Re: Draft text for summary attribute definition

Hi Leif,

I  understand your rationale, but I see two important issues:

1: The summary attribute isn't a property of the caption element, but  
a property of the table itself (its purpose is to describe how to read  
the table, not how to read the caption).

2: There isn't a strong relationship between the caption element and  
the summary attribute; the caption element isn't required, but that  
doesn't  mean a summary shouldn't be provided.

Cheers,

Gez

On 1 Mar 2009, at 03:35, Leif Halvard Silli <lhs@malform.no> wrote:

> Gez Lemon 2009-03-01 02.45:
>> 2009/3/1 Robert J Burns <rob@robburns.com>:
>
>>> I certainly don't want to contribute to the confusion between  
>>> caption and
>>> summary. Version B tries to reduce the confusion by being explicit  
>>> about how
>>> to craft summary and captions (and with Leif's section also a more  
>>> complete
>>> specification for crafting a caption). My view is that we only  
>>> contribute to
>>> the confusion by not addressing these issues.
>> I think the HTML 5 specification should simply state the purpose of
>> the summary attribute as unambiguously as possible, maybe with a
>> simple example, and point to WCAG 2.0 for advice on how to use the
>> summary attribute.
>
> My version, "version c - for caption", only differs from the first  
> version, "version a", by defining @summary as an attribute of  
> <caption>:
>
>    <caption summary="Summary text."></caption>
>
> Rationale: With the author in mind.
>
> (1) While it *functionaly*, makes some sense to keep @summary as a  
> global attribute (since the user might want to listen to the summary  
> even when he is in the middle of the table - just like a visual user  
> might call up table@title wherever he is), evidence shows that  
> mentally and "meta-wise", authors needs to discern caption from  
> summary. Therefore they need to see the two in the same context.
>
> (2) <caption> is a "meta element". @summary is meta info.
>
> (3) <caption> isn't used in layout tables. @summary isn't either.
>
> (4) caption@summary is simpler to to work with via CSS. This makes  
> it simpler to test (aka "display") caption@summary in visual user  
> agents than it is to display table@summary.
>
> table@summary should be deprecated = fully valid, though, as Julian  
> proposed.
>
> It is a total misunderstanding if anyone thinks that my proposal is  
> mixing <caption> and @summary. (But that doen't mean that it isn't  
> possible that table@summary could a better choice than  
> caption@summary, all things considered.)
>
> (The text isn't ready though, but since I perceived Rob to say that  
> I write about <caption> in itself, I had to say this. Ok, I may be  
> mented <caption>, but only because I see @summary as an attribute of  
> <caption> )
> -- 
> leif halvard silli

Received on Sunday, 1 March 2009 04:29:29 UTC