Re: W3C recommends: Avoid ASCII Art

Jorn Barger wrote:
> Lennert Stock wrote:
> > In the long term theoretical kind of way the W3C excels in, what would
> > perhaps be interesting is the CSS solution. Define a class for visual
> > clients, e.g. 'asciiartclass', then <SPAN> the ASCII art with it.
> 
> It should be set up so "ALT" text for images can be an ascii version!
> 

Which you should have been able to do with "OBJECT" in html 4.0, people
tell me. Unfortunately, the same people tell me that IE4 made a mess of
this and that OBJECT should now be avoided like the plague...  :(

> I have little respect for W3C-- eg their mistaken preference for "EM"
> instead of "I"...
> 

:)

(I feel like I'm in the wrong newsgroup, the tunes I hear here now
remind me more of news:comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html than aaa...)

I would like to look at ascii art not as text but as an image format,
just like gif or jpeg, but with the special properties that it can be
included in a text file, along with text. I definitely don't see why it
should be avoided on the internet, since it is "lean" and compatible
even with the oldest/simplest computers. With all this talk about
"marking up content", why not do exactly that and mark up our ascii art
as _ascii_art_, not just "preformatted text"?! Like this for example:


<asciiart alt="my ascii self portrait"><pre>
    |||||
   ||. .||
  |||\=/|||
  |.-- --.|
  /(.) (.)\
  \ ) . ( /
  '(  v  )`
    \ | /
    ( | )
    '- -`
</pre></asciiart>


Note that the <pre> is still necessary, or the page won't work in old
(read "real", since this is just a product of my imagination) browsers.
The <asciiart> tag is there to inform the reader that what comes next is
an ascii image and those who don't want to try to "read" it can instead
read the "ALT" text.

Also note that there is nothing stopping us from doing this (today, if
we like, if I have understood all of this correctly, please shout if I'm
wrong). The only thing that should happen is that browsers should treat
it the way they treat all tags they don't recognise, i.e. ignore it.

Here's my example "in action":

http://jota.sm.luth.se:80/~e93-vkn/pics/ascii/asciiarttag.html

-- 
              _                                         _
  __   ___.--'_`.  __   __                _           .'_`--.___   __
 ( _`.'. -   'o` ) \ \ / /__ _ _ ___ _ _ (_)__ __ _  ( 'o`   - .`.'_ )
 _\.'_'      _.-'   \ V / -_) '_/ _ \ ' \| / _/ _` |  `-._      `_`./_
( \`. )    //\`      \_/\___|_| \___/_||_|_\__\__,_|    '/\\    ( .'/ )
 \_`-'`---'\\__,                                       ,__//`---'`-'_/
  \`        `-\    uggc://jjj.yhqq.yhgu.fr/hfref/ix/    /-'        '/
   ` _____________________ r93...@fz.yhgu.fr ____________________ '
        LIKE MY SIG? GO HERE: http://www.surfplaza.com/figlet/

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o'')}____//
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[>====]

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/_________\
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  ,  ,  , , ,
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     \|

(    )
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(0::0)
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/ \/ \

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