Re: ACTION-128: Draft @summary voting text in conjunction with PF

jfoliot@stanford.edu wrote:
> Apologies for top posting.
> 
> I'm sorry James, but your propsed text would actually harm progress 
> here. Numerous respondants have underscored the fact that caption and 
> summary are different beasts and a continued insistance that they are 
> "close enough" will only encourage continued aggitation - they are not. 
> A hamburger is not a hotdog, even if you have both at your backyard BBQ.

I am not attached to the particular wording; it was designed to be a 
minimal change from the existing spec text (which mentions caption) that 
included the type of description I require. I am just as happy with:

"The summary attribute on table elements was used in older versions of 
HTML for authors to provide a description of the structure of complex 
tables. Authors should not use this attribute in HTML 5 documents but 
should instead use one of the techniques described in the table section 
to provide this information."

Although I do note in passing that the original text explicitly 
suggested caption /as a place for describing the 2D structure of the 
table/. Surely you would not object if authors did start to make this 
information accessible through <caption>? As far as I can tell the 
important thing is that the information be provided somewhere users can 
access it, not exactly where that somewhere is.

Received on Wednesday, 8 July 2009 16:49:57 UTC