[uf-discuss] RFC: sHTML Video Thumbnailing

[Charles Iliya Krempeaux]

Hello Benjamin,

Sorry for replying to my own post, but....

On 5/28/07, Charles Iliya Krempeaux <supercanadian at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello Benjamin,
>
> On 5/28/07, Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis <bhawkeslewis at googlemail.com> wrote:
> > Charles Iliya Krempeaux wrote:
> >
> > >> This is a tempting argument, but in theory and practice a problematic
> > >> one. <q> and <blockquote> are not merely intended to be "portions of a
> > >> larger document" but to be /quotations/:
> > >
> > > True... but is the <abbr> element designed for the way Microformats do
> > > dates?
> > >
> > > It seems like the same problem as that isn't it.
> > >
> > > And if we accept that screen readers can adapt to dates with the
> > > <abbr> element, then why not accept that they can adapt to thumbnails
> > > in a <q> element?
> >
> > But I /don't/ accept that. IMHO microformats currently abuse <abbr> and
> > perhaps (more debatably) title for time and location, violating the
> > standards-based credos of the movement with poor consequences for
> > assistive technology which have already been widely discussed on the
> > list.
>
> Admittantly, I haven't gotten around to reading those threads yet :-(
>
> Was there a consensus about a solution to the problem you are describing?
>
> > And even if screen readers can eventually adapt to read ISO dates
> > and geographical data as anything other than gibberish, their users will
> > lag behind the times because mainstream screen readers are prohibitively
> > expensive. On balance, I'd prefer innovators to depart from the HTML
> > specification by introducing new attributes for new parsers with a
> > custom DTD than to break HTML documents in existing user agents by
> > abusing the semantics of old elements. (Not that a custom DTD would be a
> > great idea either, just the lesser of two evils.)
> >
> > But at least the misuse of abbr for ISO time and location was useful for
> > parsers, whereas this misuse (if we agree it is such) of <q> isn't.
>
> I'd say I'm suggesting it be used in a way the designers of it
> probably didn't imagine it would be used.  (It doesn't seem to violate
> the HTML specification though.)
>
> Having said that... there isn't a <thumbnail cite="..." src="...">
> element... so what else can we do?
>
> I want to add semantics somehow... but don't want to make
> non-validating HTML (and just make up a new element... even though I'd
> like to).
>
> > >> I don't think "quote Dorothy encounters the Lion end quote" would be a
> > >> human readable hint that it's a thumbnail from a video. Unless you
> > >> happen to be a microformats guru. ;)
> > >
> > > What about what I mentioned above... about using alt text like...
> > >
> > >  alt="Thumbnail of Dorothy encountering the Lion"
> > >
> > > So that would read...
> > >
> > >  "quote Thumbnail of Dorothy encountering the Lion end quote"
> >
> > Well that's an improvement. But in that case what's actually
> > communicating the semantic" is "Thumbnail of", not <q>. And "quote"
> > still confuses the issue.
> >
> > Also, I think "Thumbnail of" will prove harder to internationalize than
> > "Still:" or "Thumbnail:", which would mean parsers would struggle to get
> > at the alternative text proper.
>
> The <img> "alt" attribute doesn't really seem built for i18n.
>
> Isn't i18n usually handled with completely different versions of the
> same HTML page.
>
> Which in that case would make the i18n for the sHTML Video
> Thumbnailing suggestion I made a non-issue.
>
> (I.e., there would be different version of the "alt" attribute for
> each language supported (in each of those pages)... and it will be a
> worded in a way that makes sense.)
>
>
> But yeah... having "quote" read out does still seem undesired.
>
> Aren't the aural style sheet or something that can be used to get rid of that?


Shouldn't putting "quotes: none none" on the <q> element be enough to
get the screen readers to NOT say "quote" at the beginning and the
end?

As in...

    <q style="quotes: none none;">...<q>


See ya


> See ya
>
> >
> > > Yeah... I'm actually using a "captioning" sHTML in a piece of software
> > > that hasn't been made public yet.  (Perhaps I'll describe it on this
> > > list later... and get it reviewed.)
> >
> > Cool.
> >
> > --
> > Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis
>
>
> --
>     Charles Iliya Krempeaux, B.Sc.
>
>     charles @ reptile.ca
>     supercanadian @ gmail.com
>
>     developer weblog: http://ChangeLog.ca/
>


-- 
    Charles Iliya Krempeaux, B.Sc.

    charles @ reptile.ca
    supercanadian @ gmail.com

    developer weblog: http://ChangeLog.ca/