From: Curtis Clark (jcclark-lists@earthlink.net)
Date: Sat Jul 22 2006 - 11:10:29 CDT
On 2006-07-22 05:43, Karl Pentzlin wrote:
> I have written a proposal to encode an EXTERNAL LINK symbol.
> The draft is found at:
> http://www.europatastatur.de/material/ExternalLinkProposalDraft1.pdf
> Any comments are appreciated.
I think it's a good idea.
One quibble: it is "web page" or "World Wide Web page", not "Internet page".
Some things to consider that may not be entirely on-topic for its
encoding, but which may come up:
1. It will take a while for such a character to find its way into
ubiquitous fonts, so web developers will need to use the graphic for a
while longer. I don't see this as an argument against; *without* the
character, they will have to wait forever.
2. A graphic can have alternate text, such as "external link" for users
who can't view images. It will take a while for screen readers to be
programmed to have a pronunciation of the new character (I'm not sure
how JAWS, the commonest screen reader in the United States, deals with
symbol characters). But again, this would eventually happen, and during
the period after the availability of fonts, and before updates to screen
readers, web developers could use the "title" attribute to identify the
character.
-- Curtis Clark http://www.csupomona.edu/~jcclark/ Web Coordinator, Cal Poly Pomona +1 909 979 6371 Professor, Biological Sciences +1 909 869 4062
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Jul 22 2006 - 11:16:07 CDT