal practice is to just threat missing arguments as undefined rather than going out of your way to throw
00:16
<annevk>
weinig, at some point http://www.w3.org/TR/DOM-Bindings/ will be named "Web IDL" and when that happens I'll update XMLHttpRequest to explicitly point to it I guess so all that will be resolved automatically
00:16
<othermaciej>
so I'd say do that unless it is spec'd differently for some specific case
00:16
<othermaciej>
or undefined would be a type error
00:17
<othermaciej>
or would stringify or numberify as something that raises an error
00:17
<annevk>
or maybe caretRangeFromPoint()
00:17
<annevk>
that would make it explicit :)
00:18
<annevk>
and although arguably the name is not abstract enough as some UIs might not have a caret, it's very clear for authors
00:18
<roc>
sounds good
00:19
<annevk>
g'night all, will look into this more tomorrow
00:24
<Philip`>
Hixie: The "h1-h6" in the spec would look much nicer with an en-dash
00:48
Philip`
sees http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/multipage/section-sections.html#headings0 saying "&endash;"
00:48
<Philip`>
but the commit email had &ndash; instead
00:48
Philip`
wonders if it's just slow at regenerating
00:50
<Philip`>
Hixie: http://krijnhoetmer.nl/irc-logs/whatwg/20080418#l-201
00:52
<Hixie>
yeah i was reading the archives
00:52
<Hixie>
there is no way for me to check something in that isn't what the site has
00:52
<Hixie>
because i check in the same file that apache serves
00:52
<Hixie>
so try reloading :-)
00:53
<Philip`>
I've reloaded multiple times, and it still says &endash;
00:53
<Philip`>
though the single-page version looks right
00:53
<Philip`>
and much nicer than those ugly hyphens - thanks :-)
00:56
<Lachy>
It's nice to see Microsoft have agreed to change their selectors api implementation. http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-webapi/2008Apr/0189.html
00:56
<Hixie>
oh the multipage version always lags behind
00:57
<Hixie>
i have another host that generates it
00:58
<Philip`>
Hixie: Ah, right
01:38
<Hixie>
woah, my imap server just got way faster
01:41
<andersca>
nice
01:42
<bradee-oh>
Hixie: does this mean the frequency at which we can expect your batch email replies increased, as well?
01:43
<Hixie>
yes, but this is "way faster" compared to yesterday, not compared to last week
01:43
<Hixie>
these past few days my imap server got stuck in a swamp somewhere and was having trouble getting data out of the mud
01:47
<Philip`>
Maybe it was scared of the alt discussion
01:56
<Philip`>
Hixie: The multipage one still says &endash;, so that's quite a lot of lag...
01:57
<Hixie>
odd
01:57
Hixie
runs .update.sh again
02:38
<MikeSmith>
roc: was just reading your latest blog entry
02:39
<MikeSmith>
well put
02:40
<roc>
thanks, but I mostly just cribbed from #whatwg
02:40
<roc>
:-)
02:41
Hixie
blushes at the implication of the target of the link for "few people"
02:47
<MikeSmith>
fwiw, in the product-development organizations I've been in, I've found that experienced QA people are also grossly undervalued
02:47
<MikeSmith>
by experienced I mean experienced with a particular product
02:48
<MikeSmith>
they have whole lot of information in their heads that they've acquired through many instances of testing and troubleshooting that product
02:53
<roc>
we've got quite a few of those people. Not sure if they're undervalued or not. I hope not
08:27
<Hixie>
i wish i understood what the real problem was with this alt text issue
08:27
<Hixie>
i'm clearly missing something
08:42
<hsivonen>
Hixie: the underlying problem statements aka. use cases would indeed be more useful than a dogmatic syntax conclusion
08:46
<Hixie>
i tried to go that way with my recent e-mail
08:54
hsivonen
looks if the TAG thread needs a reply from me
08:54
<annevk>
I hope my reply is enough
08:55
<annevk>
though maybe I should have stayed out of it
08:55
<annevk>
it's not like they're going to affect anything
08:56
<hsivonen>
annevk: ah you replied already. thanks
08:57
<othermaciej>
which list?
08:58
<hsivonen>
othermaciej: www-tag
09:00
<annevk>
I can't believe people are suggesting to hurt copy-and-paste authors. Copy-and-paste is the nr1 feature of the Web platform.
09:04
<othermaciej>
whoever wants to hurt copy-paste authors should talk to the SVG WG
09:05
<annevk>
It was in that thread, exactly. Though not by someone from the SVG WG :)
09:07
<annevk>
The alt e-mail flame war is accomplishing exactly nothing it seems :(
09:09
<Lachy>
annevk, I wouldn't call it nothing, though it's very little. There was some discussion about how to gather data on the use of alt, which would be useful, though no results from that yet.
09:12
<hsivonen>
it has altered my software development priorities
09:13
<hsivonen>
although letting it alter the priorities may set a bad precedent if it seems that the way to get me to write software is to make spec discussions too unproductive
09:13
<om_sleep>
man, TAG people love the colon character
09:13
<hsivonen>
indeed
09:14
<hsivonen>
that's another dogma
09:14
<othermaciej>
like, they don't even care any more if it is even used as a namespace prefix separator
09:14
<othermaciej>
as long as there's colons
09:16
<Lachy>
some usability studies performed on sites like wikipedia that evaluated the very redundant use of alt="...", title="..." and image captions in their articles would be useful.
09:16
<hsivonen>
I guess at some point someone has to make the impolite point that if a TAG member can't get a reasonable code path condition written in 6 hours, how do they expect Joe Blow to get it right
09:17
<othermaciej>
because the Tools Will Save Us
09:17
<othermaciej>
and Everyone Will Just Use a Library
09:17
<hsivonen>
seriously, making a sniffer that has different paths for Firefox and Opera and an untested failure in Safari should be a red flag
09:20
<hsivonen>
Hixie: when a markup generator makes a linked thumbnail of a photo of unknown meaning, would you put the function of the link in alt?
