Galleries and template tags do not respect alternate text

[doug]

When adding an image directly to a post (using the media uploader), the alternate text specified by the user is used for the alt attribute of the img element. When using the [gallery] shortcode, however, the alt attribute for each image is a duplicate of the caption (post_excerpt) for that image. The alternate text supplied by the user is not used at all.

---

miqrogroove points out that the template tags for attachments variously output the image title or a blank attribute where the alt text should be. (Added by nacin)

Change alt attribute to alternate text supplied by user rather than caption

nacin, there's a problem with this also on the gallery pages (attachment.php/image.php). The template tags for attachments variously output the image title or a blank attribute where the alt text should be. Verified on 2.9.2 and 3.0-alpha. Does that need to be a separate ticket?

Does that need to be a separate ticket?

Probably fine here.

I was testing this to look at adding a patch but it seems to have been fixed already in trunk. I couldn't find another ticket that deals with it but if you look at the wp_get_attachment_image() function, it already has the alt info added with a couple fallbacks. It adds the alt correctly to the gallery code correctly as far as I could tell.

$default_attr = array(
	'src'	=> $src,
	'class'	=> "attachment-$size",
	'alt'	=> trim(strip_tags( get_post_meta($attachment_id, '_wp_attachment_image_alt', true) )), // Use Alt field first
	'title'	=> trim(strip_tags( $attachment->post_title )),
);
if ( empty($default_attr['alt']) )
	$default_attr['alt'] = trim(strip_tags( $attachment->post_excerpt )); // If not, Use the Caption
if ( empty($default_attr['alt']) )
	$default_attr['alt'] = trim(strip_tags( $attachment->post_title )); // Finally, use the title

#11846