[Bug 8404] Refocus the figure element back to being a figure

http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=8404





--- Comment #20 from Shelley Powers <shelleyp@burningbird.net>  2009-11-30 23:39:13 ---
(In reply to comment #17)
> (In reply to comment #11)
> > (In reply to comment #6)
> > > I would expect a <figure> to be able to contain a <table> instead of an image.
> > > They may be labeled differently, but in scientific literature tables are
> > > presented in exactly the same way as graphics; both will be numbered, both may
> > > have a long explanatory caption, etc. It is overkill to require two entirely
> > > different markup structures in order to represent the same structure with one
> > > case applying to graphics and the other to tables when the two cases are easily
> > > distinguished based on the actual content. 
> > > 
> > 
> > 
> > Perhaps because of my experience writing tech books, but tables are usually
> > references as Table 1, Table 2, while code examples are Example 1, and figures
> > are Figure 1 and Figure 2, and so on. I didn't think that scientific
> > publications were that different. At least not the ones I can recall.
> 
> On page 84 of Practical RDF, there are three tables in a figure. Now I admit
> they are reasonably graphical tables, but could be done using HTML tables and
> CSS or easily as SVG or a PNG.
> 
> On page 381 of Painting the Web there is a chart/table of web safe colors in a
> Figure (9-21). It would be reasonable to represent this as either a table or
> svg, or img in HTML. Page 386 has another Figure (9-25) Font compatibility
> table from AMPSoft. 
> 
> I'd agree that figures are more graphical in nature then an aside, or a table.
> But that doesn't mean that the graphical representation can't be partially
> tabular or textual.
> 

PS These tables are not treated as tables, they're are treated in the book as
graphics. 

I think you all are mixing up representation with function here. 

And if you want to put tables into the content, you can. Use the table element.
Leave figure for figures. 

Notice that in the two examples you referenced, that I refer to the figures as
figures? But the few tables I used (I don't use a lot of tables in my books,
they're a pain to format), I reference as Table...


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Received on Monday, 30 November 2009 23:39:23 UTC