[Haskell wikibook] Using XHTML Elements in the Wikibook

[PR Stanley]

Hello again
One of you chaps once told me that XHTML elements had no place in the
Wikibook: the rationale being that everyone, regardless of his
knowledge of mark-up languages, should be encouraged to contribute to
the wiki text.
I'm wondering if a small amount of HTML tagging may not be such a bad
idea considering the accessibility benefits.
What does the list think?
Cheers,
Paul

[apfelmus]

Post by PR Stanley
One of you chaps once told me that XHTML elements had no place in the
Wikibook: the rationale being that everyone, regardless of his knowledge
of mark-up languages, should be encouraged to contribute to the wiki text.
I'm wondering if a small amount of HTML tagging may not be such a bad
idea considering the accessibility benefits.
What does the list think?

Hello Paul,

Wikibook pages can be viewed in several modes. For instance, the URL

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Haskell/Recursion

shows the page in the standard viewing mode as proper HTML. But the URL

http://en.wikibooks.org/w/index.php?title=Haskell/Recursion&action=edit

shows the page content in editing mode, the source code for the viewing
mode so to speak. This source code is written in the wiki mark-up
language which is aimed to be "simple" and is very different from HTML.
Thus, in principle the wiki mark-up wouldn't understand HTML. That being
said, the language fortunately recognizes a small number of HTML tags,
including <i>,<b>,<h1>,<p>,<span>,<code> and others, see also

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Help:HTML_in_wikitext

Note that the most HTML tags duplicate existing mark-up functionality.
For example, one can now either use

''this text is italic''

or

<i>this text is italic</i>

to get an italic font.
One tag that is not HTML but nevertheless recognized is <math> which
encloses LaTeX formatted formulas.


Personally, I don't like the wiki-style mark-up language too much, but
as the Haskell Wikibook is only a small user of the infrastructure
provided by the general Wikibooks project, we don't have much influence
on the markup language. I think that the official Wikibooks project
guideline is to favor wiki-style mark-up, but I don't mind if you use
the supported HTML tags for the page source code. It's not always easy
to properly nest them with the already existing wiki-style mark-up,
though, and can result in garbled output in the viewing mode. In
particular, I'd suggest to avoid the paragraph tags <p> if possible,
separating paragraphs by a single blank line is enough and gets
translated into appropriate <p> tags in the viewing mode.


In any case, just edit as you see fits. At worst, we'll re-format the
mark-up if the viewing output becomes garbled.


Regards
apfelmus

[Eric Y. Kow]

Post by PR Stanley
I'm wondering if a small amount of HTML tagging may not be such a bad
idea considering the accessibility benefits.

Could you clarify what you mean by accessibility benefits?

Thanks,
--
Eric Kow http://www.loria.fr/~kow
PGP Key ID: 08AC04F9 Merci de corriger mon fran?ais.
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[PR Stanley]

Post by Eric Y. Kow

Post by PR Stanley
I'm wondering if a small amount of HTML tagging may not be such a bad
idea considering the accessibility benefits.

Could you clarify what you mean by accessibility benefits?
Thanks,

Certainly. I am totally blind and therefore rely
on a screen reader for keyboard access to and
auditory feedback from the Operating system and
software programs. The screen reader is designed
to function in an environment of standard and
some lesser known HCI design practices. The wide
range of functionality with which the screen
reader is equipped enables the user to maintain
an acceptable degree of access in most
situations. Java is perhaps the only exception
in this regard but even so there are possible
solutions albeit they fall outside the confines of this discussion.
Modern screen readers offer a wide selection of
navigation aids for surfing the increasingly
choppy waves of the world wide web. the average
screen reader interprets a web page in accordance
to its logical structural components, namely,
headings, paragraphs, lists, tables, form
elements, anchor elements and so on. The user is
thus able to move between these components with
the associated navigation commands provided by the screen reader.
Of course, HTML elements alone are not enough to
guarantee the minimum acceptable degree of
accessibility of a web page. The screen reader
reformats the page into a single-column document
with each HTML element displayed in block mode.
In certain situations it even tries to find a
sensible label for img elements which do not have
an alt attribute. Yet, lousy design decisions
will continue to pose insurmountable challenges.
Fortunately, the Haskell Wikibook is for the most
part fully navigable; however, the inclusion of
XHTML elements would increase accessibility hugely.
I hope this answers your question. If you like to
learn more about screen readers please visit: www.gwmicro.com
Regards,
Paul

Post by Eric Y. Kow
--
Eric Kow http://www.loria.fr/~kow
PGP Key ID: 08AC04F9 Merci de corriger mon fran?ais.

[David House]

Post by PR Stanley
Fortunately, the Haskell Wikibook is for the most
part fully navigable; however, the inclusion of
XHTML elements would increase accessibility hugely.

But the Wiki markup is transformed to XHTML anyway; if you download
e.g. http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Haskell, that's pure XHTML, not Wiki
markup. What's the problem?

[PR Stanley]

Post by David House

I am not suggesting there's any problem. all I'm saying is that a
more effective use of XHTML elements would increase
accessibility. for example, more headings, lists. Perhaps we could
even use CSS if the wiki framework allows it.

The wikibook is, and I repeat, fully navigable for the most part but
that shouldn't preclude us from striving for perfection.
Paul

Post by David House

Fortunately, the Haskell Wikibook is for the most
part fully navigable; however, the inclusion of
XHTML elements would increase accessibility hugely.

But the Wiki markup is transformed to XHTML anyway; if you download
e.g. http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Haskell, that's pure XHTML, not Wiki
markup. What's the problem?
--

[Eric Y. Kow]

Hi again,

Thanks for the clarification. I do somewhat appreciate the inherent
difficulties that blind users may have accessing online material (my
office mate is also blind; he uses a refreshable braille device, and
navigates in a 1x40 window using the text browser Lynx). Thanks for
reminding us that it is an important issue.

You might want to take this up with the wikipedia folks, as they are
a larger wikimedia foundation project and surely have more experience
with accessibility than wikibooks do. For instance, here is a page
of wikipedia accessibility guidelines:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Accessibility

Post by PR Stanley
The wikibook is, and I repeat, fully navigable for the most part but
that shouldn't preclude us from striving for perfection.

I think what David was asking was what explicit XHTML in the markup in
source would add in terms of accesibility benefits, since the wiki
syntax is automatically converted to XHTML anyway for browsing...
--
Eric Kow http://www.loria.fr/~kow
PGP Key ID: 08AC04F9 Merci de corriger mon fran?ais.
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