2002-05-13 21:53 UTC It's a rock, mostly pegmatite with some quartz
I'm in virtual possession of Fred, the Official HWG Rock! Apparently this is to help me deal with the insanity that is being witnessed in bug 41924, where I am attempting to discuss the pros and cons of Mozilla's alternate text behaviour with Skewer (Not reading mail).
His arguments are a source of many logical fallacies, for instance ignoratio elenchi:
Images aren't usually meant to be read in sequence the way they appear in the document's markup, they're meant to sort of lay in the user's peripheral vision while he reads through the paragraph that is (should be) intact and whole on its own. [...] ALT text should always be set in a box, aside, to keep it out of the way of the textual ("real") content.
Why obey height/width styles? Why not?
It's worked in the past [...].
You could use those same arguments against using the height/width styles, but since images should be drawn in a box anyway, it makes sense to retain those styles (and not doing so would mean we can't use the system we already have for quirks).
You're saying that authors should actually never be using ALT text unless they intend for it to flow into the paragraphs the way Mozilla does?
And anyone that actually does so deserves to have their page bastardized in this way?
Circulus in demonstrando (this is a remarkably succinct example of the kind, in fact):
Besides that, height/width isn't as important as setting ALT text in its own box. As long as we do that, we've accomplished something.
It keeps the image information out of the document's paragraphs and body text. Images do NOT mix in with the paragraph! They should never do this, except for the special cases I mentioned.
And in case you hadn't noticed, he also demonstrates one of the most annoying logical fallacies: argumentum ad nauseam.
So thank you Matt for sending me Fred. I promise I'll send him back in one piece.