Re: Draft text for summary attribute definition

This sounds like a strategy for producing lay out tables to me.  data  
tables are created with lots of presupposed and prepurposed ideas and  
content in mind.  the summary is already apparent as a narative if the  
table is being created orrectly in the first place.  In other words, I  
will write in prose what I want a table to contain. "this is a report  
on how many people consumed bread and beef in the 1990s broken down by  
state.  Then, I'll gather the dat and construct the table.  The  
summary is the narative, the caption is a short title.  the two are  
unrelated but the summary is importent enough that it should ot be  
hidden and should also be part of the table.  I see a slippery slope  
when attempting to create a single element from an attribute and an  
element especially when semantically, they are so unrelated but  
perhaps I should have my second Sunday coffee before tackling such a  
brain twister.  If we are going this way, we need a new element so  
that we have a third rather than one, one element would be caption,  
the attribute summary would be almost unchanged and the combo of  
caption and summary could possibly be used for special casing but not  
called caption@///@summary.

On Mar 1, 2009, at 12:39 AM, Leif Halvard Silli wrote:

Robert J Burns 2009-03-01 05.33:
> On Feb 28, 2009, at 10:35 PM, Leif Halvard Silli wrote:
>> Gez Lemon 2009-03-01 02.45:
>>> 2009/3/1 Robert J Burns <rob@robburns.com>:

>>    <caption summary="Summary text."></caption>


> Just to clarify I wasn't yet trying to address your suggestion in  
> anything I said. Also my understanding was that Gez was more a  
> criticism of what I had said than anything about your proposal.

No problem.

> As for your proposal directly. I don't have any strong objections to  
> this approach. I also think your proposal would work equally well  
> with either version A or version B.

Yes, I guess so. I saw text bit in version b which spoke about other  
users than speech and braille users, and I was not certain I agreed to  
that.

> I'm still trying to think through why associating the table's  
> summary with the caption is superior to associating it with the  
> table itself (leaving the CSS issues aside). Perhaps you could say a  
> little more about what problem this addresses.

I feel that it addresses directly in the code the juxtaposing of  
summary and <caption> that I think is needed. The <caption> element is  
one that the author will often be working with all the time - it is  
the place where he attributes meaning to the entire table. The title  
might often be the final touch. This is also natural moment for when  
to add info about the table struture.

Wheras when the author starts with the <table> element, he might not  
have much clue about what the content will be. Most authors considers  
<table> only a kind of container element - they do not consider it any  
more semantic than <div>. In order to add anything inside @summary,  
one must either know the table structure before one creates the table,  
or one must go back to the <table> element and add @summary once it is  
finished.

The title - aka caption - however, one works with through out the  
table creation process, I think.

And, if one is running the table through some acessibilty checker  
which tells the author to add a caption@summary, the author might in  
the same go be reminded about adding caption conten as well.

(And likewise, if one has added a caption, and the checker asks for a  
summary, then I think many will find it naturally to add it to the  
caption@summary.)

> If we have captions always in the caption element and summaries as  
> defined in either version A or version B always in the 'summary'  
> attribute, what problems arise in attaching that 'summary' attribute  
> to the table instead of the 'caption' element?

I describe some of those above.  One should add the summary when one  
knows the entire table structure. When the author adds the caption is  
also the moment when he thinks about the structure. While when  
@summary is part of table, then the whole thing become more of a hard  
to understand accessibility burdon. (I hope this was answered what you  
asked a litle bit, at least.)

ISSUE-32

-- 
leif halvard silli

Received on Sunday, 1 March 2009 12:09:35 UTC