09:20
<hsivonen>
alt=thumbnail 30 per page
09:21
<hsivonen>
30 times
09:21
<hsivonen>
with current AT even that would be less bad than letting the crazy file name reading kick in
09:24
<Lachy>
I think some people are focussing too much on the spec saying "rare subset", rather than considering that the conditions need to be evaulated on an individual site basis.
09:25
<Lachy>
although I thought the spec said rare as a way to encourage people to avoid the situation if possible, people seem to be interpreting it as a loophole that people will aim for
09:27
<othermaciej>
"thumbnail" isn't good text for the link
09:27
<hsivonen>
it isn't
09:27
<othermaciej>
since the link surrounding a thumbnail doesn't lead to a thumbnail, it leads to the full photo page
09:27
<hsivonen>
but it's less horrible than reading out a GUID or some other hex name
09:27
<hsivonen>
right
09:28
<othermaciej>
I think <a title="photo page"> or something might be right
09:28
<othermaciej>
maybe even duplicate title or description there
09:28
<othermaciej>
I dunno
09:28
<hsivonen>
assuming that title isn't IMG3827.JPG
09:30
<othermaciej>
fair enough
09:31
<hsivonen>
I think the default behavior of Flickr Uploadr sucks, btw
09:31
<hsivonen>
it's a classic example of having a metadata field (title) and trying to fill it with *some* junk when the user is uncooperative
09:32
hsivonen
uses his own custom uploader
10:04
<Hixie>
hsivonen: based on impl experience we had when mozilla experimented with this, imho the src or parts of the src are never good alt text
10:04
<Hixie>
well, never is strong
10:04
<Hixie>
not often enough that it should be considered by the ua
10:05
<Hixie>
the point of thumbnails is to provide a quick overview of what is available
10:06
<Hixie>
if nothing but the image is known (i.e. no metadata at all) then you might as well just say alt="2" alt="3" etc
10:06
<Hixie>
as in: <p>Photos: <img src=... alt="1"> ... <img src=... alt="50"></p>
10:06
<hsivonen>
Hixie: shouldn't that be aria-posinset='2', etc.?
10:06
<Hixie>
with links, of course
10:06
<Hixie>
why?
10:07
<Hixie>
i think the aria thing is a classic example of second system syndrome
10:07
<hsivonen>
Hixie: to make the user experience consistent with other "items n of M" cases
10:07
<Hixie>
and people apply solution-looking-for-a-problem attitudes when they learn of it
10:08
<hsivonen>
Hixie: I wasn't looking for a use of ARIA here
10:09
<Hixie>
my last two lines weren't really related to your suggestion
10:09
<Hixie>
just a general observation
10:09
<Hixie>
but frankly even in this case i don't see much point
10:09
<Hixie>
it's a bunch of links
10:09
<Hixie>
people know how to deal with those
10:09
<Hixie>
what's the problem we're trying to solve?
10:09
<hsivonen>
in fact, I think this case happens to be one where the posinset/setsize design would actually make sense
10:10
<hsivonen>
in the more obvious cases, the current ARIA design kinda sucks
10:10
<hsivonen>
Hixie: the problem we are trying to solve is to convey that we have N links to photos and we don't know what those photos are about
10:11
<Philip`>
You should draw all the images onto a canvas and then use some JS code to map mouse coordinates onto links
10:11
<Philip`>
and then you wouldn't have to worry about alt text at all
10:11
<hsivonen>
if it is a set of N links, presumably it would be good for the UE to be the same as the AT presenting a set of N items in general
10:13
<hsivonen>
Please try out the new "Image Report" feature of Validator.nu and help me make the UI text suck less
10:13
<hsivonen>
there's a tension between instructing first-time users and making the UI non-crufty for repeat users
10:15
<Hixie>
hsivonen: i don't really see why N is especially more relevant in this case than in any other case of a set of links
10:16
<Hixie>
(and thus why the UA wouldn't automatically do all this clever processing itself)
10:17
<hsivonen>
Hixie: yeah, it's only relevant on paged flickr thumbnail pages
10:17
<hsivonen>
where the ARIA stuff would make it possible to spread the N links across several HTML pages
10:17
<hsivonen>
Hixie: but I agree that in general the assumption that the author should manage posinset/setsize sucks
10:18
<hsivonen>
see my feedback on public-pfwg-comment
10:18
<Hixie>
the image report is cool, though wordy. not sure how to reduce that though.
10:20
<Hixie>
I would have a warning if there's an image without alt="" saying "N images were not declared as decorative and yet had no alternative text specified; please see the _image_report_ to manually check that this is appropriate." or some such
10:28
<hsivonen>
Hixie: that might make the report more discoverable, yes
10:28
hsivonen
is annoyed at Leopard Screen Sharing not doing full screen
10:28
<hsivonen>
do I have to pay for Pro or something? :-)
10:29
hsivonen
wants VNC connections to appear in Spaces so that local and remote spaces look the same
10:32
<hsivonen>
anyway, if anyone has better UI text, Validator.nu pulls the UI text from the wiki at startup
10:34
<annevk>
I wonder if the wordy descriptions should go on a separate page with pointers
10:34
<annevk>
so that for frequent use you don't have to scan all those paragraphs
10:34
<hsivonen>
that's a possibility
10:36
<hsivonen>
I should show off the RTL support: http://html5.validator.nu/?doc=http%3A%2F%2Fhe.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2F%25D7%25A2%25D7%259E%25D7%2595%25D7%2593_%25D7%25A8%25D7%2590%25D7%25A9%25D7%2599&showimagereport=yes&showsource=yes#l244c238
10:39
<annevk>
does the validator check <a> <img alt> </a> cases?
