[Bug 6543] New: Mint a new element for figure captions

http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=6543

           Summary: Mint a new element for figure captions
           Product: HTML WG
           Version: unspecified
          Platform: PC
        OS/Version: All
            Status: NEW
          Severity: normal
          Priority: P2
         Component: Spec proposals
        AssignedTo: dave.null@w3.org
        ReportedBy: hsivonen@iki.fi
         QAContact: public-html-bugzilla@w3.org
                CC: ian@hixie.ch, mike@w3.org, public-html@w3.org


Currently, HTML 5 specifies that the caption for <figure> is represented by the
<legend> element. Unfortunately, the <legend> element implies a <fieldset> in
the HTML parser in already shipped and installed instances of Gecko. If
<legend> is used, this is a rather notable barrier for author adoption of
<figure> even if the generation of implied fieldset were removed in a future
release.

Furthermore, the <legend> element comes with form-related DOM baggage: the
HTMLLegendElement interface from DOM Level 2 HTML.

Since <caption> is also legacy-encumbered, I suggest minting a new element to
remove the adoption barriers for <figure> and its caption.

Since the English thesaurus has been exhausted, I suggest minting a new element
name that has some qualifying prefix for the word "caption": e.g. <figcaption>.
(I'm assuming here that <rubric> wouldn't be appropriate.)


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Received on Monday, 9 February 2009 07:17:38 UTC