Thanks, Bob, for the explanation. Seems like dropping the longdesc
attr on image would be fine.
Is the attribute there originally for screen readers, for users are
not going to read a visual representation of the page?
Regards,
Mark
On Sat, Mar 17, 2012 at 9:08 PM, Bob Stayton <> wrote:
> Hi,
> The directory in the longdesc attribute of the an <img> element comes from
> either a dbhtml dir processing instruction if the mediaobject has one, or
> the base.dir param.
>
> The W3C designates the longdesc attribute as a URL, which means it should be
> relative to the HTML file that contains it. Using either the dbhtml dir or
> the base.dir in that attribute is not correct, because then the link path
> from the HTML file (which is in base.dir) would be wrong. So I consider
> this a bug in the stylesheet.
>
> Like you said, it doesn't seem to matter much, because the <a href> link to
> the actual long description file is correctly constructed relative the the
> HTML file. And this W3C page:
>
> http://www.w3schools.com/tags/att_img_longdesc.asp
>
> says "Tip: The longdesc attribute is so poorly supported that it should not
> be used. To offer a long description of an image, simply create a link (that
> is visible to anyone) to a page with the description."
>
> The HTML5 spec appears to have dropped the longdesc attribute entirely.
> Since DocBook XSL generates a visible link, I'm tempted to drop support for
> this attribute in the stylesheets rather than fix it since it appears to be
> useless. Any objections?
>
> Bob Stayton
> Sagehill Enterprises
>
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Mark Craig
> To:
> Sent: Friday, March 16, 2012 2:59 AM
> Subject: [docbook-apps] Generate relative longdesc on <img>?
>
> Hello,
>
> What HTML customization serves to get relative paths in the longdesc
> attribute on img elements?
>
> The longdesc links and pages are fine, so it's not something noticeable when
> browsing. But img elements in HTML are coming out with absolute paths in
> longdesc attributes.
>
> For example:
>
> <img src="images/standalone-repl.png"
> longdesc="/opt/jenkins/.jenkins/jobs/OpenDJ Community Site (core
> docs)/workspace/target/docbkx/html/admin-guide/figure-standalone-repl.html">
>
> The corresponding source for the whole media object is:
>
> <mediaobject xml:id="figure-standalone-repl">
> <alt>Dedicated servers versus consolidated instances</alt>
> <imageobject>
> <imagedata fileref="images/standalone-repl.png" format="PNG"/>
> </imageobject>
> <textobject>
> <para>Dedicated servers are suited to environments with large numbers
> of replicas.</para>
> </textobject>
> </mediaobject>
>
> Regards,
> Mark
