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Re: Re: XSL implementation of DBTeXMath
Jirka Kosek <jirka@kosek.cz> writes:
> 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.
> ----
The TDG reference page for Inlineequation:
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/docbook/chapter/book/inlineequation.html
actually has the same contents for <alt> that you've described:
<inlineequation>
<alt>e=mc^2</alt>
<graphic fileref="figures/emc2"></graphic>
</inlineequation>
But I guess that's a case of a very simple equation for which the Tex
math happens to match the meant-to-be-human-readable text description.
Looking at the TDG examples for the other equation elements:
<equation><title>Fermat's Last Theorum</title>
<alt>x^n + y^n ≠ z^n ∀ n ≠ 2</alt>
<graphic fileref="figures/fermat"></graphic>
</equation>
<informalequation>
<alt>e^(pi*i) + 1 = 0</alt>
<graphic fileref="figures/epi10"></graphic>
</informalequation>
...I guess maybe you can infer that the DocBook TC intended the
contents of <alt> to be a *human-readable* text description, using ISO
entities for any math symbols that couldn't be represented with normal
characters.
But maybe if you use <alt role="tex">, you could tweak the stylesheets
so that to the HTML output they add some generated text like:
<img alt="Tex version of equation: [Tex stuff]">
That way, to people reading or hearing the alt text in a browser,
it'll at least be unambiguous to them that what's they're reading/
hearing is Tex math -- which, depending on the complexity of the
equation, they may or may not find "human-readable".
Just my two yen,
--Mike