A proposed scheme for parsing preformatted alt text

[Alex // nytpu]

>I strongly recommend against this. The W3C has been trying to get HTML
>authors and browser makers to _only_ display, in tooltips, text in
>`title` attributes.  Previously, HTML authors would write `alt`
>attribute values intending them to be read by sighted HTML readers who
>can already see the image.
I strongly agree. While I don't view the W3C's recommendations as the
gold standard of things gemini should look to emulate (EME anyone?), I
agree that if we make the alt text easily visible it will no longer be
accessibility text and will turn into a miscellaneous-purpose field.

>(You might be thinking “well, what about that Markdown meme where
>people write ‘```javascript’ to start off a JavaScript code block, with
>the idea that a syntax highlighter will read it and colorize the
>output?”
The original point of suggesting that it be displayed for all users was
to discourage turning text intended for humans into text intended for
machines anyways, but I believe an alternate solution other than
displaying it for everybody would still be preferable.

Rewriting that portion of the spec to emphasize that it is not to be
parsed in any way other than as natural language?  Maybe say that a
client *should be able to* completely replace the preformatted block
with the contents of the alt text without the document losing
significant meaning? That would work for ascii art and short code
snippets, but it might not be doable for longer code blocks.

-- 
Alex // nytpu
alex at nytpu.com
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