Re: summary attribute compromise proposal

On Tue, Aug 4, 2009 at 2:06 PM, Maciej Stachowiak<mjs@apple.com> wrote:
>
> Hi Shelley,
>
> On Aug 4, 2009, at 12:02 PM, Shelley Powers wrote:
>
>> All due respect to John and Ian, but I would object to your compromise.
>
> I'd like to see if we can give consensus-building a chance to work before we
> jump into a new round of flaming. So let's give John and Ian a chance to
> comment. If anyone feels their views are not adequately represented by
> either John or Ian, then feel free to state additional objections with
> rationale. But first, let's give peace a chance.
>
> Regards,
> Maciej
>
>

This is not flaming. This is me disagreeing with your solution.

You started out providing what I felt were good directions in how to
differentiate between the other examples and summary, but then you
still include summary as "obsolete but conforming", which will
generate a warning (or error, not sure which) in validators.

You just gave a reason why summary should still be active, and
conforming, but then took it away immediately by saying its use will
generate a warning, and that the other approaches should be used
instead.

The alternatives and the summary attribute are all described in the
same place in the document. I am assuming folks can read all of the
approaches. And if your text is associated with the section (about
differentiating when to use one over the other), that should be
enough.

What you've done, though, is create confusion for people who have used
summary, correctly, in the past, when they're moving to HTML 5.
They'll get warnings, but they're using summary correctly -- can you
imagine the complications this could cause? And people will be getting
warnings when they use it correctly in new documents, too.

I do not agree with making summary "obsolete but conforming" or
specifically highlighting it for warning. And I'm not following any
mandate, other than my own judgment of what's right or not. I don't
think this is the right approach.

Now, John can work with you to go back to the WCAG group, and that's
cool, but until someone comes up with a good replacement for the
_same_ functionality, I'm staying with summary.

Now, I appreciate that you tried to find a compromise, and admire your
effort. But the issue really isn't between Ian and John.

Shelley

Received on Tuesday, 4 August 2009 19:31:04 UTC