<summary> element and Issue 32

On 1/23/10, Maciej Stachowiak <mjs@apple.com> wrote:
>
> On Jan 23, 2010, at 8:58 PM, Ian Hickson wrote:
>
>> On Wed, 20 Jan 2010, Maciej Stachowiak wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> So it sounds like no one else has strong feelings. I therefore suggest
>>> that Ian should implement the fcaption/dlabel Change Proposal:
>>> http://esw.w3.org/topic/HTML/ChangeProposals/DdDtFcaptionDlabel
>>>
>>> I think it would be fine to pick either of <fcaption> or <figcaption>,
>>> and either of <dlabel> or <dsummary>. Once that change is made, the
>>> Chairs will post a Call for Consensus to close this issue by amicable
>>> resolution.
>>
>> <figcaption> seems reasonable, but can't we use <summary> instead of
>> <dsummary>? The argument that it would be confusing because of summary=""
>> doesn't seem to really hold water given that authors have no problems with
>>
>> <title> and title="", <style> and style="", <span> and span="", or <cite>
>> and cite="", and nobody has particularly complained about us adding
>> <label> and label="" or <form> and form="" in HTML5. In fact the best
>> example may be <abbr> and abbr="", which haven't caused anyone any
>> confusion that I'm aware of, where the meaning is subtly different in
>> almost exactly the same way as proposed here, and where the attribute is
>> similarly considered by many to be a feature that should be removed from
>> the language anyway.
>
> That sounds pretty convincing to me, I don't know of anyone being seriously
> confused by the cases above. And I agree your example with plain <summary>
> reads nicely. Shelley, are you willing to reconsider your objection on this
> point? Does anyone else have an opinion one way or the other?

I am in favor of creating a <summary> element as it might be a long
term solution for issue 32. From Al Gilman's 6 Aug 2008 email "PFWG
WAI review of @summary for tabular data":

"element content providing this info, *if linked by markup to the
table*offers growth to even better practice"
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2008Aug/0213.html

Brainstorming long term possibilities in the Wiki:
http://esw.w3.org/topic/HTML/SummaryForTABLE#head-1d4cc386df3edd130dd677e056ba2bf98961145a

Best Regards,
Laura
-- 
Laura L. Carlson

Received on Sunday, 24 January 2010 08:50:41 UTC