- From: John Foliot <john@foliot.ca>
- Date: Sun, 10 Aug 2014 10:59:13 -0700
- To: "'Michael[tm] Smith'" <mike@w3.org>, "'David MacDonald'" <david100@sympatico.ca>
- Cc: <public-html-a11y@w3.org>
Michael[tm] Smith wrote: > > David MacDonald <david100@sympatico.ca>, 2014-08-07 15:56 -0400: > ... > > I think it would be great to have a working <noteref> and <note> > > elements that opens (and/or jumps) to the footnote and returns the > > user back to footnote. > > You might want to consider taking this topic to the www-style list > instead. Personally, I think this is a horrible recommendation. We're not worried about how it looks Mike, we're concerned about the semantic representation of the data being marked up (and as an aside Mike, can you point us to the previous discussions at the W3C?) Footnotes(1) and asides(2) have distinct and unique definitions, and further, they generally have different interaction (reading) patterns(3), which by rights should remain separated. You are correct, <aside>, as defined by the HTML5 spec, can be "...used for typographical effects like pull quotes or sidebars, (and/or) for advertising..", but that is not what a footnote is, nor does: the footnote has a very specific role to play, and is often a critical requirement for scholarly works, legal documents, and other "non-app" applications. One key function, not provided with the <aside> element is a programmatic binding of the content to a specific reference (although, we *might* also consider creating rel="footnote" - http://www.w3.org/TR/html5/links.html#linkTypes - but that is not the charter of www-style, but rather the charter of HTML5-WG) (4) Relegating it to simply a visual "styling" completely misses the whole point. > > The reason I'd suggest www-style is that the idea of having specific > markup for footnotes is not a new suggestion -- we've had a lot of > discussion over the years about markup for footnotes, and that > discussion was a large part of what led to the <aside> element being > added to HTML. > > So the fact that at this point we don't have a more specific element > than <aside> for footnotes is actually not an oversight -- it's by > design. <aside> "The aside element represents a section of a page that consists of content that is tangentially related to the content around the aside element, and which could be considered separate from that content. Such sections are often represented as sidebars in printed typography. The element can be used for typographical effects like pull quotes or sidebars, for advertising, for groups of nav elements, and for other content that is considered separate from the main content of the page." source: http://www.w3.org/TR/html5/sections.html#the-aside-element (JF notes that footnotes are not "tangentially" related to the content in proximity to the <aside>, but rather are specifically related to a specific piece of content.) </aside> > > That is, the <aside> element is, by design, a presentation-agnostic > means intended for marking up all types of notes as a general class. As > far as footnotes specifically, the prevailing agreement that emerged > from past discussions was that footnotes are mostly just a particular > presentational way to handle (render) notes as a class (<aside>s) in > particular presentational environments -- and so therefore the right > solution for footnotes is for CSS to provide some means to handle them. That might handle the visual conundrums, but it does not handle use-cases where styling is moot (i.e. screen reader usage). Once again, a pointer to this "prevailing agreement" would be most useful here, as, being a longtime subscriber to the HTML5-WG mailing list, I don't recall that discussion being documented. > > That's why the CSS Generated Content for Paged Media (GCPM) spec has an > extensive overview of footnote handling, and a solution: > > aside.fn { float: footnote } > http://www.w3.org/TR/css-gcpm-3/#creating-footnotes Again, that deals with the visual output, but does not address the specific semantic difference between and aside and a footnote. In the past, when suggestions of the idea of starting to add semantic reasoning to CSS have been suggested, the howl and cry on how "stupid" that idea might be has been heard (loud and clear). Thus, using CSS to address the semantic requirement MUST not be considered here either. > Anyway, that's all why I'd suggest www-style as the best place to > restart any new discussion about handling of footnotes -- e.g., to ask > why browsers haven't already implemented "float: footnote" yet and/or > to find out if there's some proposed CSS alternative to "float: > footnote" that's been discussed and that browser implementors might be > more likely to implement at this point. I do not think there is a clear understanding of the use-case problem. It's not about how it looks, it is about how it is perceived - and so taking this to www-style does not solve the problem at hand, that group simply would figure out how to make it pretty :) In fairness, another approach *might* be to use ARIA (role="footnote" + aria-describedby: feels a bit awkward), which would address the "screen reader problem", but I think a more universal, native approach would benefit *more* than just the non-sighted user, which is something that many non-accessibility-specialists have often argued for in the past (for example, as an argument *against* @longdesc...) JF (1) Footnote: "a note of reference, explanation, or comment usually placed below the text on a printed page" - source: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/footnote See also: http://libguides.csuchico.edu/content.php?pid=214757&sid=1793692 (2) Aside: "to or toward the side - used with put or set to describe something that is being kept or saved for a future use; - used to say that something is not included in a statement that follows" - source: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/aside (3) Footnotes generally are expected to have an interaction pattern that allows the end user to reference the content, and return to the reference, with relative ease. This XML definition of footnote is a good example: http://docs.ubmatrix.com/webhelp/XPE/3_5/ubmf_functions/ubmfi_footnote-links .htm (4) Very quickly knocking together an example: <p>Gombrich associates Daumier with the political cartoonists and not "the French tradition of great art." (<a href="#gombrich" rel="footnote">7</a>)</p> ...blah blah.. <aside id="gombrich"> 7. E.H. Gomrich, art and Illusion (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1961), 336, 345, 252</aside> (Sample text taken from http://libguides.csuchico.edu/content.php?pid=214757&sid=1793692) {Missing here however is a specific mechanism that would allow the user to return to the initial reference link, although, as a basic anchor element, I suppose the "Back" button would do so...}
Received on Sunday, 10 August 2014 18:00:07 UTC