10:40
<hsivonen>
annevk: no, but it checks for <a> <img> </a>
10:41
<hsivonen>
annevk: when the alt attribute is present, linkness doesn't seem to need further considerations at least not in VO
10:41
<annevk>
if the alt attribute is the empty string as in my example it is probably an authoring error
10:42
<hsivonen>
at least with VO, not a worse authoring error than misapplying alt='' in general
10:43
<annevk>
i think that <a> <img alt> </a>, <button><img alt></button> (others?) should be non-conforming
10:43
<hsivonen>
moreover, the code currently doesn't distinguish <a><img alt=''></a> and <a><img alt=''> Redundant text</a>
10:44
<annevk>
(if there's text it's obviously a different case)
10:45
<hsivonen>
yeah, but it's also obviously more difficult to check for in SAX, hence, left undistinguished in the first version
10:48
<hsivonen>
Hixie: I'm not sure I want to add the warning you suggested since it changes the badge hunter effects of the feature
10:52
<annevk>
i was more thinking about it being a content model restriction
10:52
<hsivonen>
Ah.
10:53
<Lachy>
<a><img> text</a> could also be considered non-conforming, since the only logical alt text for it would be alt="" or alt="non-redundant text". Omitting alt in that case would obviously be an error
10:53
<hsivonen>
I think I'd still use the same code.
10:53
<hsivonen>
(as amended to distinguish the cases, that is)
10:57
hsivonen
wonders how dictionary-based Hebrew text-to-speech needs to be
11:04
<zcorpan_>
hsivonen: i think the image report is a bit unstructured visually; the sections blend together and it looks like one big blob of text. i think it would help with h3 { font-style:italic } or something
11:06
<zcorpan_>
and/or more spacing between the sections
11:07
<mpt>
Lachy, I worked on a page design this week where that markup pattern would have non-empty alt= text
11:08
<mpt>
Specifically, something like 'Owner: <a href="...+edit"><img alt="[Edit]" src="edit-icon" /> Rowley Birkin</a>'
11:09
<Lachy>
mpt, yeah, that would be the alt="non-redundant text" case I mentioned.
11:10
<mpt>
oh, right
11:10
<zcorpan_>
hsivonen: uh, actually, never mind... for some reason the headings aren't bold for me in opera
11:10
<mpt>
I was thinking we were still in the phase where <img> == <img alt="">
11:11
<Philip`>
hsivonen: It took me quite a while to realise that the top list of images was ones with alt=""
11:11
<Philip`>
since it's not obvious that the "Omitted from non-graphical presentation" heading is associated with that table, and it's not obvious what that heading means anyway, and I don't want to read all the text
11:12
<hsivonen>
Philip`: would it help if h3 had a larger margin-top?
11:13
<Philip`>
(Also the <th>Image</th> should maybe have text-align:right since it looks quite unbalanced when the image directly under the heading is very narrow and right-aligned)
11:13
<Lachy>
mpt, the spec basically says alt="" means decorative, missing alt means key part of the content (not decorative), without any alt text available from any reliable source
11:13
<mpt>
ok, good
11:14
<Philip`>
hsivonen: I imagine that could help with making the heading seem associated with the text+table, rather than just with the text
11:15
<hsivonen>
Philip`: any suggestion on how to make it look that way?
11:15
<Philip`>
hsivonen: You already gave a suggestion that seems reasonable to me :-)
11:16
<zcorpan_>
hsivonen: i had rules in user.css that took away the boldness
11:17
<hsivonen>
zcorpan_, Philip` : is it better now after reload?
11:18
<Philip`>
hsivonen: Hmm, I think the <th>Image</th> needs some padding-right or something
11:18
<Philip`>
but otherwise it does look better
11:18
<hsivonen>
oh right
11:19
<hsivonen>
what about now?
11:19
<Philip`>
hsivonen: That looks more better now
11:20
<hsivonen>
ok
11:20
<Philip`>
Is it at all useful to say "From line 90, column 146; to line 90, column 301", instead of "Line 90, column 146"?
11:20
<Philip`>
I can imagine automatic syntax-highlighting tools caring, but not humans
11:21
Philip`
goes for a while
11:21
<hsivonen>
the location number matter if you want to correlate stuff with a text editor buffer manually
11:22
<zcorpan_>
hsivonen: yep, looks better now. (i now have body, label { font-weight:normal } in user.css instead of what i had before)
11:22
<hsivonen>
otherwise, you can check "Show Source" and use the links
11:22
<hsivonen>
zcorpan_: is that your user.css in general of for validator.nu in particular?
11:24
<zcorpan_>
hsivonen: for validator.nu in particular. the use of system fonts in your style sheets in combination of my font choise in windows makes everything go bold in opera otherwise
11:24
<hsivonen>
ok
11:36
<zcorpan_>
hsivonen: the image report is very useful
11:36
<zcorpan_>
hsivonen: good work :)
11:43
<zcorpan_>
hsivonen: i think the headings would require less thinking from the user if they just said "Images with alt=''", "Images without alt", etc
11:44
<hsivonen>
zcorpan_: thanks. and yeah, changing the headers like that might make sense
11:44
<hsivonen>
too bad I'll have to change the interfaces to do <code> in heading :-(
11:46
<zcorpan_>
hsivonen: might also be useful with a TOC at this point, not sure
12:01
<Philip`>
hsivonen: You can correlate stuff with a text editor buffer manually just with the start location, and press your text editor's "jump to closing angle bracket" key to find the end location
12:04
<Philip`>
hsivonen: "The img elements of the page (if any) ..." - you could remove the "(if any)", and replace the image report with "There are no img elements on the page." if there aren't any
12:06
<Philip`>
"Please review that the images in the group match the definition all what kind of images should appear in that group." - s/all/of/, or maybe s/.*/Please review that the images in each group match that group's definition./ which hopefully says the same but more concise
12:12
Philip`
wonders what happens if he pastes into IRC <a ... title="ויקיפדיה:הבהרה משפטית">הבהרה משפטית</a>
12:12
<Philip`>
Hmm, doesn't give the intended effect in my client, but http://krijnhoetmer.nl/irc-logs/whatwg/20080418#l-494 does
12:13
<Philip`>
Don't Hebrew HTML authors get horribly confused by their markup getting rendered like <a ... title="some text<"some text</a> ?
