Re: summary attribute compromise proposal

On Tue, Aug 4, 2009 at 3:16 PM, Laura
Carlson<laura.lee.carlson@gmail.com> wrote:
> 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
>

I was not aware that Cynthia was specifically tasked with this.

Then, yes, agree 100%:  we need to give her time to do her job.

Shelley

> 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 20:40:41 UTC