Re: talking about text alternatives Re: ALT as required attribute

> Images as objects are badly specified though, since the UA cannot know it's
> an image until after it's performed an HTTP GET on the url, it can guess it

That's what the type parameter is for.

> might be, but cannot know.
> 
> Equally, what happens with an HTML document returned with a 404 status code

Because img isn't a first class link either, you lose the information 
with the 404.

> returned by the server, should the object fallback be used, or should the
> HTML document be used?  What about other status codes?  At least with image,

I would expect the fallback.

> you know the author intended it to be an image, and not just about anything.