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 -- ----------------------------------------------------------------- Jirka Kosek e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.kosek.cz