Image pages/Data syntax
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Proposals for syntax for the data to be stored on Image pages
Requirements:
- Image caption, which may include wiki links or formatting (optional)
- ALT text, which will be plain (required)
- link to an optional larger image, so that the article page which displays a thumnail can append to the caption "See a Template:Larger image"
Unresolved questions:
- is it safe to assume that all instances of an image will want the same caption?
- might some instances want no caption?
- These can both be resolved by allowing for specification of multiple captions, and allowing some selection of any (or none) of them.
Old proposal
[edit]all text up to the first ------- on the image page becomes the caption.
Old proposal with added ALT
[edit]We can do better than that: make all text up to the first ---- be the caption, and all text between the first ---- and the second ---- be the "alt text" (text when no image downloaded). That way we'll do better with blind or partially sighted readers who are using text-to-speech interfaces and the like. The title (mouseover text) could be something like "click here for a description", I guess - or a repeat of the caption.
For instances with no caption, simply make ---- the first text in the page. I think it's safe to assume that all instances of an image will want the same caption, in practice if not in theory.
Brackets and keywords
[edit]Several blocks delimited by "----" is starting to get messy, but you're right -- we need to provide ALT text. How about:
Caption{ }
Alt{ }
Larger{ }
on the image page?
Heading markup & #LARGER
[edit]Another option:
#LARGER [[larger-version.lpg]] == Caption goes here == This is alt text This is not alt text.
I like the idea of using == == to delineate a caption, which seems intuitive to me. No == == - no caption (but first para is still alt text). MyRedDice
Some of my thoughts: --Brion VIBBER 05:50 12 May 2003 (UTC)
Caption
[edit]This is a caption section. It's not alt text, but a caption that will appear below the image if there is a section with a header so named in the desc page.
The caption may even be multiple lines or paragaphs; it is terminated by the end of the page or the next section header.
Alternate caption
[edit]Multiple captions can be provided, and selected among when the image is used. Perhaps something like [[Image:Some image.png|caption:Alternate caption]]?
Image map
[edit]If there's an "Image map" section, the image will be a clickable image map. Lines in a bullet list like this:
- rect 0,0 80,20 Some captioned thing
- circle 100,120, 60 Alt text here...
- poly 1,1, 50,60, 90,70, 40,20 Nowhere else please we're done
Cf HTML client-side image map syntax. The text between the section header and the list will be inserted as alternate text in the map.
Technical notes
[edit]The caption and image map data probably will be parsed on page save and then stored in the image table, so loading a page that uses images doesn't have to load up and parse a gajillion pages.
An image with no caption can go directly in as an inline <img> tag. An image with a caption will be a <div>, necessarily a block-level element. We should extract the size of image files via php's getimagesize() so we can generate appropriate width and height attributes; this is helpful for the browser to set up layout, and necessary to keep long captions from grossly exceeding the width of their images.
Localization
[edit]- The "Caption" and "Image map" section names should be localizable, as the "image" namespace is.
- The "rect", "circle", and "poly" for image maps are specific to HTML. It's possible they should be left as-is, but they could be localizable as well.
- None of the above should be case-sensitive.