Re: LYNX-DEV Auto-ALTs

[Al Gilman]

  From: Hynek Med <address@hidden>

  On Sat, 29 Mar 1997, Al Gilman wrote:
  
  > The basic idea there was a short-term fix of adding the _full_
  > URL cited in the link text, as for example 
  > [LINK to href-value_inserted_here]
  
  Well, you can see the URL on the bottom of the screen when in Advanced
  mode, anyway, and URLs are so long to read..  I'd like this rather to be
  both - suppose there is news.gif image, with a link to some news stuff, so
  it would be: 
  
  [LINK: news - href-value_inserted_here]
  
  Or maybe optionaly switch between this and [LINK: news]. 
  
I agree, when people use varieties of buttons as in your example,
it is better to include that information.  I might rearrange the
formatting a little.  What would you think of 
 
  examples:
  [NEWS: link to nntp://perl.porters.host/cgi/announce_messages.pl]
  [RED_BALL: link to ../whats_new.html]

  spec: the text between the opening [ and the : is
        - the ALT string if it has been given
        - the file part of URL_path/file.typ if no ALT has been given
        - alpha characters are forced to uppercase throughout

The reason why I am not too happy with the "you can read it at
the bottom of the screen" argument is that this is not convenient
for blind users with speech access.  They are [as I get it as of
the moment] largely working through a one-line window into the
VT-100 screen.  It is possible to configure your screen reader so
that the bottom line is a hot zone that basically interrupts the
reading of the current line, but that is advanced mastery of the
speech output software and we can't count on the bulk of our
speech users to be set up quite that smart.  So it's good for
these users if the link says what it is a link to, to the best of
our ability.

  > In the long term I think we should be working toward the day that
  > the TITLE values for pages get percolated forward so clients in
  > text mode could use them as anchor text.  This sure beats [dot].
  
  Surely. But there are pages which show up as 
  
  [INLINE] [LINK] [LINK] [LINK]
  
  [LINK] [INLINE] [LINK] [INLINE]
  
  [LINK] [LINK] [LINK] [INLINE]
  
  Best viewed with [LINK]. 
  
  
  (I like the last line best. :-)
  
  In these cases, the image name gives at least some information.. 

I like the "both" version you suggested [give or take
formatting].  We can at least capitalize on all the info that is
in the HTML in hand.
  
--
Al
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