Daniel Mayer wrote:
Q: Is it desirable to have image maps? Would having
image maps in some
places (like the element locator maps) be confusing when they are not
available in others (such as geographic maps)?
They would be *wonderful* for geographic maps as well.
Some thoughts:
* An image map must never be vital content, so editors need to provide a
second set of links (or an indirect link to a list). Ie, two sets of
things to maintain.
* Like tables, image maps are inherently complex -- shape styles, sets
of coordinates, links, perhaps alt text per link. We can steal the HTML
syntax exactly, or try to come up with something cleaner.
* Image maps are likely to be shared over many articles, either with the
same image or over a group of related images (ie, 58 maps of California,
each with a different county highlighted; 100-odd periodic tables, each
with a different element highlighted). Thus, it _might_ be useful to
have the maps in a magic namespace, which could be linked from the image
description page -- thus, one image map can be cleanly shared over many
almost-identical images, in any articles that link the images.
(Custom style sheets could be similarly treated with a magic namespace,
as I believe has been occasionally suggested.)
Just thoughts...
It would be neat to have this ability but I'm not
sure if it would be
desirable given our current non-standard image behavior (that is, clicking on
the image brings you to the image description page).
That's another concern, but something could probably be worked out.
-- brion vibber (brion @
pobox.com)