[Bug 8404] Refocus the figure element back to being a figure

http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=8404





--- Comment #22 from Shelley Powers <shelleyp@burningbird.net>  2009-11-30 23:51:00 ---
(In reply to comment #21)
> (In reply to comment #18)
> > (In reply to comment #16)
> > > I should note by the way that I was in agreement with Shelley's opinion that a
> > > figure can only be an image  until this morning when I studied a large number
> > > of examples from the various science, engineering and social science textbooks
> > > I have around, as well as samples of academic papers, and practical programming
> > > books. Seeing how figures are used in practice convinced me that they need a
> > > very broad content model.
> > > 
> > 
> > I don't think it's a good idea, though, to allow the exceptions to guide what
> > is default behavior. 
> > 
> > Remember there's nothing with refocusing figure back to images that doesn't
> > preclude people also including an HTML table when they need a table. But they
> > would embed the table directly in the content, rather than a figure. 
> 
> I think if you're converting an article from some source form (say LaTeX or
> DocBook) to HTML, then you should be able to use <figure> for anything that was
> a figure in your source format.

How are DocBook converted to HTML now? There is no figure in HTML4, or XHTML. 

How has DocBook been converted into HTML now?

> 
> > 
> > As the publication you showed demonstrated, figures are treated separately from
> > code examples, and from tables. By simplifying figure, we're not precluding
> > people from using what has existed for years: tables and code. 
> 
> Indeed, tables are usually (though not always) treated separately from images.
> But I found many examples of source code being presented as a figure and
> labeled as such.
> 
> 
> > In point of fact, HTML tables are a bit of a problem with the ebook industry,
> > but the tools are improving. And code samples have their own elements, with
> > their own captions, and their own reference: Example 1, Example 2, and so on.
> 
> That's not always the case. I've never seen the Example 1 / Example 2 numbering
> in a computer science paper, but I have seen Figure 1 / Figure 2 used to label
> code samples that are out of the normal flow.
> 
> > So I don't think that restricting figure to svg, canvas, img, object, video,
> > and pre, would be an onerous burden on the scientific book community. 
> 
> I think it would. You should be able to convert LaTeX or DocBook to HTML and
> still be able to generate a valid list of tables and figures from the resulting
> HTML.
> 


And you can. You can convert images into figures, and tables into tables. 


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Received on Monday, 30 November 2009 23:51:02 UTC