Re: PF Response: @Summary

Quoting Leif Halvard Silli <lhs@malform.no>:

> James Graham On 09-06-04 13.11:
>> Joshue O Connor wrote:
>>> On Wed, 3 Jun 2009, Ian Hickson wrote:
>>>>> Is the need not served by <caption>?
>>>
>>>> No. A caption is provided visually. [...]
>>>
>>> It is also worth noting that <caption> is a terse descriptor. @summary
>>> is a long descriptor.
>>
>> Since this is clearly going to be a long discussion it might help   
>> (and would certainly help me) if we start from clear premises. So   
>> it would be great if statements like "<caption> is..." could be   
>> clear about whether they are referring to spec requirements, actual  
>>  author practice, some sort of best practice (that may or may not   
>> match actual common practice), or something else, along with   
>> pointer to the relevant documentation/evidence.
>>
>> In this case I can't see anything in a HTML spec to back up your   
>> claim that <caption> must be terse whilst @summary must be long.
>
> HTML 4.01 on @summary (versus <caption>):
>
> [1][2]: "summary [...] purpose/structure for speech output"
>
> [3]: "Each table may have an associated caption (see the CAPTION
> element) that provides a short description of the table's purpose. A
> longer description may also be provided (via the summary attribute) for
> the benefit of people using speech or Braille-based user agents."

Oh, interesting. I had forgotten that HTML 4 did things like define  
element semantics in multiple places.

It seems like it doesn't really allow for the use case of documents  
that require extended table captions for all readers, which is clearly  
bad.

Received on Thursday, 4 June 2009 21:20:01 UTC