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rjt lists at ryliejamesthomas.net
Tue Sep 8 08:58:16 BST 2020
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On 7/9/20 9:20 am, Luke Emmet wrote:
Hi All
We had an interesting discussion on the #Gemini IRC channel earlier
today about a generalised scheme for parsing the alt text on
preformatted regions, e.g.
```this is the alt text, not normally displayed to the end user
the preformatted content
```
It was a collective discussion, but I've written up some of the key
points in a post here:
gemini://gemini.marmaladefoo.com/blog/7-Sep-2020_Parsing_preformatted_alt_text.gmi
Essentially the key design considerations are as follows:
1. By default the whole alt text can be used as a label (current behaviour)
2. Use CSS style syntax for the remainder, a familiar and low ritual syntax
3. Don't prescribe the attributes, allow practice to suggest them
4. Be backwards compatible and friendly to screen readers etc.
two initial attributes seem to have obvious initial utility and could be
used to effectively label content in a practical way:
content-type
lang
Best Wishes
 - Luke
It's interesting!, but I feel like transforming preformatted text (like in your example of adding borders to a table) goes against the semantic idea of preformatted text. It becomes postformatted :) You've basically turned the preformatted text section into a general-purpose wrapper.
--I keep going back-and-forth on whether-or-not it's a good idea though. On one hand: yeah, it's no longer preformatted; on the other it's not a dramatic change, and it makes tables actually legible; on the other, oh god, I see the return of table-based layouts--
Still, I think it's more within the spirit of Gemini to show the preformatted version, and link to a TSV/CSV/.ODS file for those that may want it.
Nitpick: I also think your examples misunderstand what alt text is for. 'here is a table in csv' is not a useful description to a screenreader user. Alt text is not a 'simple label', but a description.
As an aside: Unfortunately I don't think there's enough semantic information in Gemtext to let screen readers describe tables well.
I'm all for a bit more discussion about adding metadata to Gemini files themselves (even if I suspect it would produce too much clutter). Perhaps a better approach is to not tie it to the preformatted text section though? Preformatted text doesn't need, say, a language attribute more than a quote or any other piece of text.