[Bug 18476] New: Failure to define that a table-caption element is block-level

https://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=18476

           Summary: Failure to define that a table-caption element is
                    block-level
           Product: CSS
           Version: unspecified
          Platform: All
        OS/Version: All
            Status: NEW
          Severity: normal
          Priority: P2
         Component: CSS Level 2
        AssignedTo: bert@w3.org
        ReportedBy: antonsforums@yahoo.co.uk
         QAContact: public-css-bugzilla@w3.org


Reported by Peter Moulder

9.2.1 (Block-level elements and block boxes) says:

  # [...] The following values of the 'display' property make an
  # element block-level: 'block', 'list-item', and 'table'.

In CSS21, an element with display:table-caption is also a block-level element,
but this is intentionally not mentioned in 9.2.1 because future levels of CSS
are likely to introduce new 'left' and 'right' values of the 'caption-side'
property, which will cause the caption box to not be block-level.[1]  Rather,
the belief expressed in [1] is that 17.4 defines that table captions are
block-level in CSS21, so that this forwards-incompatible information is
restricted to the very chapter ("module") that will introduce the breaking
change (and simultaneously remove the statement that table captions are
block-level) at some future level.

However, 17.4 in fact fails to define table captions to be block-level
elements.  Rather, it says:

  # [...] The caption boxes are block-level boxes [...].

It is not enough to put this down to the familiar box vs element informality in
the spec, since both the quoted statement for boxes and the analogous statement
for elements are simultaneously true.

17.4 needs to define table captions as block-level elements, since the spec is
written under the assumption that the "level" of each element type is known.

[1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2010Aug/0026.html


Conversation begins:
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2010Jul/0519.html (middle part)

Bug description:
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2010Aug/0029.html

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Received on Thursday, 2 August 2012 20:48:29 UTC