12:56
<Philip`>
http://www.google.com/search?q=%221+comments%22 - grammar are hard
13:10
<hsivonen>
argh. while I'm away writing alt-related software and docs, the thread just keeps growing
13:46
<hsivonen>
Philip`: fixed UI strings. thanks
14:38
<hsivonen>
bad the link function in WordPress is sad. it doesn't escape &
14:52
<hendry>
hsivonen: use http://packages.qa.debian.org/i/ikiwiki.html :)
15:01
<hsivonen>
hendry: Hixie only installs software that Dreamhost supports
15:07
<annevk>
hsivonen, wow, long post
15:11
<Philip`>
hsivonen: s/the market generator/the markup generator/ ?
15:11
<hsivonen>
oops. I blame speech-to-text
15:11
<Philip`>
Also s/in// in "pretend that in the case"
15:12
<hsivonen>
Philip`: thanks
15:15
<Philip`>
hsivonen: http://validator.nu/?doc=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.coalitionforjustice.net%2F shows 4 messages but http://validator.nu/?doc=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.coalitionforjustice.net%2F&showimagereport=yes only shows 3, which seems odd
15:16
<hsivonen>
Philip`: indeed. thanks. I'll investigate later.
15:18
<Lachy>
hsivonen, the tables in the image report need visible borders and it would help if the table headers were left aligned or centred, rather than right aligned.
15:19
<Lachy>
and make the th's bold or something to distinguish them from td's
15:24
<Lachy>
hsivonen, it seems to be quite usable, though I think the presentation needs some improvment.
15:24
<Lachy>
I wonder if it would be possible to have a feature that showed the images with some of their surrounding content to put them in context.
15:32
<Lachy>
hsivonen, it might be good to either treat alt=" " the same as alt="", or somehow indicate that the value only contains whitespace
15:40
<Lachy>
hsivonen, I think the description of Images with textual alternative should include something that says automated markup generated should not attempt to generate alternative text unless it has been obtained from a reliable (or at least human) source.
15:49
<zcorpan>
hsivonen: http://html5.validator.nu/?doc=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.accessify.com%2F&showimagereport=yes&showsource=yes is not very helpful...
15:51
<zcorpan>
hsivonen: why does it need to reparse in that case?
15:52
<Lachy>
maybe because the meta charset occured outside the limit of the preparse
15:52
<Lachy>
in any case, such error messages should probably include some quick way to say force override with this charset anyway
15:53
<Lachy>
and then have it revalidate
15:54
<zcorpan>
or the validator should just reparse :P
15:54
<Lachy>
it would also be useful if there was a quick way to view the image in full size, without having to select view image from the context menu
15:55
<Lachy>
zcorpan, no, fatal errors are great for forcing the author to fix the error :-)
15:56
<zcorpan>
Lachy: well perhaps the author was only set out to check the alt text
15:57
<Lachy>
ah, so you want a way to view image report only without validation
15:58
<Lachy>
forcing UTF-8 works. http://validator.nu/?doc=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.accessify.com%2F&charset=UTF-8&showimagereport=yes&showsource=yes
15:58
<Lachy>
it's intersting to see their incorrect use of alt text
15:59
<zcorpan>
yeah, although skipping over the validation messages is about as much work as unchecking a "validate" checkbox
15:59
<Lachy>
"accessify.com" image has alt="Accessify home page - latest news" is somewhat wrong. The image says nothing about news.
16:00
<Lachy>
and the 1x1px transparent gif with alt="site statistics" should have alt="" instead
16:04
<zcorpan>
http://html5.validator.nu/?doc=http%3A%2F%2Fflickr.com&charset=UTF-8&showimagereport=yes&showsource=yes looks reasonable
16:14
<hsivonen>
Lachy: why do the tables need borders?
16:15
<hsivonen>
Lachy: Philip` suggested right-aligning the image th, and I think it makes sense that way
16:15
<hsivonen>
Lachy: the th *is* bold
16:16
<hsivonen>
Lachy: context would be useful, yes. However, in a validator, the source location is the surrogate for context
16:16
<hsivonen>
Lachy: if you really want context, you need a browser extension
16:17
<hsivonen>
Lachy: I think alt=' ' needs further investigation whether it already is taken to mean something special
16:17
<hsivonen>
Lachy: the UI text is on a wiki :-)
16:18
<annevk>
some light colored border and maybe some amount of padding would help though, I think
16:19
<annevk>
(not necessarily on the side of the table, though)
16:20
<Philip`>
http://validator.nu/?doc=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F&showimagereport=yes#imagereport
16:20
<Philip`>
Is that a legitimate use of alt?
16:20
<annevk>
why not?
16:21
<Philip`>
The alt text for each image is not an alternative to that image, though the concatenation of alt texts on the page is an alternative to the concatenation of images
16:22
<annevk>
i suppose it would be weird if a single image failed to load
16:22
<billmason>
I don't understand why when I'm actually looking at google.com, it's one integrated image, not a concatenation.
16:23
<annevk>
prolly does browser sniffing
16:23
<Philip`>
Probably depends on cookies and logins and stuff too
16:23
<Philip`>
Also it does IP sniffing
16:23
<Philip`>
(so validator.nu gets google.fi)
16:23
<billmason>
Ah, that would make sense.
16:23
billmason
is sniffed out now
16:24
Philip`
can't work out which part of the spec is relevant for alt text for images which themselves just contain text
16:25
<annevk>
Google tries to save bytes with markup on the one hand, but on the other they could save quite a bit more if they really tried
16:25
<Philip`>
It's not the first case, since the text isn't more clearly stated when it's in the graphic
16:25
annevk
wonders what the deal is
16:25
<Philip`>
It's not the second since it's not an icon, it's not the third since it's not supplementary to surrounding text, it's not the fourth since it's not purely decorative
16:25
<Philip`>
It's not the fifth since it's not a critical part of the content
16:26
<Philip`>
It's not the sixth since it's not being emailed
16:26
<Philip`>
So the spec doesn't seem to tell me whether the image needs alt or what it should say
16:27
<billmason>
The second includes discussion of logos, which would seem to have some relevance.
