Re: lynx-dev '[' / pseudo inlines

[David Woolley]

> I fill out the screen with my address and submit.  I am including
> the HTML I get.  With Lynx 2.8.2dev15 / ncurses on my SPARC, with my

The HTML you have is your visited links, not the offending page.

Lynx cannot distinguish between ALT="[image-name.gif]"  and 
ALT="[Useful information about the purpose of the image]".  This is a
problem for authors, probably resulting from the misguided requirement
that ALT is mandatory - the intention was clearly that people should think
about ALT text, but the result is that they put anything in to make the page
validate, or even that the authoring tool sticks in the image file name
and they never change it.++

The author should have used ALT="" in many cases.  ALT="[blueX.gif]" should
probably have been ALT="X", or ALT="[X]".

Better still, they should have used style sheets, which could probably 
remove nearly all the images from the body of the document.

Note, in the past people have asked that ALT="" should generate a pseudo ALT;
that's not an idea I approve of.

I would suggest complaints to the page author and to the author of the
authoring tool (generally identified by a META element), but don't
expect much sympathy.

> 
> here's the first few lines:
> 
>                                     Apple: Find A Dealer: Result Page (p1 of 
> 4)
> 
>    [logo.gif] [results.gif]
> 
>    [transparent.gif]
>    [1][blueX.gif] 674 Falls Pl, Reynoldsburg, OH 43068

++ Authoring tools probably ought to put in something like:

ALT="[The page author was too lazy to think about appropriate alternative text.]

This would certainly force authors to repond to complaints, but is very 
unlikely to ever happen in a commercial product!