How valuable are images containing text, compared with markdown?

Question

This morning, I updated this question to convert text contained in the embedded image to markdown: Is instruction pointer a program visible register?

It seems to me that the text is more valuable in markdown than an image, since it can be searched, indexed, etc. But on the other hand, the image allows text to be highlighted, which I believe markdown does not support (??). In this case the highlighting is superfluous, but it got me to thinking:

Is it preferable to "convert" an embedded image containing text, where the image itself provides little value over markdown?

Answer 1

I agree with your conversion. In general, text is much more useful than images.

I've seen people post pictures of their code. That preserves syntax highlighting (unnecessary though it may be), but does not allow answerers to copy the code directly to try it out themselves. That's borderline rude, in my opinion.

Images also don't play well with screen readers, high-contrast text modes, etc. I know we have a number of people who are vision-impaired and would not be able to read or answer a question which relied solely on an image.

Answer 2

You can use bold or italic for highlighting text, so that isn't really a disadvantage of markdown compared to images of text.

I'd consider text version of such images superior in pretty much every regard, they're usually better readable, can be copied and provide accessibility. I agree that converting the image you used as an example improved the post.