#microformats 2025-11-30

2025-11-30 UTC
[schmarty], glacier, pfych, [fluffy], [KevinMarks], PicoPixl, barnaby, [Trevor_Morris], capjamesg, DREADBEEF, hedy, ancarda, [KevinMarks]1 and [snarfed] joined the channel
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[snarfed] anyone know the current state of the art for alt text in u-video in mf2?
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[snarfed] the HTML <video> tag doesn't have the alt attr, and I don't see anything about alt text on https://indieweb.org/video or https://microformats.org/wiki/h-entry
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[snarfed] https://indieweb.org/video#How_to_markup implies that the text content of <video> could be the alt text, but mf2 parsers don't seem to parse that, eg http://pin13.net/mf2/?id=20251130194827785
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[snarfed] ...and when I put a p-name inside the <video>, it gets attached to the outer h-entry, not the video object, http://pin13.net/mf2/?id=20251130195025886
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[snarfed] silo support seems inconsistent, but some do let you add alt text or similar to videos. example on https://bsky.app/profile/snarfed.org/post/3m6sb6pq7us2h , it doesn't seem to get rendered, but it's in the HTML in a <figcaption> element
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[tantek] [snarfed] key caveat: "only for browsers that do not support the video tag"
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[tantek] yeah I think fig video figcaption is a pattern that some are using
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[tantek] also that use of "alternative text" is confusing (as you have pointed out) so I'm changing it to "warning"
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[snarfed] got it! so then...if I want to author mf2 video with alt text, ie that parses into video: [{value: "http://...", alt: "alt text"}], do we have any current way to do that? or is that just not really doable right now?
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[tantek] I don't think we've documented a "common" markup pattern that folks are using to author HTML video with alt text, so we have not designed anything to fit such a pattern
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[snarfed] sgtm
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[tantek] are you seeing a common markup pattern for HTML video with alt text? that would be a good start. even if it's not common, if it's something "recommended" that seems to be accepted as a "best (or good enough) practice" that would give us a starting point
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[snarfed] no, I haven't seen enough HTML for it, or even authoring UIs
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[snarfed] I've seen mention of adding "text tracks" to video in an authoring UI, forgot where
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[snarfed] ...but I don't really do a lot of video, I may be the wrong person to do a deep dive, I'd look to people like [aaronpk] who know video more
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[tantek] maybe we can start by gathering screenshots of the UIs you are seeing to add alt text to videos?
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[tantek] probably more appropriate for #indieweb-dev since it's likely silos that we're documenting for that
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[tantek] not clear we need a deep dive per se
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[tantek] if the context is "alt text content users enter into silo video upload UIs" then that's much narrower than the full gamut of text tracks, captions, etc.
boramalper and barnaby joined the channel
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[snarfed] sure. I think the authoring UIs are a bit more obvious though; the precedent of image alt text authoring UIs probably applies pretty directly. honestly the mf2 plumbing and parsing is the main unclear part to me
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[snarfed] but yes, I can look at Bluesky's at least
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[tantek] There's no mf2 feature for that because video alt text markup behavior is unclear
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[tantek] Trying to not introduce parser work/maintenance without direct connection to real world publishing behaviors
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[snarfed] definitely! not proposing anything
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[tantek] Too much overdesigned tech for hypotheticals