Re: DOCBOOK-APPS: Re: XSL implementation of DBTeXMath

[Jirka Kosek <jirka at kosek dot cz>]

Norman Walsh wrote:

> With respect, I think that's abuse of the alt tag. Might I suggest instead
> supporting this with:

I don't want abuse alt. But from my reading of alt element description
in TDG:

----
Description
A text (or other nonvisual) description of a graphical element. This is
intended to be an alternative to the graphical presentation. 

Parents
These elements contain alt: equation, informalequation, inlineequation.
----

>From this it is clear that alt is used for text (or other nonvisual)
description of graphic representation of equation (it is used only as
child of equation elements).

I perceive TeX syntax as text (or other nonvisual) representation of
equation. From this point of view it makes sense for me to use TeX
inside alt element. I will be glad if we (DocBook community) can settle
on this topic as it is not good to support abused elements in de-facto
standard DocBook processing tool.

I suggested using alt over adding new element by DocBook customization
as in initial DBTeXMath release from Allin there on DocBook list. No one
disagreed, so I though that using TeX inside of alt is nothing wrong.
 
> <inlineequation>
> <inlinemediaobject>
> <imageobject>
> <imagedata fileref="eq1.gif"/>
> </imageobject>
> <textobject><phrase>E=mc squared</phrase></textobject>
> <textobject role="tex"><phrase>E=mc^2</phrase></textobject>
> </inlinemediaobject>
> </inlineequation>

I think that I'm understand you point there. But if someone wants to
read document with many equations he will probably have graphical client
and will be able to see equations as images and won't need text
alternative at all. To me "E=mc squared" is less understable notation
than E=mc^2. I agree that using TeX in DocBook is a hack and if you want
be fully semantic and allow smooth text to speach etc. you should use
MathML. IMHO using "E=mc squared" won't help to users in terms of
accessibility and reusability. Thus using TeX directly in alt may be
acceptable. If someone wants all benefits of highly structural he can go
MathML way.

					Jirka 

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  Jirka Kosek  	                     
  e-mail: jirka@kosek.cz
  http://www.kosek.cz