audio-info-issues

Audio info issues

This page defines the current issues with the hAudio draft specification. Any issues that have not yet been resolved are marked with an open issue! tag.

Contributors

In order of contribution:

• Brian Suda
• ManuSporny - Digital Bazaar, Inc. (Bitmunk)
• Martin McEvoy - WebOrganics

Problem: Redundant Property Names

The audio info proposal has invented several new properties. These should be condensed, removed and/or discussed further.

image-summary Property

hAudio ISSUE #1: open issue!

image-summary - This is a small graphic image that summarizes the audio piece. It should NOT be a MUST to use the <img> element, (it shouldn't be a MUST anyway) ~BrianSuda. There are several other formats that already use the PHOTO property, including hCard and hReview. This has potential to collapse and remove image-summary.

Possible Solutions

1. Use PHOTO instead.

Votes

• +1 for using PHOTO ManuSporny 06:40, 14 Aug 2007 (PDT)
• +1 for using PHOTO Martin McEvoy 15:49, 14 Aug 2007 (GMT)

audio-title Property

hAudio ISSUE #2: open issue!

audio-title - There is an on going debate where this should be something else such as FN or SUMMARY.

Possible Solutions

1. Use FN instead
2. Use SUMMARY instead

Votes

• -1 : don't change audio-title ManuSporny 06:41, 14 Aug 2007 (PDT)
• -1 : don't change audio-title Martin McEvoy 15:48, 14 Aug 2007 (GMT)
• +1 for using FN, no clear difference between two so why invent another David Janes 14 August 2007

published-date Property

hAudio ISSUE #3: open issue!

published-date is a duplicate of the PUBLISHED property found-in hAtom. This can be collapsed to a single property name.

• • or dtstart, from hCalendar (shouldn't the published date be an hCalendar event?) Andy Mabbett

Possible Solutions

1. Use PUBLISHED instead
2. Use DTSTART instead

Votes

• +1 for using PUBLISHED instead of PUBLISHED-DATE ManuSporny 06:41, 14 Aug 2007 (PDT)
• +1 for using PUBLISHED instead of PUBLISHED-DATE Martin McEvoy 15:51, 14 Aug 2007 (GMT)

Problem: Display properties of rel-patterns

hAudio ISSUE #4: open issue!

In order to solve the graphic-only buttons in rel-patterns problem, it was identified that part of the problem dealt with attempting to create relationship quadruples, or incorrect relationship triples.

If there is no text to display, then how does one place the item into a menu/display for Operator/Firefox? Grabbing the image and placing it in a UI is a difficult argument to make - there are a variety of image sizes that might not do well in the Operator UI (or Firefox 3 UI).

Typically, rel-patterns are created by doing something like the following:

<a rel="RELATIONSHIP" href="URL">TARGET</a>

The final triple that is created can be read thusly: URL is related to TARGET via RELATIONSHIP.

<a rel="brother" href="/people/john_f_kennedy.html">Robert Kennedy</a>

The URL above would be read like so: The URL http://www.people.org/john_f_kennedy.html is related to Robert Kennedy via a relationship of type brother. In other words, John F. Kennedy is Robert Kennedy's brother.

Using rel-pattern as such:

<a rel="brother" href="/people/john_f_kennedy.html" title="Robert Kennedy">
  <img src="/images/robert_kennedy.gif" alt="Robert Kennedy" />
</a>

It isn't defined if the displayable value of the relationship "Robert Kennedy" should be used from

• the @alt attribute on the IMG element
• the @title attribute on the anchor (A element)
• or, not at all.

This is because the rel attribute is only concerned with the relationship between the current page and the href. The TITLE of the link is not defined by rel.

It is quite often that a site uses an image instead of a text link to present actions. For example: Instead of using the text "Download", they will use a graphic image with a downward-facing arrow.

How do we present this option to a human being in a non-web-page UI?

Possible Solutions

Do nothing

The decision should be left up to uF implementors. The market should decide how the information is displayed. This is something that does not need to be explicit in the spec, but can be left flexible to developers to implement as they see best and to adapt to their applications and future developments. Forcing someone to use the @alt or @title prevents them from reusing the actual image or using their own graphics because the spec mandated the "correct" use.

Not Specified but Publish hAudio Best Practices Section

This is a slight variation on the "Do nothing" approach. Implementation is still left up to the uF implementors, but we recommend that @title is used to mark up the displayable value if it exists.

Use the TITLE Attribute

Using @title was proposed in the following post to the mailing list:

http://microformats.org/discuss/mail/microformats-new/2007-July/000590.html

Benefits

1. It POSH-ifies the website.
2. It works well with Operator, Firefox 3 and other uF parsers/UIs.
3. It adds the accessibility/screen reader problem.

Drawbacks

1. There are arguments stating that the @alt attribute would be a better choice: http://microformats.org/discuss/mail/microformats-new/2007-July/000593.html
2. there are arguments that this is not part of how the rel attribute was designed and it is layering semantics onto the attribute that don't exist in the HTML spec.