16:27
<hsivonen>
Lachy: isn't the context menu easy enough for magnifying the image?
16:27
<hsivonen>
zcorpan: re: only checking alt: validation is the first step. :-p
16:27
<Philip`>
billmason: None of the three cases for logos applies either
16:28
<Philip`>
The Google logo isn't representing Google (like if it was a list of lots of search engines, using their logos to make them easily identifiable) - it's just the page heading
16:28
<Philip`>
It's not being used next to the company's name
16:29
<Philip`>
and it's not just decorative, since if you removed it then you wouldn't know what site you were on
16:29
<billmason>
I'm not sure I agree with your first statement. Particualy in light of your third.
16:29
<billmason>
If it's that critical, then its representative.
16:30
<Philip`>
I'm not sure I agree with your "If" statement
16:31
<billmason>
Well, then you will have to explain how it's not decorative, but at the same time doesn't stand for anything to me....
16:31
<annevk>
hsivonen, "Fatal Error: Changing encoding at this point would need non-streamable behavior." is an open issue right?
16:31
<Philip`>
The image is critical to the page, because it's part of the page's text; its purpose is to be heading text, and not to be representing the organisation Google
16:32
<billmason>
Perhaps we have different definitions of "representing".
16:32
<Philip`>
It's not "being used to represent the entity ... such as a company, organisation, project, band, software package, country, or some such"
16:33
<billmason>
I think a marketing person would disagree that a logo doesn't represent the entity. A logo is generally a carefully considered product designed to to just that. Judging by the arguments over logo design I've experienced.
16:34
<Philip`>
Regardless of that, if they replaced it with black Comic Sans saying "WE HACKED YOUR SERVERS" then it certainly wouldn't be representing any such entity, and then there's still the problem that none of the cases mentioned in the spec seem to cover it
16:36
<hsivonen>
annevk: fatal error is a major design decision
16:36
<hsivonen>
annevk: making it more usable regardless is an open issue
16:37
<hsivonen>
Lachy, annevk: is the problem not having a border between table rows?
16:37
<hsivonen>
or columns, too
16:38
<billmason>
Such a change would mean you no longer have a logo. Right now I'm only asserting that the Google graphic is a logo.
16:39
<billmason>
I would argue that your example fits the current definition of icon: 'WE HACKED YOUR SERVERS' is a short phrase with an alternative graphical representation.
16:39
<Philip`>
I'd have to agree that the Google logo graphic is a logo
16:41
<Philip`>
but I think it's not so clear that the logo is "being used to represent the entity" - it's being used to tell people what site they're on and to make it prettier
16:41
<Philip`>
It does represent the entity, but it's not being used simply for that purpose
16:42
<Philip`>
billmason: Which of the sub-cases in the 'icon' section would apply?
16:43
<billmason>
Philip`: would apply to what? The hypothetical 'hacked' graphic?
16:43
<Philip`>
billmason: Yes
16:44
<billmason>
Probably "In other cases, the icon has no text next to it describing what it means; the icon is supposed to be self-explanatory. In those cases, an equivalent textual label must be given in the alt attribute."
16:45
<billmason>
I'm starting to dislike the word 'icon' though. It makes me leap to the assumption that the image will therefore be a little 16x16 image, or the like.
16:45
<Philip`>
That seems to me like an abuse of the spec's intent - that's supposed to apply to e.g. <img src=magnifying-glass alt=Search>
16:46
<billmason>
Yes, I agree. This is why I don't like the word icon here.
16:47
<Philip`>
The whole spec section is far too long to bother reading to work out what you're meant to do in any given case anyway, even if it did actually say clearly what to do in every given case
16:50
<billmason>
I would rather, I think answer that the 'hacked' image example is point 1 in the spec. It is a 'A phrase or paragraph with an alternative graphical representation', but the following text pulls you away from that by saying the image 'more clearly' represents, when in this example it equally represents.
16:50
<billmason>
So I'm finding the text a little blurry.
16:50
Philip`
agrees
16:51
<annevk>
hsivonen, fatal error is incompatible with HTML5...
16:51
<Dashiva>
But what if the vandals didn't change the alt?
16:51
<billmason>
Then it's nonconforming? :)
16:52
<Philip`>
Dashiva: I'm assuming these are vandals who care about accessibility
17:00
<hsivonen>
annevk: actually, HTML5 permits fatal errors
17:04
<annevk>
hmm true, does your parser allow the other variant too if you don't do the streaming model?
17:05
<hsivonen>
annevk: yes, the parser supports non-fatal behavior if you accept losing streaming
17:06
<Lachy>
hsivonen, the th's weren't bold. They are now. I assume the problem was the font-weight: inherit;, which now appears to be removed.
17:06
<hsivonen>
I'm not sure if keeping V.nu streaming is a bad call, but I'm not ready give up on streaming
17:06
<hsivonen>
Lachy: are you sure your browser cache is up-to-date?
17:07
<Philip`>
CSS5 should allow every element to have two parents, and if you set "inherit" then it chooses to inherit from one of the parents at random, with a small chance of inheriting from both mixed together, when the element is first created
17:07
<Lachy>
it seems to be now up to date now. I wasn't getting the light yellow background on the middle column earlier. Now I am
17:07
<hsivonen>
Lachy: I'm pretty sure I haven't changed the style sheet in the last hour
17:07
<hsivonen>
Lachy: you had a *really* old cached copy of the style sheet, then
17:07
<Lachy>
oh, ok. Maybe mine was cached
17:08
<Lachy>
had you set and cache related http headers on them, which would have caused it to be cached for me?
