Re: XFO Mapping...

["Jelks Cabaniss" <jelks@xxxxxxxx>]

Guy Murphy wrote:

> Also if we persude what I would like to see, and that is XFO for basic
> textual layout, and a seperate namespace for GUI presentational objects
> which *could* degrade gracefuly into aural constructs then I think we'd be
> a significant step ahead of a "HTML on steroids", we get all the
> flexibility and extensibility while being able to cater for degradation to
> other media.

There is one group of "blind" for which aural constructs won't be of help:
indexing agents.  I will hazard the guess that search engine queries at least
equal if not far exceed the number of blind *people* viewing web documents.

> I do however appreciate that I am biased by what I would like to do in
> terms of Web design, so I should limit my comments to the context of what I
> want to work with, rather than any claim that this is the "right thing".
> ::shrug:: I just want to build highly interactive easily accessible Web
> application in the most scalable, robust fashion possible.

I think everybody shares that goal in your last statement.  And if you strike
the "easily accessible" part, you might be able to do what you want using FOs.
Paper and bitmap images are useful.  Nobody in their right mind suggests "do
away with paper and bitmap images because they're not accessible".  FOs might
even replace RTF, PDF, and who knows what else, and it might well be a Good
Thing.  But they are *output* formats; the million-dollar question is whether
FOs should become the preferred format for documents on the *World Wide Web*,
instead of XML + linked CSS (or XML + "linked" XSL).


/Jelks



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