New Label Property

1. Create a specific new property that defines the label title, or other displayable Microformat class that should specify the text value to be used.

Votes

• +1 for not specifying, but providing best practices section ManuSporny 06:54, 14 Aug 2007 (PDT)
• +1 for Do Nothing recommend proper use of @alt Martin McEvoy 16:03, 14 Aug 2007 (GMT)

Problem: Peeking into child elements

hAudio ISSUE #5: open issue!

It has been proposed that peeking into child elements that are not labeled with microformatted class names goes against the established publishing practices of microformats. In other words, if there isn't a microformatted class name on the element, we shouldn't be reading/interpreting the contents of the element.

There have been several proposed solutions, one of which automatically peeks at certain sub-elements, such as @alt in IMG:

<a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/">
  <img src="/images/deed/by.png" alt="Creative Commons Attribution 3.0" />
</a>

A microformat parser would take the HTML above and automatically parse out the contents of the @alt attribute on all child elements.

Another approach would parse out display-able elements based on a pre-defined microformatted relationship such as displayble, like so:

<a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/">
  <img rel="displayable" src="/images/deed/by.png" alt="Creative Commons Attribution 3.0" />
</a>

Possible Solutions

1. Microformats should never peek into child elements when displaying information.
2. The community should decide on a set of attributes and elements that are peek-able (for example: any element that contains an @alt attribute should be peek-able)
3. Only elements that are marked with a class of a specified type, such as displayable, should be used to display the text.
4. Display what common text-only browser displays (in the case of Lynx, the value in @alt).

Benefits

1. Valid HTML requires that the ALT tag is specified anyway, thus we're helping people write proper HTML.
2. Because of the item above, this is in-line with what most text-based browsers and screen readers expect.
3. There is no danger of @title and @alt both being specified and read by a screen reader.
   1. ?? what about @title on the 'a' and an @alt on the image?

Drawbacks

1. The point was raised that ALT tags are not used properly on the web: http://microformats.org/discuss/mail/microformats-new/2007-July/000598.html and http://microformats.org/wiki/hcard-faq#Why_is_IMG_alt_not_being_picked_up

Votes

• +1 for displaying what a common text-only browser or screen reader would display ManuSporny 06:46, 14 Aug 2007 (PDT)
• +1 Display what common text-only browser displays Martin McEvoy 15:58, 14 Aug 2007 (GMT)

Problem: Summary Property is Missing

hAudio ISSUE #6: open issue!

Martin McEvoy did another analysis run of the audio-info-examples data and found that audio descriptions existed for many of the examples. It has been proposed that audio descriptions should be added to the hAudio Microformat.

Possible Solutions

• Add audio descriptions to the hAudio specification using SUMMARY
• Add audio descriptions to the hAudio specification using DESCRIPTION

Votes

• +1 for using DESCRIPTION ManuSporny 06:45, 14 Aug 2007 (PDT)
• +1 for using DESCRIPTION Martin McEvoy 15:46, 14 Aug 2007 (GMT)

Historical: Graphic buttons in rel-patterns

Affected Parties

Any site that uses images for links. 'rel-sample', 'rel-enclosure', and 'rel-payment' and wants an additional property to display something besides a URL are affected. Most of the examples also contain images instead of text for samples, downloads and purchase links. This is a demonstrable, widespread problem.

This problem has been split into two parts, per Brian Suda's request. The problems are listed above and refer to this problem statement, namely:

Display properties of rel-patterns and Peeking into child elements

History

1. ALT was proposed on the mailing list: http://microformats.org/discuss/mail/microformats-new/2007-July/000593.html
2. The point was raised that ALT tags are not used properly on the web: http://microformats.org/discuss/mail/microformats-new/2007-July/000598.html
3. Research was started on ALT tag usage on the web: http://microformats.org/discuss/mail/microformats-new/2007-July/000614.html and http://microformats.org/discuss/mail/microformats-new/2007-July/000596.html
4. Analysis on ALT tag usage on the web was reported: http://microformats.org/discuss/mail/microformats-new/2007-July/000624.html and http://microformats.org/discuss/mail/microformats-new/2007-July/000627.html
5. A very long argument started on the use/mis-use of ALT: http://microformats.org/discuss/mail/microformats-new/2007-July/000603.html
6. More research was performed and presented to the list asserting that ALT is not being mis-used on the web: http://microformats.org/discuss/mail/microformats-new/2007-July/000629.html
7. It was asserted that the research completed was not acceptable: http://microformats.org/discuss/mail/microformats-new/2007-July/000635.html
8. Things got nasty: http://microformats.org/discuss/mail/microformats-new/2007-July/000637.html
9. Posting stopped due to an End of Thread request: http://microformats.org/discuss/mail/microformats-new/2007-July/000644.html
10. The issue and discussion was documented on the wiki.