17:08
<Lachy>
like an Expires header
17:10
<hsivonen>
Lachy: nope: http://web-sniffer.net/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fabout.validator.nu%2Fstyle.css&submit=Submit&http=1.1&gzip=yes&type=GET&uak=0
17:12
<annevk>
hsivonen, ah ok, for some reason i assume the parser didn't use streaming
17:12
<annevk>
maybe because of Schematron
17:12
<annevk>
assumed*
17:13
<annevk>
oops
17:13
<hsivonen>
annevk: Schematron will be gone at some point from HTML5 checking
17:13
<hsivonen>
annevk: but yeah, Schematron builds a private tree and doesn't stream
17:13
<hsivonen>
looks really ugly in a perf profiler :-)
17:14
<Lachy>
hsivonen, re magnifying images, it's not always immediately obvious which images are already shown full size, or which can be enlarged. So going to the context menu to view each image is time consuming
17:14
<hsivonen>
Lachy: good point
17:14
<hsivonen>
Lachy: I tried to pick a size that is large enough for an author to recognize photos
17:15
<Lachy>
would be nice to have some kind of zoom feature for significantly larger images
17:15
<hsivonen>
it may suck if you aren't the author and you try to figure out a large diagram
17:15
<Lachy>
but I suppose, for an author familar with the page, it's not so bad
17:16
<hsivonen>
Lachy: I considered using CSS :hover and :focus but then I cut that feature from the first release, because I couldn't figure out a nice way to tell CSS to zoom from current dimensions by a factor
17:17
<Lachy>
such a thing would have to be done with javascript
17:17
<hsivonen>
yeah
17:21
<hsivonen>
can JS query for the actual file dimensions?
17:21
<Lachy>
hsivonen, can you turn the Group Messages feature on by default. It's so much better than the ungrouped
17:21
<hsivonen>
the server size doesn't know the file dimensions and uses width/height from HTML
17:22
<hsivonen>
Lachy: I can't. Grouping doesn't work during load
17:24
<Lachy>
I wonder if you could somehow use the canvas APIs to determine the actual size of the image
17:25
<Philip`>
Lachy: You can't
17:26
<Philip`>
and when I last tried, it was impossible to find the image size on the client
17:26
<Philip`>
(because img.width/height always returns the rendered size, or 0 if it's not in the document)
17:26
<Lachy>
Philip`, ok.
17:26
<Philip`>
(at least in the compatible intersection of all browsers)
17:27
<Philip`>
so I ended up calculating sizes on the server instead, and sending <img _width="123" _height="456" style="max-width:100px"> so scripts could grab the real size
17:28
<Philip`>
(Can't use width="..." because getAttribute('width') in IE is equivalent to .width and returns the rendered size)
17:29
<Philip`>
(Web development is great fun)
17:31
<Philip`>
(Also I was putting the max-widthed images in a table, and Opera 9.2 does table layout as if the image was full size, which messes everything up, and I was having so much fun that I just gave up and let Opera have broken layout)
17:31
<Lachy>
hsivonen, this works: http://software.hixie.ch/utilities/js/live-dom-viewer/?%3C!DOCTYPE%20html%3E%0A%3Cscript%3E%0Avar%20img%20%3D%20document.createElement(%22img%22)%3B%0Aimg.src%20%3D%20%22image%22%3B%0Aw(img.height)%3B%0Aw(img.width)%3B%0A%3C%2Fscript%3E
17:33
Lachy
has to go home now. Back soon.
17:34
Philip`
wonders why that didn't seem to work when he tried this a while ago...
17:44
<annevk>
(the example Lachy gave above only works for cached images)
17:45
<Philip`>
(That's easily fixable with onload)
17:58
<Lachy>
annevk, the example I gave would work for all images shown in the image report, if the function is executed onload, creates an image, and iteratively sets the src to that of each images in the report and retreives the dimensions.
17:59
<Philip`>
"Iteratively" sounds bad for performance - you want to do them in parallel
18:00
<Lachy>
ideally, you would catch the onload event for each individual image and retrive the dimensions imediately
18:00
<Lachy>
that will be possible with XBL, but no so easy now
18:00
<Lachy>
unless you can do <img ... onload="getDimensions();">
18:00
<Lachy>
for each image
18:07
<Philip`>
<img onload> won't work, since it'll give the rendered size and not the real size
18:07
<Philip`>
so you have to use createElement('img') or new Image()
18:10
<Lachy>
Philip`, yes, that's why my above explanation said to create an img, and iteratively set the src to that of each image in the page.
18:11
<Philip`>
You can just create multiple imgs and set the source of them all, instead of iterating on one img
18:12
<Lachy>
you still need to create and set each one sequentially, but creating new img elements would be less efficient than reusing the same one.
18:15
<Lachy>
I assume multiple onload events from several images would be executed sequentially, since it's single-threaded, so reusing the same img for each wouldn't cause a conflict
18:15
<Philip`>
Network latency is seven zillion times more significant than CPU/memory usage for a handful of DOM objects
18:15
<Lachy>
yes, but every bit counts
18:15
<Philip`>
Every bit of network latency counts more; and if you're downloading one image at a time, compared to downloading half a dozen in parallel, that's going to be really slow
18:16
<Lachy>
but the network latency is irrelevant here, since you can't do anything with the image until it's loaded, and once it is, the script for each takes an insignificant amount of time
18:17
<Lachy>
the browser can still download multiple images simultaneosly, and use various techniques to speed that up. There's nothing a javascript can do about that
18:18
<Philip`>
The browser can't download multiple images simultaneously if your script is waiting for the first to call onload before you update img.src and tell it to download the next
18:19
<Lachy>
I think your misunderstanding how I envision the script working
18:19
<Philip`>
Possibly :-)
18:20
<Philip`>
Since you said you're reusing the same img, I assume you mean "var i = new Image(); i.src = '1'; i.onload = function () { process(i); i.src = '2'; i.onload = ... }" (except setting src/onload in the right order and setting up the chain in a loop)
18:21
<Lachy>
no, you got it wroing :-)
18:21
<Philip`>
I'll blame your description, then ;-)
18:26
<Lachy>
I'm putting together an example page to show it working, give me a few minutes
18:29
<bkardell>
I have a question about <link> in the working draft...
