A proposed scheme for parsing preformatted alt text

[Luke Emmet]

On 10-Sep-2020 19:53, Nathan Galt wrote:
>> I've been thinking about clients toggling the visibility of preformatted text. While it may not provide much value in a desktop client for sighted users, this could be very useful in mobile clients. Preformatted text is one of the troublesome areas that screws up displays on narrow screens. If a mobile client were to serve the alternate text instead then visitors could choose whether they want to expand it to see the preformatted content.
>>
>> This sort of flow is exactly what a screen reader would be doing for a blind user. It serves up that alternate text first and the user then can decide whether it is worth the effort to dive into the contents further.
>>
>> Maybe it will also help keep alt-text top-of-mind for content authors if they run into it themselves in the proper context.
> True, but another (probably better in most cases) way for narrow screens to handle wide preformatted blocks is to have just those blocks be side-scrollable. I’d rather use a client that has the occasional side-scrollable block instead of a client that makes me tap on alt text to display ``` blocks. Oftentimes I can get a better idea of what’s in the block, and whether I want to scroll to the right, just by looking at the left edge.

The pleasure of Gemini is there can be a genuine diversity of clients - 
unlike the web.

We should not really be specifying client behaviour too much, but rather 
focus on Gemini as a protocol and exchange format intended for humans to 
be displayed in the way that makes sense for them. It is a real benefit 
that there is no server imposed presentation controls and styling 
(unlike HTML)

I'd love to see a Gemini client on KaiOS (offspring of FirefoxOS) which 
is growing rapidly as a simpler smart phone in many countries. In that 
case, an option to skip or keep preformatted text collapsed would make 
perfect sense to me.

What makes sense for one person on a large screen will be different to 
someone on a small phone, and so on for the myriad of users out there.

  - Luke