[Pmwiki-users] Re: Image alt text

[John Rankin]

On Thursday, 20 May 2004 1:43 AM, Patrick R. Michaud <pmichaud at pobox.com> wrote:
>Nils Knappmeier <nk <at> knappi.org> writes:
>> I just had the following idea: Usually, what you see on an image does 
>> not depend on where you put the image. Maybe, one should be able to 
>> specify the alt-text when uploading the picture. 
>
>...except that many pages may refer to images that aren't uploaded,
>and we'd still need a way to specify alt-text for those.  I'd much 
>prefer to have an alt-text solution that works more generally over 
>one that only works for uploads.  
>
>And although the concept of a separate page containing an alt-text
>index could also work, it would bug me as an author to have to go
>put my alt-text in a page separate from where it's going to be
>displayed.  Plus, some images may need different alt-text depending
>on the context of where they are being displayed.
>
>Pm

And I'd still like to see the same approach for image alt text,
acronyms, abbreviations and similar. Which brings me to...

Sometimes people are writing 

    [a bit of jargon|with an explanation]

which while it's not really a correct use of <acronym>, is very
convenient. (I think <span title='...'> is the correct form.)
This of course doesn't work if one writes

    a bit of jargon[with an explanation]

Ideally the markup needs to support:
  image alt text
  acronyms
  abbreviations
  phrases

(Since some people may not know the difference between an acronym 
and an abbreviation, it might be safest to use only the <abbr> tag.)

So how about:

  [item=text string] or
  [item==text string]

where item is Attach:, image reference, acronym, abbreviation, 
wikiword, free link, or just a string of text.

Alternatively, use 

  item[text string] or
  item<text string>

for all but the last one, which could be done with a style:

  %%title=text string%item%%

-- 
JR
--
John Rankin