Re: summary attribute compromise proposal

On Aug 4, 2009, at 1:43 PM, Julian Reschke wrote:

> Maciej Stachowiak wrote:
>> No, I mean a summary attribute being present at all, regardless of  
>> its value. What do you think should be the validator behavior for  
>> that case?
>> ...
>
> Unless the validator develops sufficient intelligence so that it can  
> tell a good summary value from a bad one, it should stay silent.

I think silence is not an approach that will get buy-in from people  
who think summary is problematic.

> Any element can be mis-used and in fact is misused in practice, so  
> why make an exception in this case?

This case may be worth an exception, because we have some evidence  
that this particular attribute is often used wrong, and HTML5 offers  
new alternatives. Thus, highly visible guidance to authors could help.  
Is your concern about the label as a "warning", or about having  
advisory guidance in the validator at all?

Regards,
Maciej