Just checking… no objections apparently since last week.
Should I have opened an issue somewhere to track removal of longdesc on img in generated HTML?
Regards,
Mark
On Mar 19, 2012, at 6:25 PM, Bob Stayton wrote:
> Hi Mark,
> I believe the original intent was for screen readers.
>
> Bob Stayton
> Sagehill Enterprises
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Mark Craig" <>
> To: <>
> Sent: Sunday, March 18, 2012 1:04 AM
> Subject: Re: [docbook-apps] Generate relative longdesc on <img>?
>
>
> 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
>
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