- From: Leif Halvard Silli <xn--mlform-iua@xn--mlform-iua.no>
- Date: Tue, 1 Dec 2009 17:47:05 +0100
- To: "Tab Atkins Jr." <jackalmage@gmail.com>
- Cc: Laura Carlson <laura.lee.carlson@gmail.com>, Michael(tm) Smith <mike@w3.org>, Shelley Powers <shelley.just@gmail.com>, HTMLWG WG <public-html@w3.org>
Tab Atkins Jr., Tue, 1 Dec 2009 09:54:14 -0600: > On Tue, Dec 1, 2009 at 9:31 AM, Laura Carlson: >> Hi Leif, >> >> You wrote to Tab [1]: >> >>> What you did not prove anywhere, is that people will *not* have a >>> difficult time understanding what <figure> is about. >> >> I did a little bit of searching and found some definitions, style >> guides, and examples. > [snip giant list] > > Thanks for the research, Laura! Much appreciated. Indeed! > It seems somewhat odd that, despite all the styleguides implicitly > forbidding using code in figures and explicitly forbidding tables in > figures, that such uses are still as common as they are. This may > indicate that it is in fact more natural to use figures in the broader > sense that the spec currently defines, and that attempting to limit it > to the definition implied by the styleguides would be > counterproductive, as authors would just ignore it and use it as they > see in current books and magazine articles. > > (I also note that many of the guides forbidding using a table as a > figure are merely forbidding it from being *labeled* as a figure - I > doubt they're requiring that they not be styled and treated otherwise > as a figure. Even in books that I own that do explicitly label > table-figures as "Table 1.2" or what-have-you, the styling and meaning > of the table is identical to that of other figures.) I think the question is whether <figure> is a suitable common denominator for content ]]that could, without affecting the flow of the document, be moved away from that primary content, e.g. to the side of the page, to dedicated pages, or to an appendix[[. I was confused when you insisted that a table can be referred to as a figure. And, if <figure> remains, then it should not be *labeled* as a figure, whenever it actually wraps around a <table> ... We should not go for "<figure>" if it can lead to more such concept clashes. And it could be tempting to use your line of argumentation as proof of the problem. ;-) The denominator that cover the broadest seems to be "caption", and not "figure". -- leif halvard silli
Received on Tuesday, 1 December 2009 16:47:49 UTC