Re: @headers issue resolved - allowing a td to be referenced by a header to be in the HTMl5 spec.

Chris Wilson wrote:
> On this topic, there has been much asynchronous participation 
> already.  I explicitly listed this as a topic for discussion for the 
> telecon, to invite those who might not be able to participate to 
> offer their input or ask for the matter to handled in some other way 
> in order to incorporate their input.  (There were, BTW, no explicit 
> regrets for this telecon.)  I also elicited different points of view 
> at length during the issue discussion on the telecon.

The problem with the telcon is that there isn't always time to fully 
analyse all the evidence and make informed decisions, let alone raise 
objections based on that.  For myself, having only joined the telcon at 
the last minute at Anne's request, I had no time to review the topic in 
preparation before hand, and was less able to make informed decisions on 
the spot.

> There was, in  effect, no significant dissent represented on IRC or the
> telecon, and I considered consensus to be achieved - thereby requiring 
> no further question to be put to the group.

I was also unaware that any sort of binding decision was going to be 
made, until after it was made, at which I point I quite clearly objected 
and asked for more time to review the evidence.

<Lachy> all of this discussion needs to be summarised and posted to the
         mailing lists where I and others, can have more time to analyise
         it thoroughly
<DanC>  Lachy, I'm pretty confident all the arguments made on the phone
         today are already in email
<Lachy> DanC, good. But I still don't think that making a binding
         decision like this on a telcon is the right approach
<DanC>  Lachy, I suppose the decision isn't binding until it's been put
         to the WG

DanC's last comment in particular led me to believe that the decision to 
allow headers="" to reference a TD element wasn't final, but that it was 
just going to be recommended to the group based on the outcome of the 
telcon.

I will also note that James Graham also mentioned his objections, and 
that during the telcon, there was even some slight confusion about what 
exactly the proposal was.  I think this is more evidence of my above 
assertion that telcons are really not a good place to make well informed 
decisions.

<jgraham>   Can someone fill me on briefly on what the idea is
<Josh>      @James: See 
http://esw.w3.org/topic/HTML/Action72Headers#head-14f006a74dc57f338be03afe43e7409e9828a86f
<MikeSmith> jgraham: idea is that there are cases where @headers seems
             to be needed on th
<MikeSmith> not just on td
<Gez>       It's the opposite of what Mike Smith just said
<Lachy>     wait, I thought it was just about having headers reference a
             TD, not that it should also be usable on TH?
<jgraham>   Oh, I have already explained why I think that is a bad
             approach in general
<MikeSmith> jgraham:
             http://juicystudio.com/wcag/tables/complexdatatable.html is
             the example under discussion
<jgraham>   MikeSmith: For that particular example it is not needed as
             far as I can tell

http://krijnhoetmer.nl/irc-logs/html-wg/20080828#l-527

-- 
Lachlan Hunt - Opera Software
http://lachy.id.au/
http://www.opera.com/

Received on Sunday, 31 August 2008 17:11:35 UTC