Image syntax

[John Gruber]

Aaron Swartz <aaronsw at gmail.com> wrote on 07/27/05 at 2:53 pm:


> ## Possibilities

> 

> Here's how Wikipedia does it:

> 

> [[Image:Gruber.jpg|300px|right|The Narrator, pictured with his family.]]

> 

> It's sort of ugly.


Yeah, it's gibberishy.




> Here's something like what I previously considered:

> 

> ![The Narrator, pictured with his family.](Gruber.jpg){300px, right}

> 

> It's a little cleaner, but still messy.


Yeah, again, I have to ask: how and when did '!' come to mean
"image"?



> Here's how I'd do it under this syntax.

> 

> <Gruber.jpg> 300px right

> (The Narrator, pictured with his family.)

> 

> Actually, that's not so bad.


I think you should optionally be able to line-break it liberally:

    <img url>
    size
    alignment
    (Alt text.)

Why worry about cramming so much onto one line?

Size and alignment would definitely both be optional.

But how does "300px" qualify as a size? It's just one dimension.

What about:

    </url/to/img>
    h: 200px
    w: 300px
    a: right
    (Alt text goes here.)
    
and then since they're more like named parameters, you could put
them in any order:

    </url/to/img>
    (Alt text goes here.)
    a: right
    w: 300px
    h: 200px

or, optionally, more compressed:

    </url/to/img>
    (Alt text goes here.)
    h: 200px  w: 300px  a: right  
    
or, optionally, with longer attribute names:

    </url/to/img>
    height: 200px
    width:  300px
    align:  center
    (Alt text goes here.)

-J.G.