Re: Summary of Thursday's IRC conversation about @summary

On Fri, Jun 5, 2009 at 3:44 PM, Shelley Powers <shelleyp@burningbird.net> wrote:
>>> I asked in the IRC, what are alternatives, and what was a little
>>> uncomfortable was that the folks who really want this attribute gone,
>>> really
>>> have no alternative solution in mind. Well, other than smoosh it into
>>> caption, which is bad mistake, and a bad design decision (you don't want
>>> to
>>> start redefining the context and meaning of existing elements).
>>
>> Why not? Especially if the change in semantic is such that
>> compatibility with existing content is still maintained.
>
> Every DBA and data person in this list just winced at that one. You're not
> maintaining existing "semantics" when you change what is allowable data in
> the container. And you don't change the meaning of a data container after
> it's been in the wild for a time. You can clarify the information about the
> container, but you don't literally change the meaning.
>
> If you must, you deprecate the old, and replace it with new. But that would
> mean pulling both caption and summary. Are you all willing to pull both
> caption and summary?
>
> Seriously, if you all insist on "merging" the data, the only appropriate way
> to do so would be to deprecate both and replace them with something new. But
> deprecating table caption -- I'm not sure that's a particularly feasible
> idea.

This doesn't seem to answer my question "Why" above.

/ Jonas

Received on Friday, 5 June 2009 23:34:47 UTC