18:30
<bkardell>
There is a "prefetch"
18:30
<bkardell>
and you can specify type
18:31
<bkardell>
could it be used similarly to <script src="xx">
18:31
<bkardell>
to load script?
18:32
<Philip`>
bkardell: Why not just use <script src="..."> instead?
18:33
<bkardell>
well - the reason isn't important for now
18:33
<bkardell>
the important part is that I don't understand from the text whether that is a valid case
18:33
<bkardell>
would it be?
18:35
<bkardell>
it allows type/media etc
18:35
<Philip`>
The spec doesn't tell UAs to do anything with <link rel=prefetch>, so (I think) they mustn't do anything that affects the document in any way (and so they can't e.g. run scripts)
18:36
<bkardell>
but they can attach stylesheets?
18:36
<bkardell>
which can attach via xbl?
18:36
<annevk>
through rel=stylesheet
18:36
<Philip`>
That's rel=stylesheet, not rel=prefetch
18:37
<Philip`>
(prefetch is just meant to tell the UA to download and cache the data so it can be used in the future with less delay)
18:37
Philip`
might be misunderstanding the question, though
18:37
<bkardell>
sure... it's kind of a complicated question I guess I may be having trouble expressing too
18:38
<bkardell>
let me try again.. I don't want to get hung up on the 'prefetch' piece
18:38
<bkardell>
I chose that one in my question because it specifies an "external resource"
18:39
<bkardell>
so I guess in simplest terms: could <link> not be used to load script?
18:39
<Philip`>
Like <link rel="script" href="example.js">?
18:39
<annevk>
<link> cannot atttach scripts like <script> can
18:40
<bkardell>
it seems syntactically very capable and as to why exactly one would want to - I'm just examining possibilities
18:40
<bkardell>
yes - precisely...
18:40
<Philip`>
There's not really anything to stop someone adding a <link rel=script> to HTML in the future, except that it would seem like a bad idea when there's already <script>
18:41
<bkardell>
does it really seem like a bad idea?
18:41
<annevk>
yes
18:41
<bkardell>
lol :)
18:41
<annevk>
(it's a rejected extension: http://wiki.whatwg.org/wiki/RelExtensions )
18:41
<bkardell>
good deal Anne - that's exactly what I was looking for
18:41
<bkardell>
thanks!!
18:42
<Philip`>
It doesn't seem like a good idea (e.g. it doesn't allow interesting new features), and the default state for ideas is to be bad because otherwise the world would be flooded with too many things to implement :-)
18:42
<annevk>
the default state for proposals is bad
18:42
<annevk>
actually, the default state for proposals is rejection
18:43
<bkardell>
yeah - I agree with that philosophy the question was not to propose but to understand intent
18:44
<Philip`>
annevk: That shouldn't be true - the default state for proposals should be to be awaiting consideration
18:44
<bkardell>
I was trying to figure out essentially if this would be an effort like one to say <embed>, <object> and <applet> are kind of redundant
18:45
<bkardell>
thanks though anne - that's exactly what I was looking for
18:45
<annevk>
in general if a new feature does exactly the same as an existing feature it won't be introduced
18:45
<annevk>
and since rel=script was not supported anywhere there's no reason to add it
18:46
<annevk>
(as for <embed>, <object>, and <applet>; <applet> is obsoleted in favor of <embed> and <embed> and <object> are quite different)
18:49
<annevk>
Philip`, i guess the default outcome of said consideration is rejection then :)
18:52
<Lachy>
Philip`, http://lachy.id.au/dev/2008/image-dimensions.html
18:53
<Lachy>
hsivonen, feel free to rip off that script for the validator
18:53
<Lachy>
... if and when you want to implement the zoom feature
19:00
<bkardell>
annevk: I must admit that I did not know <embed> and <object> - both still have recommended uses
19:00
<bkardell>
thought <embed> was out
19:03
<bkardell>
Don't have a lot of chance to use either so hopefully that doesn't seem too dreadfully stupid a comment
19:05
<annevk>
np
19:25
<Philip`>
Oops, I think I contributed to the alt email pile
20:47
<Hixie>
wow http://www.w3.org/mid/OF51C16334.62B43BA0-ON8625742F.004CBE78-8625742F.0051275D⊙uic
21:24
<Philip`>
Aha, I'm glad someone gave a specific example in response to my "there are other more legitimate reasons for having several img elements representing a single piece of text", since I couldn't actually think of any
21:50
<zcorpan_>
http://html5.dk/wordpress/2008/04/16/første-danske-bog-om-html-5/ -- danish book about html5
22:01
<annevk>
if I interpret the Danish correctly there's no book yet but you can pre-order it or something?
22:27
<Hixie>
wtf are document.charset and document.defaultCharset
22:31
<othermaciej>
crazy XML things
22:31
<Hixie>
seems they're IE things for text/html
22:31
<Hixie>
i don't understand what they are supposed to do
22:31
<Hixie>
on setting in particular
22:31
<Hixie>
for .charset
22:31
<othermaciej>
oh
22:32
<othermaciej>
that's right
22:32
<othermaciej>
we have those APIs marked as IE extensions and I don't remember what they do
22:32
<Hixie>
"defaultCharset Property
22:32
<Hixie>
Gets the default character set from the current regional language settings."
22:32
<Hixie>
w.t.f.
