Equivalency of caption, h, and title.

It seems very much to me that caption, h and title are all the same element.
They describe the object that they are the child of.  So it makes sense to
me to name them all the same thing.  Title here seems to be the best
candidate because it works in all cases.  The h tag and the caption tag
bring about specific presentational images to mind.  Also I suggest adding a
summary tag to the content models of certain block elements.  Together these
would add quite a bit of semantic information.  As a colliery to this, might
I also suggest moving the title attribute from the core attribute collection
and attaching it only to inline elements.  To show some examples of where a
rethought title tag and an expanded summary tag would be useful, I present
the following:

 

<?xml.

<html.

<title>The title of the document</title>

<summary>A summary of the document for use by search engines and UA's to add
to bookmark data.</summary>

<head>.</head>

<body>

            <section>

                        <title>The title of the section.  Replaces
h.</title>

                        <summary>The summary of the section.  New
element</summary>

                        <p>..</p>

                        <section>

                                    <title>...</title>

                                    <summary>.</summary>

                                    <p>.</p>

                        </section>

                        <object .>

                                    <title>Replaces caption</title>

                                    <summary>Summary of object</summary>

                                    <param...

                                    <param.

                        </object>

                        <table>

                                    <title>Title of table. Replaces
caption</title>

                                    <summary>Summary of table.  Existing
element</summary>

                                    .

                        </table>

            </section>

</body>

</html>

 

Similarly you could add title and summary information to form elements as
well.  Additionally for the title and summary information you could add a
ref attribute of type IDREF that pointed to the content you wanted in the
title or summary tag.  This would allow the title tag and the summary tag in
the heading to point to content in the body, reducing the need to duplicate
information.

The content model for the title tag is inline.  The content model for
summary is the same as the p tag.

 

Orion Adrian

Received on Tuesday, 10 February 2004 12:35:12 UTC