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

Reposted due to delivery errors of original posting

James Graham wrote:
> 
> FWIW I would prefer not to have an "conformant with warnings" level of
> conformance but I can accept it if it helps us make progress with the
> spec. I would request the additional change that the spec include a
> description of the purpose of features that generate warnings e.g.
> 
> "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 the caption element or one of the other techniques
> described in the table section to provide this information."
> 

I'm sorry James, but your proposed text would actually harm progress here.
Numerous respondents have underscored the fact that caption and summary
are different beasts and a continued insistence that they are "close
enough" will only encourage continued agitation - they are not. A
hamburger is not a hotdog, even if you have both at your backyard BBQ.

Personally I do not understand the harm in keeping summary in the spec as
conformant, but with guidance that there might be a better way today. As
Chaals pointed out earlier, introducing a proposed 'new better way' should
not be a criteria for instant removal of the previous 'better way'.

I suspect that if sufficient numbers still hold a similar view as James
(caption can replace summary) that consensus has not yet been reached and
we need to proceed with a vote. My $0.02

JF

Received on Wednesday, 8 July 2009 17:28:33 UTC