22:32
<othermaciej>
Mozilla instead has characterSet
22:33
<othermaciej>
(which we also copied)
22:33
<othermaciej>
defaultCharset is read-only in our DOM
22:33
<othermaciej>
not sure that is the case for IE
22:33
<Hixie>
yeah i just looked at the patch that webkit uses
22:33
<Hixie>
to implement this
22:33
<Hixie>
didn't help much
22:33
<Hixie>
:-)
22:33
<othermaciej>
the crazy XML things are inputEncoding and xmlEncoding
22:33
<Hixie>
(in terms of what setting .charset does)
22:34
<othermaciej>
for a grand total of 5 attributes on Document relating to the document's character set
22:34
<Hixie>
first hit for [document.charset msdn] on google seems to be a security vulnerability report
22:34
<othermaciej>
I think if you set it, it will affect the default charset assumed for linked resources
22:35
<othermaciej>
and possibly also charset used for form submission and URL escaping
22:35
<othermaciej>
not sure about the latter two though
22:35
<Hixie>
charset Property
22:35
<Hixie>
"Sets or retrieves the character set used to encode the object."
22:36
<Hixie>
this documentation is worthless
22:36
<othermaciej>
IE's vaunted docs for their JS APIs are often maddeningly vague
22:49
<annevk>
hmm, you'd think that nonsense like charset shouldn't end up in the DOM
22:51
<Hixie>
so i wonder what a document like <script>alert(document.charset)</script><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-2"><script>alert(document.charset)</script> does
22:52
<Hixie>
damowmow.com/playground/demos/001.html
22:52
<annevk>
in Mozilla document.carset is undefined even
22:53
<annevk>
in Opera it returns the empty string, and if you set it to some string you can retrieve that string later, but I'm not sure what the effect is
22:55
<Hixie>
it helps if i remove the default encoding
22:55
<Hixie>
sigh
22:58
<annevk>
Hixie, maybe these features can be removed given that Firefox 3 gets away with not supporting them?
22:58
<Hixie>
http://damowmow.com/playground/demos/charset/001.html seems to indicate that IE doesn't change the encoding
22:58
<Hixie>
etf
22:58
<Hixie>
annevk: well they support document.characterSet
22:59
<annevk>
ah, and Opera and Safari support all...
23:04
<Hixie>
my definition of defaultCharset is awesome
23:31
<gsnedders>
Hixie: goddamnit. just as I am trying to go to bed I see that comment and _have_ to look.
23:32
<gsnedders>
Hixie: Awesomness gone mad.
23:38
<hsivonen>
Hixie: did you test charset setting with IANA-unregistered but otherwise supported names?
23:42
<Hixie>
no
23:43
<Hixie>
i'm working on the mythical concept that only iana-registered names are supported, and that all supported names are iana-registered
23:43
<Hixie>
or at least that they will be by the time the spec is in cr
23:43
<gsnedders>
Ah, I see the realist Hixie showing through again :P
23:45
<Hixie>
if nobody does the work of registering them, i'll just set up a wiki page and change the spec to refer to that instead of iana
23:46
<Hixie>
so...
23:46
<Hixie>
which fires first
23:46
<Hixie>
onreadystatechanged, or DOMContentLoaded?
23:47
<gsnedders>
And also, what's a word that means "laughed at" that starts with a t?
23:47
Philip`
wonders if document.defaultCharset should return the same value every time you get it
23:47
<othermaciej_>
in Safari, we support all variants of IANA names with added or removed hyphens (and maybe some other punctuation)
23:47
<Philip`>
otherwise a mobile browser than returns "encoding associated with the user's current geographical location" might do odd things if you travel a lot
23:47
<takkaria>
gsnedders: as in "I laughed at him"?
23:47
<othermaciej_>
probably that is more than strictly needed for compatibility
23:47
<Philip`>
s/than/that/
23:47
<gsnedders>
takkaria: "I was laughed at endlessly"
23:48
<Hixie>
teased
23:48
<Hixie>
and which happens first, onreadystatechanged, or onload?
23:48
<Philip`>
Tittered?
23:48
<Hixie>
othermaciej_: yeah i've received similar feedback from opera
23:48
<gsnedders>
teased is too specific
23:49
<Hixie>
Philip`: i see no reason why it shouldn't change each time
23:49
<gsnedders>
othermaciej: so what? all consecutive hyphens become a single hyphen?
23:49
<Hixie>
Philip`: e.g. if someone is playing with their settings
23:49
<Philip`>
gsnedders: The dictionary suggests "twitted" but I've never heard that before
23:50
<othermaciej>
gsnedders: for example, for the official name ISO_8859-1 we will also accept ISO88591
23:50
<Philip`>
Hixie: <a href="#refsRFC2046">[RFC2646]</a> - s/0/6/
23:50
<othermaciej>
(that's not one of the registered aliases)
23:50
<gsnedders>
othermaciej: ah, OK
23:51
<othermaciej>
or conversely, we'll accept latin-1, even though only latin1 is an official alias
23:51
<Hixie>
Philip`: fixed
23:53
<othermaciej>
(of course we don't treat any of those as real latin1)
23:53
gsnedders
wishes life was simpler than it is
23:53
<Philip`>
Hixie: There's another half a dozen of the same error elsewhere
23:53
<gsnedders>
(in terms of things like this)
23:54
<Hixie>
Philip`: where?
23:54
<Hixie>
Philip`: all the other 2046s seem right
23:54
<Philip`>
href="#refsRFC2318">[RFC2138]</a>
23:54
<Philip`>
href="#refsRFC2046">[RFC2646]</a>
23:54
<Philip`>
href="#refsRFC3490">[RFC3986]</a>
23:54
<Philip`>
href="#refsRFC3490">[RFC3987]</a>
23:54
<Philip`>
href="#refsRFC3490">[RFC3986]</a>
23:54
<Philip`>
href="#refsRFC3490">[RFC3987]</a>
23:54
<Philip`>
href="#refsRFC3490">[RFC3986]</a>
23:54
<Hixie>
othermaciej: iirc opera said they just strip out all -s and _s and various other punctuation before doing comparisons
23:54
<Hixie>
Philip`: ah ok
23:54
<othermaciej>
Hixie: that's basically what we do too
23:54
<Hixie>
Philip`: good times
23:55
<Hixie>
Philip`: i'll fix those when i do the refs
23:55
<othermaciej>
Hixie: both from the provided charset and the official charset names being compared to
23:55
<Hixie>
othermaciej: right