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  • #1

    Searching image alt attribute

    First of all, let me say what a great product Zoom is!

    Two questions. Is it possible to...

    1. Configure the product to index the image alt attribute (sometime called alt tags)? This would be useful as my site is maths-oriented, and contains many images, such as the "not equals" sign. If the image text were indexed, the context line could read, e.g. "If x not equal to 0..." rather than "If x 0", as it currently does.

    2. Write the search results in XHTML or HTML, depending upon the DOCTYPE declaration in search_template.html? (Assuming a valid DOCTYPE declaration is present.)

    Thanks,
    Nick
    Nick
    Tags: None
  • #2
    Alt text was being considered

    To partly answer my first question, I see in this thread from last year that indexing of alt text was being considered. Did anything come of this? (Or am I missing an existing configuration option?!)

    Nick
    Nick

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    • #3
      Image search (and image ALT tags) are not supported in V4. They will be in V5 of the software.

      In 99% of cases XHTML and HTML are the same. Why do you need to make the difference? Zoom does XHTML, because it is more standardised.

      -----
      David

      Comment

      • #4
        Originally posted by Wrensoft
        Image search (and image ALT tags) are not supported in V4. They will be in V5 of the software.

        In 99% of cases XHTML and HTML are the same. Why do you need to make the difference? Zoom does XHTML, because it is more standardised.

        -----
        David
        So, it will be an option or required? I hope that there will be a way to specifically exclude all alt tags.

        Comment

        • #5
          Originally posted by Wrensoft
          Image search (and image ALT tags) are not supported in V4. They will be in V5 of the software.
          Great! As JCF1976 hopes, it will surely be configurable? Is there an estimated release date for V5?

          Originally posted by Wrensoft
          In 99% of cases XHTML and HTML are the same. Why do you need to make the difference? Zoom does XHTML, because it is more standardised.
          It's not important as it renders correctly anyway. I suppose it just offends my sense of tidiness that the program would write XHTML into an HTML file! But it's no big deal.

          Nick
          Nick

          Comment

          • #6
            Yes, indexing ALT tags will be optional. If I get time I'll post more details of how V5 will handle images next later in the week.

            I don't see why XHTML would offend a sense of tiddiness? XHTML is the successor of HTML and it was created "to clean up some of the more untidy parts of HTML". See the offical FAQ,
            http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/2004/xhtml-faq


            In early 2006 we were thinking around June for V5 (i.e. this month), but that was too optimistic. Which is always the way with software. We still have bunch of coding to do. End of July is now more likely. We have an early beta done now, but a functionally complete beta is still at least a month away.

            We are in the position were V4.2 is very stable. We are also very fortunately not to have a fixed deadline. Meaning that we won't be releasing a bug ridden half finished mess, as some large companies do in order to meet a deadline.

            ------
            David

            Comment

            • #7
              Originally posted by Wrensoft
              Yes, indexing ALT tags will be optional. If I get time I'll post more details of how V5 will handle images next later in the week.
              Thanks.

              Originally posted by Wrensoft
              I don't see why XHTML would offend a sense of tiddiness? XHTML is the successor of HTML and it was created "to clean up some of the more untidy parts of HTML". See the offical FAQ,
              http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/2004/xhtml-faq
              It's not XHTML that offends my sense of tidiness, but the presence of XHTML in a document that is declared to be HTML!

              I'm aware of the differences between HTML and XHTML, and why XHTML was introduced. In the official FAQ, note the following section:

              ... Can I intermix HTML 4.01 and XHTML documents?

              No. ...
              Nick

              Comment

              • #8
                The example search template file that we supply declares the document type to be XHTML. This is a extract from the file,

                Code:
                <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
    "http&#58;//www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
                So I am still confused why you think it isn't tidy?

                ----
                David

                Comment

                • #9
                  It isn't tidy because if I change the DOCTYPE to HTML I'd expect Zoom to output HTML rather than XHTML. But as I say, it's a minor issue.
                  Nick

                  Comment

                  • #10
                    Originally posted by Wrensoft
                    Yes, indexing ALT tags will be optional. If I get time I'll post more details of how V5 will handle images next later in the week.

                    ...In early 2006 we were thinking around June for V5 (i.e. this month), but that was too optimistic. Which is always the way with software. We still have bunch of coding to do. End of July is now more likely. We have an early beta done now, but a functionally complete beta is still at least a month away.

                    We are in the position were V4.2 is very stable. We are also very fortunately not to have a fixed deadline. Meaning that we won't be releasing a bug ridden half finished mess, as some large companies do in order to meet a deadline.

                    ------
                    David
                    I eagerly await V5. I have the pro version of V4.2. I agree that you should take the appropriate amount of time to get everything done so that there aren't any (many) bugs.

                    ...Again, one of my great wishes is a better category search and more comprehensive / exhaustive search options built in to the actual search engine and page outputs.

                    Comment

                    • #11
                      According to our stats only about 0.06% of browsers in use don't support the basic XHTML required by Zoom. So we don't see why HTML 1, 2, 3 or 4 output would be of use any more.

                      -----
                      David

                      Comment

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