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

I want to apologize to the group; I try not to respond to email on the weekends, and I've been swamped this week with other work.  I still intend to reply to this thread, but need the time to dig into the other analyses (particularly James Graham's, thanks James) before replying.

As I said at the time on the telcon last week, as Dan said in email (below), and I said last week - no binding decisions are made on the telcon.  That doesn't mean we won't have significant discussion, or even attempt to gauge consensus and move the needle forward.

-Chris

-----Original Message-----
From: Lachlan Hunt [mailto:lachlan.hunt@lachy.id.au]
Sent: Sunday, August 31, 2008 10:11 AM
To: Chris Wilson
Cc: public-html
Subject: 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 Wednesday, 3 September 2008 20:54:53 UTC