Re: summary attribute compromise proposal

Hi Shelley,

You wrote to Maciej:

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

+1

Table summary is an open issue in the HTML WG Tracker.  And it should
be marked as open in the spec, whether John's or Ian's or some
combination of words are used.

Cynthia Shelly has Action 128 to "Work with PF to find an owner for
drafting @summary text proposal" [1]. Let's give Cynthia a chance.

Best Regards,
Laura

On Tue, Aug 4, 2009 at 2:20 PM, Shelley Powers<shelley.just@gmail.com> wrote:
> 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

-- 
Laura L. Carlson

Received on Tuesday, 4 August 2009 20:17:00 UTC